A former Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun, has identified the absence of statutory reinforcement as the primary reason for the decline of one of the nation’s most successful anti-corruption initiatives.
Speaking at the second edition of the Citadel School of Government Dialogue series in Lagos on Saturday, Adeosun revisited the highs and lows of her tenure, offering a masterclass in the “philosophy of reform.”
Her keynote address served as both a cautionary tale for current policymakers and a roadmap for resilient leadership in an environment often hostile to change.
The whistleblower policy, introduced in December 2016, was initially hailed as a revolutionary tool in the fight against financial crimes.
It famously led to the recovery of staggering sums of looted funds, including the iconic $43 million discovered in an Ikoyi apartment.
However, Adeosun revealed that the policy’s greatest strength was also its “fatal flaw”: it lived and died by executive whim.
She said, “My biggest regret is the Whistleblower Policy. It was highly successful, leading to the discovery of the $43 million in the Ikoyi apartment—but I didn’t turn it into a law.
“Because it was only a policy, it was easily tossed aside when leadership changed. If you want a reform to last, you must institutionalise it through law.”
She emphasised that in the Nigerian bureaucratic landscape, government policies with legal backing become difficult for subsequent administrations to change, “Without that shield,...
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