The present administration in December, 2016 introduced the whistle-blower policy as a strategy to curb corruption in the country but the initiative has remained at the level of policy with no serious attempt to back it up with an enabling law especially to protect whistle blowers. JOY YESUFU in this report takes a look at how far the policy can go without a legal framework.
Whistle-blowing policy in Nigeria is an anti-corruption initiative of the Federal Ministry of Finance that encourages Nigerians to voluntarily disclose information about fraud, bribery, looted government funds, financial misconduct, government assets and any other form of corruption or theft to the anti-corruption agencies.
The policy, which was launched on December 21, 2016, by the Federal Government and facilitated through the Ministry of Finance, says any whistle blower who provides information about any financial mismanagement or tip about any stolen funds to the ministry’s portal will be rewarded or entitled to between 2.5% to 5% percentage from the recovered funds.
Report has it that within the first two months of the whistle-blowing policy, the Federal Government recovered over $178 million that were stolen from the public coffers. By June 5, 2017, the Federal Ministry of Finance had received a total of 2,150 tips from the public. 128 tips came through the website of the ministry, 1,192 were through phone calls, 540 through SMS and 290 through emails to the ministry. By July/August, 2017, a total of 5,000 tips were received.
In October, 2017, the acting chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Ibrahim Magu, said a total of N527,643,500; $53,222.747; GBP21,222,890 and Euro 547,730 has been recovered since the policy was launched.
It has been generally accepted that the whistle blower policy is one of the main tools used by President Muhammadu Buhari to tackle corruption, all forms of theft from government coffers and also one of his major achievements.
It is interesting to note that a whistle blower is a person who exposes any kind of information or activity that is deemed illegal, unethical or not correct within an organisation that is either private or public. The information of alleged wrong doing can be classified in many ways: violation of company policy/rules, laws, regulation or threat to public interest/national security as well as fraud and corruption.
However, the whistle blower’s major challenge is the fact that corruption will naturally fight back as he or she is up, most times, against the high and mighty in the society. So, this has made some intended whistle blowers develop cold feet in reporting glaring theft in public or private institutions.
To protect whistle-blowers, some civil society organisations have engaged in a number of advocacies to ensure that people who blow whistle are protected. MacArthur Foundation is currently funding the African Centre for Media and Information Literacy (AFRICMIL) to launch a whistle-blower campaign known as ‘Corruption Anonymous’.
Chido Onumah, co-ordinator of AFRICMIL while declaring open a training workshop organised for journalists recently by AFRICMIL on whistle-blowing and the fight against corruption in Nigeria, said apart from the need for continuous collaboration with the media in driving the whistleblowing awareness campaign, the need to highlight the protection of whistleblowers has become imperative to the success of the policy.
He noted that whistleblowers have continued to suffer harassment for exposing corruption because there is no law that ensures their safety.
According to him, adequate reportage of such issues could bring about change.
As part of activities to mark this year’s World Whistleblowing Day on June 23, Onuma in a statement called on the Federal Government to make the protection of whistleblowers a priority in its fight against corruption.
According to him, “unless the federal government ensured the safety and protection of whistleblowers, the fight against corruption would not benefit from the input of citizens.”
He noted that “without effective protection, there is no way citizens, especially those in the public service who witness acts of corruption on a daily basis, would be encouraged to blow the whistle on corruption or any wrongdoing for that matter, knowing that at the end of the day you are on your own, faced with all kinds of victimization, ranging from loss of jobs, intimidation, redeployment to sinecure positions and even threat to live”.
He expressed disappointment that since December, 2016 when government introduced the whistleblower policy as a strategy to curb corruption in the country, the initiative had remained at the level of policy with no serious attempt to back it up with an enabling law.
“You would think that a government whose major campaign promise was to ensure a drastic reduction in corrupt practices in the country would in less than one year of initiating the policy come up with a strong law that would ensure honest implementation and protection of whistleblowers. But here we are, close to three years and government still seems uncertain what to make of the policy,” Onumah added.
Speaking to LEADERSHIP Friday, Mr. Aaron Kasse, who blew whistle against the a former chairman of the Police Service Commission (PSC), Mr Mike Okiro, lamented that there are no mechanisms on ground to protect whistle blowers at the moment, adding that no legislation on the policy while the Presidential Initiative on Continuous Audit (PICA) has no such structures yet.
He said his journey began in 2014 when an NGO called Right To Know (R2K) in collaboration with the Police Service Commission organised a two-day workshop to enlighten staff of the commission on the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act, 2011.
He said two sections of the FoI Act stuck in his memory after the training. Kasse gave the sections of the law as follows:
L-R: Prof Abdullahi Shehu, Femi Falana(SAN) and Nuhu Ribadu at the AFRICMIL National Summit on Whistleblowing
Section 1(a): “Notwithstanding anything contained in any other Act, law or regulation, the right of any person to access or request information whether or not contained in a written form, which is in the custody or possession of any public official or agency howsoever described, is established.
Section 27(1,2): 1. “Notwithstanding anything contained in the Criminal Code, Penal Code, the Official Secrets Act, or any enactment, no civil or criminal proceedings shall lie against an officer of any public institution, or against any person acting on behalf of public institution, and no proceedings shall lie against such person thereof, for the disclosure in good faith of any information, or any part thereof pursuant to this Act, for any consequences that flow from that disclosure, or for the failure to give any notice required under this Act, if care is taken to give the required notice.
