Whistle-blowing: Right answer, wrong method!

When Senators of the Seventh Senate of the National Assembly were rounding up their tenure in 2015 it dawned upon them that they had done little impactful work in terms of passing legislation. The Nigerian public’s perception of legislators, is that they spend a disproportionate amount of time on the supposedly “lucrative” matters of Oversight […]

When Senators of the Seventh Senate of the National Assembly were rounding up their tenure in 2015 it dawned upon them that they had done little impactful work in terms of passing legislation. The Nigerian public’s perception of legislators, is that they spend a disproportionate amount of time on the supposedly “lucrative” matters of Oversight functions and Constituency Projects, as opposed to concentrating their energies on the serious business of actually passing legislation. In order to address this imbalance, on the eve of their departure our Distinguished Senators passed 46 Bills in approximately ten minutes. 

This means they gave “careful consideration” to 4.6 Bills per minute, or in simpler terms it took them an average of less than 16 seconds to carefully consider each Bill. Outgoing President Goodluck Jonathan never gave his assent to these Bills as required by the Constitution so they were not passed into law. One of these Bills was the Whistle Blower Protection Bill. Towards the end of last year, a new Whistle Blower Protection Bill passed its second reading on the floor of the Senate, but is yet to be being enacted into law. Despite the absence of legal backing, in December last year the Federal Executive Council (FEC) approved a whistleblowing policy. 

Co-ordinated by the Federal Ministry of Finance, the policy strengthens the anti-corruption war by giving the nation an opportunity to recover misappropriated funds of which the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has no knowledge. It further gives members of the public the opportunity to obtain financial rewards for reporting people who have misappropriated public funds through fraud, contract splitting, diverting revenues, facilitating unapproved payments, or over-invoicing. In addition to the policy having no legal backing, there are several other issues and problems surrounding its implementation. Firstly, there is a moral issue. Many people feel that rather than be rewarded, whistle-blowers should themselves be charged as “accessories to the fact”. 

This is a legal term which means that anyone with knowledge of a crime who doesn’t report it has committed an offence.  Although disclosures are meant to be made in “good faith”, it’s a sad state of affairs when Nigerians who have information on financial crimes are encouraged to come forward out of greed rather than patriotism. Fortunately, not all whistle-blowers are interested in being financially rewarded, because for those who are, collection won’t be easy. The conditions attached to being paid are a major drawback with the policy. Not only does the information have to lead to the actual recovery of funds, but the person in possession of such corruptly accumulated funds must be willing to return them voluntarily, and information on the financial crime must not be in the public domain. Another problem is that the percentage of the loot to be given as reward isn’t fixed, and varies between 2.5% to 5%. Also problematical is the fact that as currently implemented the policy gives very little protection to whistle-blowers who may be putting their careers or even their lives at stake. Although the policy guarantees them anonymity and confidentiality, there is in truth little preventative protection. In countries like America there are witness protection programs to prevent repercussions for informing authorities. 

In Nigeria, the whistle-blowing policy only suggests remedies after the fact which in effect means that the informant isn’t really protected from harm but can only seek compensation for it. If whistle-blowers are harassed, intimidated or victimised in retaliation, the only action they can take is to file a complaint before an Independent Panel of Enquiry. With the legendary snail pace of justice in Nigeria this is hardly an attractive option.  Another problem with the policy is that even though it stipulates that whistle-blowing must be done in “good faith”, there is little or no protection for the allegedly corrupt individual if the allegations are found to be misleading, malicious or false. Indeed, one of the biggest reservations about the policy is that it could be used to either defame, or witch-hunt people. There is no disputing that the anti-corruption war must be pursued with all vigour. The majority of infrastructural, social amenity, and security problems in the nation have been caused by lack of investment occasioned by massive treasury looting. The amounts of money being recovered are astonishingly humongous and there should be no let up because the objectives and outcomes of the policy are indeed laudable. 

However, with no legal backing and an assortment of problems which need to be thought through carefully, it’s only another example of the new Nigerian penchant for believing that the end justifies the means. This belief is analogous to a student who cheats in a Secondary School mathematics examination by “spying” the answer from the person sitting next to him. The student then proceeds to perform all sorts of incorrect calculations but then arrives at the correct answer which he underlines several times. Those who behave like this always find that they will get zero marks for that question with the observation – “right answer, wrong method”!