Survey: Victimisation Crippled Whistleblower Policy

Kuni Tyessi in Abuja

A survey on the five years of whistleblowing policy in Nigeria has revealed that the fear of victimisation made the impact of the policy minimal.

The report released by the African Centre for Media and Information Literacy (AFRICMIL) with support from MacArthur Foundation, recently in Abuja, assessed the impact of the whistle-blower policy introduced in 2016 as a tool to fight corruption in Nigeria.

The Acting Executive Director of Dataphyte and survey reviewer, Adenike Aloba, said the survey assessed the level of citizen awareness of the policy and their willingness to expose corrupt practices and to also know the perceptions of government Ministries Departments and Agencies (MDAs).

According to Aloba, the findings revealed that 98.2 per cent of Nigerians perceived corruption as a serious problem and evidence showed that respondents expressed dissatisfaction with the information available to them on whistleblowing policy.
“Findings revealed that legislative protection and monetary reward for whistle-blowers were considered as key motivators for potential whistle-blowers.

“Overall evidences from both quantitative and qualitative data showed that while the whistleblowing policy recorded some achievements, its impact in curbing corruption remained minimal.
“This is due to several barriers including, but not limited to lack of legislation protection ,limited funding ,insufficient data ,lack of political will, limited knowledge , poor reporting, controversial compensating mechanisms ,wide spread retaliation among others,” she said.

Aloba said the survey therefore recommended that the federal government should provide appropriate mechanism to institutionalise the policy in MDAs to enhance implementation.

She said it also recommended that the Ministries of Finance, Budget and National Planning should collate and statistics of whistleblowing cases investigated and evidence of recovered fund and compensation.

She also said the move would encourage the culture of accountability and transparency for potential whistle-blowers.
She urged the executive to collaborate with the National Assembly to ensure that the whistle-blower bill was passed into law.
She called on state governments to embrace the policy and adopt a multi-sectorial approach to institutional it and the National Assembly should review and pass the policy before the end of their tenure.

She also urged the Minister of Finance to ensure that the circular issued to all anti-corruption agencies became a policy document to maintain the culture of accountability and transparency for compensation of whistle-blowers.
Aloba urged the media to track and report prosecution of whistleblowing cases recoveries, compensations as well as whistle-blowers who suffer retaliation.

On his part, AFRICMIL’s Coordinator, Chido Onumah, said the organisation and MacArthur Foundation, had been working on a project tagged ‘Corruption Anonymous’ (CORA) that was designed to mobilise citizens to key into the whistleblowing policy.
Onumah said to assess its performance over this period, AFRICMIL commissioned a survey in July, targeting 7000 respondents and including key informants in MDAs and unions.

He added that the objective of the survey was to catalogue the data of the impact of the whistleblowing policy in addressing corrupt practices and other wrongdoing in Nigeria.
“We feel it is important for us to know why people are willing or not willing to blow the whistle and how well the protection mechanism has worked.

“Of course, the protection of whistleblowers against retaliation is key to the effectiveness of any whistleblowing regime.
“AFRICMIL also wanted to learn from this project how whistleblowing will change the face of Nigeria’s fight against corruption. The goal is to strengthen whistleblowing to become an acceptable tool for exposing corruption and other forms of wrongdoing that endanger society,’’ he said.

Onumah said apart from the survey, AFRICMIL also used the occasion to introduce a safe and secure whistleblowing platform which was put together in collaboration with the Yar’Adua Foundation.
He said when launched, the platform would offer citizens an avenue to report corrupt practices anonymously thereby enlisting citizens to support the fight against corruption by providing tips or information to anti-corruption agencies.