Our Reporter, Abuja
Leading non-governmental organisations in the fight against corruption, Africa Centre for Information and Media Literacy, AFRICMIL; and Progressive Impact Organisation for Community Development, PRIMORG, have asked journalists to embrace the culture of whistleblowing and the protection of whistleblowers seeing that the work they do is similar to those of whistleblowers, which is bringing power to account.
The Coordinator of AFRICMIL, Dr Chido Onumah, said this on Thursday in Abuja during a training programme organised for Journalists as part of the advocacy for whistleblowing policy of the Federal Government through the Corruption Anonymous (CORA) project of AFRICMIL supported by the Macarthur Foundation.
Dr Onumah said since the introduction of the whistleblowing policy in 2016, AFRICMIL has been working with the Presidential Initiative on Continuous Audit (PICA), a unit in the Federal Ministry of Finance, and other relevant stakeholders in government, civil society and media to promote the whistleblowing policy.
Onumah also said that in the course of execution of the CORA project since 2017, AFRICMIL has built strategic alliances across sectors.
“We started by engaging it on three major fronts which include creating awareness and sensitizing the public to the importance of whistleblowing as a tool for fighting corruption and checking other forms of wrongdoing in society, advocating honest implementation of the policy, and ensuring effective protection for people who show the courage to blow the whistle in the public interest.”
He further said that the last phase of project involves to “foster the speak-up culture in society by working to institutionalise whistleblowing as a vital mechanism for achieving transparency, accountability and proper democratic governance not only in Nigeria, but also across ECOWAS member states.”
Dr Onumah noted that in the past four years AFRICMIL has been Organising meetings and trainings for stakeholders and collaborating organisations hence the training for journalists in conjunction with PRIMORG themed: “The role of Journalists in promoting whistleblowing and protection of whistleblowers in Nigeria.”
He said the overriding aim of the training was to inculcate in journalists a better understanding of the concept of whistleblowing as a tool for good governance.
“The aim is to facilitate among journalists a better understanding of the concept of whistleblowing as a good governance tool. And the goal is to instill in journalists the need to consistently promote the culture of whistleblowing and ensure protection for whistleblowers who face attacks for reporting corruption and other wrongdoing.
“We believe that by the nature of what they do, journalists and whistleblowers cannot be separated. Both are dedicated to holding power to account by bringing up the facts. In this era when information is proving more difficult to find, it is only whistleblowers who can comfortably maneuver and supply the information journalists need.
“But for the relationship between the two to be effective, journalists must understand the risks whistleblowers face and do their best to protect them,” he stated.
On his part, Veteran journalist, and executive director of PRIMORG, Mr. Austin Agbonsuremi, urged journalists to support and promote the passage of the whistleblowing bill describing it as the only opportunity that guarantees them protection together with their sources of information.
Delivering a paper, the former African Independent Television (AIT) presenter, described journalism as a lifelong career in whistleblowing and said any policy geared towards protecting whistleblowers will greatly benefit journalists. He therefore enjoined reporters to use every opportunity available to them in their small circles to promote whistleblowing.
“Whistleblowing is the career and passion of a journalist. Journalists are going to be major beneficiaries of whistleblower protection law. So journalists must stick their voices out to push for the enactment of the whistleblower protection law,” he said.
Delivering a Paper titled “Understanding Nigeria’s Whistleblowing Policy,” Johnson Oludare, a Director at the Federal Ministry of Finance, defined a whistleblower as “a person who voluntarily discloses to the Federal Government of Nigeria, possible misconduct or violation that has occurred, is ongoing or is about to occur with specific concerns in the public interest.”
He also described whistleblowing as an “anti-corruption programme that encourages people to voluntarily disclose information about fraud, bribery, looted government funds, financial misconduct, mismanagement of government assets and any other form corruption or theft.”
He further adumbrated that the policy has three main components: Channel of information and the type of information to be reported; Reward for reporting fraud, which is based on the quantum of funds or monetary value of assets recovered by the Federal Government as a result of disclosed information (ranges from 2.5% – 2.5%); finally, the protection of whistleblower guaranteed in sections 6 & 12 of the Policy, and also in Part V the Federal Executive Council (FEC) approved 2022 whistleblowing bill.
Oludare, however, noted that in spite of the many benefits that have accrued from the whistleblowing policy including the recovery of huge sums of looted funds, Nigerians were yet to take ownership of the policy, which can be attributed to the fact that currently, there is no legal protection of those who blow the whistle on corruption.
While conceding that Whistleblowing bill before the National Assembly amounts to a significant progress, an anticorruption Lawyer, Mr. Godwin Chigbu while delivering a paper, “A Review of the Whistleblowing Bill 2023,” maintained that the Federal Government’s Whistleblowing Bill in a number of ways falls short of the global best standards.
Chigbu posited that the bill was hamstrung because it seeks only to protect the whistleblower without considering other people around him or her. For instance he said the FEC approved bill does not consider protection also for people close to the whistleblower including his or her family members.
He also faults the bill for seeking to domicile the emergent implementing agency, the National Office, for the management of whistleblowing policy within the Federal Ministry of Finance when in fact its core responsibility is security related, arguing that an independent body would be better suited for the purpose.
Chigbu further explained that the bill missed a big opportunity to harvest more whistleblowers especially in this era of insecurity by its narrow consideration of reward for only information that has monetary value to the Federal Government. He wondered how anyone can quantify information for instance that prevents terrorists from attacking the country and wasting many lives?
The Lawyer also said “fair and expeditious hearing of complaints and actions against allegations of reprisals or reprisal actions was not provided” in the bill as well as “Burden of proof – in cases of reprisals, the burden should be on the person alleged to have taken reprisal action against a whistleblower to prove that his action is not a retaliation against the disclosure,” among other contentious provisions.
