By Doyin Ojosipe
Whistleblowing will improve the standard of living of Nigerians if utilized properly, the MacArthur Foundation (MAF) has said.
Speaking during a whistleblowing sensitization workshop which took place at the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), Abuja, Dr Kole Shettima, Director, Africa Office of the Foundation, noted that the less privileged had always suffered the consequences of corruption.
He pointed out that COVID-19 had again shown the gap between the poor and the rich, where the children of the poor couldn’t attend classes because they lacked the necessary facilities.
The MAF Director commended AFRICMIL for the initiative and expressed satisfaction with the sensitization of the MDAs on the whistleblowing policy.
According to him, “This is not just work for the sake of doing it. It is meant to ensure that people get the basic services that they need… that we improve the standard of living and quality of life of citizens. That is the benchmark upon which we evaluate the work.”
Johnson Oludare, Assistant Director, Presidential Initiative on Continuous Audit (PICA), said Nigeria accounts for 25% of revenue leakages on the African continent
Oludare said illicit financial flows, tax evasion, and other sharp practices were responsible for the under-development of the country. He maintained that implementing the whistleblowing policy was very important to the fight against corruption as it would help in blocking leakages.
The Federal Inland Revenue Services (FIRS) noted that it was ready to explore the opportunities offered by the whistleblowing policy.
Mohammed Abubakar, Coordinating Director, Executive Chairman’s Group, who represented the Executive Chairman, Mohammed Nami, said the agency had established an Anti-Corruption Transparency Unit (ACTU) and was also in partnership with anti-graft agencies and civil society organizations to help expose leakages and block revenue pilfering. He said the FIRS was preparing a framework which it would share with the public as soon as it is concluded.
Abubakar added that the sensitization workshop was coming at the right time, and would also help a great deal in making the agency’s work easier.
One of the resource persons, Maxwell Kadiri, a lawyer and whistleblowing expert, who works with the Open Society Justice Initiative (OSJI), said the whistleblowing policy had multiple benefits for the FIRS, noting that it would help address issues within the institution, ensure greater tax compliance while creating an enabling system to generate more revenue for the country.
Godwin Chigbu, also a legal practitioner, who paired Kadiri in addressing the issue of institutionalising whistleblowing in Nigeria, pointed out that the agency was in the best position to institutionalise the whistleblowing policy within its organisation without difficulty.
He said the law guiding the running of the agency had provided for full operations of the whistleblowing policy, as far as some core principles of whistleblowing, such as reward and confidentiality of whistleblowers were concerned.
In a welcome address, Senior Program Officer, AFRICMIL, Godwin Onyeacholem, who represented the Coordinator of the organisation, Dr Chido Onumah, said the sensitization engagement with the MDAs was in collaboration with the Presidential Initiative on Continuous Audit (PICA), a unit in the Federal Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning, that manages the whistleblowing policy. He said it was part of the Corruption Anonymous project of the organization which is supported by MacArthur Foundation.
He said it was intended to get Ministries Departments and Agencies (MDAs) to develop, among others, whistleblowing mechanisms in their governance codes, processes, and operations. “AFRICMIL hopes to put in place a mechanism to rank MDAs on their whistleblower practice at the end of the process,” he stated.
