By Godwin Onyeacholem
For the second time since late 2021, five years after President Muhammadu Buhari rolled out an executive order launching Nigeria’s whistleblowing policy as an anti-corruption programme, the Federal Ministry of Finance is on the road.
It needed to take the walk again as the principal actor in the federal government’s newfound, albeit tepid crusade against a monster that is eating away at the soul of ethical governance in the country. Being the custodian of a policy designed essentially to rein in endemic public sector corruption, the finance ministry’s whistleblowing management unit in the Presidential Initiative on Continuous Audit (PICA) is just about rounding off traversing the country’s six zones, striving to educate workers on the whistleblowing policy and persuade them to embrace whistleblowing as a weapon of choice against fraud, embezzlement and other illegal practices in the workplace.
In the last six months, the ministry has sought to deepen this phase of its sensitization programme in Lagos, Owerri, Makurdi, Sokoto and Calabar, and hoping to draw the curtains on the campaign in Gombe. But for two main reasons, the experience isn’t altogether cheery.
First, the highest level of government representation expected at a conference spotlighting a topic of such inestimable significance is missing. For a nationwide meeting whose subject underpins good governance and democratic accountability, it is expected that state chief executives would be eager to attend physically and lend their voices, not through ineffectual subordinates – but the governors themselves standing there with the mike, looking into the eyes of their workers and telling them how seriously they take public interest disclosure as an indispensable step toward improving governance in their states.
But as it’s been happening ever since, not in any of the zones with each comprising no less than five states – except it happens in the upcoming meeting in Gombe (and that would be a miracle) – did any state governor show up at the venues of the sensitization even if, at the very least, as a symbolic gesture of commitment to a good cause. That the governors would always send some sinecure lieutenants with no power to make decisions to represent them at such critical meetings is in itself a big sign that they are not interested in adopting whistleblowing as a tool of governance.
Second, for safety reasons and fear of futility, workers are not coming out of the sensitization programmes feeling certain that whistleblowing is an action they would easily want to engage. Even after thunderous claps and nodding of heads in agreement with presentations from the various speakers, most workers still reveal tangible conflicted feelings towards whistleblowing simply because there is no law protecting them from the brutal suppression that is often visited on brave colleagues who report fraud or challenge abuse of power in their offices, and also because more often than not, the concerns reported are never addressed.
Across many states in Nigeria, workers acting as whistleblowers are facing active and passive retaliation initiated by senior and powerful individuals who are bent on stopping them from speaking up. The adverse actions include outright dismissal, pay cuts and sometimes total withdrawal of salaries and other benefits, denial of career progression, suspension without pay, frivolous lawsuits, harassment, and even death threats. In some cases, the punishment is extended to family members via physical and emotional harm.
Sensitizing workers to the values of whistleblowing is important no doubt, but the ministry of finance should know that the exercise would register a more desirable outcome if government enacts a law as a cover for the relentless workplace punishment workers perpetually suffer simply for doing the right thing. Not that a whistleblower protection law is a silver bullet that prevents all acts of corruption. But such a law will be an instrument to look up to as a safe alternative to silence in the face of rapidly increasing official misconduct.
Furthermore, and more importantly, a protection law will not only adjust the boundaries of the whistleblowing policy by widening its scope beyond reporting corrupt practices only in government offices, but also bring to a closure the uninspiring reign of a policy that has been rendered impotent by its poor management by key stakeholder-institutions like the ministries of finance and justice, as well as the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, the Independent Corrupt Practices and Othe Related Offences Commission, and the police.
The law everyone is waiting for will make whistleblowing a sweeping disclosure concept as it is in other jurisdictions that have such legislations, and give people, especially employees, the confidence to report wrongdoing. At the ministry’s one-off sensitization activity in Abuja a little less than two years ago, finance minister Wale Edun promised a packed auditorium of workers that the whistleblower protection bill, an executive bill lying at presidency, would get a quick attention from the president.
In between that promise and now, Senegal, now the sixth best governed country in Africa according to the latest World Economic Governance Index (WEGI), initiated its own process and passed a whistleblowing bill into law in no time. And it’s a sure bet that the passage of the law must have been one of the key reasons the country earned that prime position in the global governance categorization.
Meanwhile, the “giant of Africa” is still dragging its heels on a similar law, nearly a decade after introducing a whistleblowing policy. Ranking 112 out of 156 countries, a wretched 17.1 score in corruption and a pathetic overall score of 33.9 out of a maximum 100, WEGI puts Nigeria in Category D and, therefore, a country with poor governance. As a result, it’s no surprise that Nigeria didn’t feature in the list of top 10 best-governed countries in Africa, where fellow West African countries like Ghana, Sierra Leone and Gambia prominently starred alongside Senegal. What better way to describe Nigeria’s showing here than scandalous.
The ministry of finance should think of the effect the continued absence of a protection law is having on its awareness campaign. Without a whistleblower law in place, the ministry is merely scratching the surface in its effort to convince workers to adopt whistleblowing as a work tool. The bible the ministry needs for an impactful nationwide exhortation for workers to embrace whistleblowing is a robust law, not a jejune policy.
Little wonder on the matter of whistleblower protection as dictated by the extant policy, the supposedly frontline institutions have been doing more harm than good in promoting and sustaining the whistleblowing culture. As far as one knows, not a single victimized whistleblower whose case the ministry of finance, ministry of justice, EFCC, ICPC, and the police are well aware of since 2016, has benefited from the courage of any of these institutions by way of ensuring safety and justice for the victim.
It’s often been the other way round – the perpetrators of reprisals who are the more powerful parties in the workplace and everywhere in society, are the ones who enjoy institutional cover from justice. And that’s an enduring shame, no less.
Onyeacholem is a journalist and whistleblowing activist.