“Nothing contained in the Criminal code or official Secrets Act shall prejudicially affect any officer who, without authorization, discloses to any person, an information which he reasonably believes to show mismanagement, gross waste of funds, fraud and abuse of authority.”
He said the information became more important to him after President Buhari won the elections with a firm commitment to fight corruption.
“But even before President Buhari was sworn-in, the PSC as a build-up to the 2015 general elections, as it is customary with its operations, monitors police conduct during elections. It was in line with pursuing this mandate that the immediate past leadership of the commission, headed by Mr. Mike Okiro (IGP) rtd decided to cash in on the opportunity to siphon government funds.
“Several letters soliciting for financial assistance were sent out by the commission to government agencies, corporate organisations, NGOs and highly placed individuals to fund this national assignment, despite a budgetary approval already in place.
“However, I became aware that a response for this financial assistance came from the office of the National Security Adviser to the tune of N350 million. With the huge cash in the hands of the PSC, twice the estimated monitoring budget, Mr. Okiro, the chairman and his co-travellers sat and devised dubious means of stealing the money,” Kasse added.
Armed with the facts and a host of other dubious financial manipulations of the former chairman which he knew of working closely with him as head of protocol, Kasse took a dangerous but patriotic decision of writing a detailed and evidence-packed petition against Mr. Okiro and submitted same to the ICPC and EFCC on May 21, 2015. This decision did not however come easy.
He further said he knew that corruption will always fight back but was determined even if it meant laying down his life. But according to Kasse and as expected, Okiro instigated his friend to write a petition against him (Kasse) to the police.
Using his influence, Mr. Okiro ordered the police to arrest the whistle blower with his police details and other aides threatening him that he (Kasse) was yet to see anything.
He said this was followed by his hurried suspension from work without pay, through a letter backdated to the day he submitted the petition even though the letter was written and given to him on May 27, 2015, six days after submitting the petition.
“It is noteworthy to state here that no civil service disciplinary procedure as contained in PSR and PSC Conditions of Service were followed. A letter of suspension without pay was arbitrary handed over to me for daring Mr. Okiro.
“These events were not happening in isolation. They were followed with threat messages and phone calls, strange people stalking me and pestering my house with stones at midnight. It is also instructive to note that complaint letters to the Inspector-General of Police and the DG of DSS over threat to my life elicited no response.
“By the grace of God, a day after I returned to work in March, 2018 after my victory at the National Industrial Court, the trumped up criminal charges against me were dismissed by the Federal Jigh Court and I was acquitted with the Judge having strong words of warning to the police prosecutors not to be fishing for evidence to witch hunt people,” he said.
Meanwhile, an Abuja based legal practitioner, Kadiri Maxwell, in his opinion said looking at the existing legal or policy framework, that level of protection is not there, adding that we do not have maximum protection for whistle blowers as their lives, safety and liberty of their person becomes endangered.
He said “I would not say so advisably and it also depends on how you define protection. Beyond Nigeria and looking at other climes. In our neighbouring country here in Ghana, there was an investigative journalist called Anas Anas who does a lot of exposé on corruption related activities in public sector mostly and blows the whistle on key developments basically to address some of the ills within the Ghanian society and I know that a couple of months ago, one of his assistants was murdered.
“So why I’m giving some of these examples is basically to say that in certain instances there have been reported cases, I’m not specific to Nigeria just a comparative analysis, perspective where people have actually died arising from blowing whistle. This raises the question of what level of protection should you have for a whistle blower.
“In an ideal circumstances, a whistle blower should be able to enjoy maximum protection if their lives or that of their loved ones, relatives or associates gets threatened. In the Nigeria context, if you look at the existing legal or policy frame work, that level of protection is not there. That is an entry point to say we do not have maximum protection for whistle blowers where their lives, safety and liberty of their persons become endangered,” he added.
He also said for the policy to be successful, there must be employment related protection and security of tenure of employment which seems to be a predominant factor now.
“The second level of protection which is also more common in terms of being contentious now is employment related protection and that seems to be a predominant factor now. If you recall when the current administration took over in 2015, some months later was when the then minister of finance initiated the whistle blower policy as a way of recovering public looted funds with a promised fraction of the money to the whistle blower.
“When you look at that framework or the policy that was adopted, a lot of the emphasis was on recovering looted funds or funds that are related to activities of corruption. And the incentive in that process was pecuniary for the whistle blower if you can prove conclusively that the money recovered is a result of the information that you gave to the government institution and that, that information was not otherwise available to the government institutions.
“There have been different reports, Ikoyigate scandal, the one involving the former Group Managing Director of the NNPC in Kaduna and a number of places. There were a lot of reports of such. We have also received reports of people who faced employment related sanctions.
“There was the guy in Ministry of Foreign Affairs who arising from a whistle he blew on some developments in the ministry was posted out and at a point, his job was also threatened.
So, for several months he was out of job, until there was a concerted advocacy by some civil society groups including AFRICMIL led by Chindo Onuma, that then finally got the government to act but even in getting him reinstated, what we heard was that he was posted out of the ministry to an area of the ministry where he is not sufficiently challenged.
The joy of every genuine whistle blower is to see the perpetrators punished. The momentum dies down when often the reverse becomes the case and the blower becomes the one who suffers the punishment, a scenario which affirms the fact that corruption can fight back if not properly confronted.
