By Christian Njoku
The National Orientation Agency (NOA) says that if well-handled, Nigeria’s whistleblower policy was all the nation needed in its fight against corruption.
Mr Otu Ibor, Director, NOA in Cross River, said this during a town-hall meeting organised by the African Centre for Media and Information Literacy (AFRICMIL) with support from the McArthur Foundation and the Cross River Watch.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the Whistle-blowing Policy in Nigeria is an anti-corruption programme that encourages people to voluntarily disclose information about fraud, bribery, looted government funds and other financial misconduct to the government.
The policy, which was launched in 2016 by the Federal Government, shows that a whistleblower who provides information about financial mismanagement or fraud is entitled to 2.5 per cent to five per cent from the funds recovered by the Nigerian Government.
Ibor said that financial corruption did not happen in abstract but was carried out by people who benefitted from its proceeds, adding that all the policy needed in Nigeria was more publicity.
He said, “if given necessary attention, the whistleblower policy is a beautiful and sustainable programme to fight the monstrous, hydra-headed and multi-faceted corruption in the nation.
“Our mandate is to build a society where people will conform to positive and acceptable norms that aid development, this is why we are present in the 774 local government areas in the nation.
“Corruption is a monster in Nigeria and it is multi-faceted, we need to be dogged in the fight against it and the whistleblower policy is a fine way to go,’’ the NOA director said.
Also, Mr Jeremiah Archibong, who is the Managing Editor of the Cross River Watch, said that without whistleblowing, a lot of corrupt practices would go unnoticed.
Archibong said this while presenting a paper on the topic: “Strengthening the Whistleblowing Policy Implementation through Whistleblower Protection”
He said that, although, whistleblowing was an important tool to fight corruption, not many Nigerians knew how the policy could be carried out.
He noted that many people had not been able to take the policy to their immediate environment, due to lack of knowledge and fear of not being protected.
“Whistleblowing helps protect public interest by fighting corruption but weak institutions, poor protection of whistleblowers, poor financing and the long and difficult process make the policy problematic in Nigeria,” he said.
Archibong appealed to the NOA to use its wide reach as an agency to educate Nigerians on the importance of the whistleblower policy and to push for the policy to be made a law in the nation.
On his part, Mr Tijah-Bolton Akpan, Head of Programme, Policy Alert, said Nigeria needed to be saved from fiscal crisis, which was impossible due to its weak institutions.
Akpan added that Nigerians had the power of localised intelligence that could help security agencies in identifying illicit actions, which, when reported, could help society but the challenge was the fear of what happened next to the whistleblower.
“One way to enhance whistleblowing is the anonymity clause but we need to go beyond whistleblowing being a policy to a law,” he maintained. (NAN)
