By Dickson Omobola
Despite being introduced to curtail or eliminate graft in Nigeria, the whistle- blowing policy has failed to live up to expectations.
The confession was recently made by the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, who disclosed that the anti-corruption policy had lost momentum.
“We noticed that the whistle blower policy response has lost momentum. We embarked on engagements in the six geo-political zones and one of the main outcomes that we found is that people are concerned about their safety as a result of providing information,” the minister said.
Interestingly, this watchdog that was launched on December 21, 2016 by the Federal Government and facilitated through the Federal Ministry of Finance, had resulted in the recovery of no less than N527,643,500 of misappropriated funds in the first one year of initiation.
Unfortunately, failure on the part of the authority to uphold its end of the bargain to whistle blowers and that of the required agencies to protect them has led to the sterile state of the policy six years later.
It is no longer attractive – CACOL
Chairman, Centre for Anti-Corruption and Open Leadership, CACOL, Mr. Debo Adeniran, explained that the whistle blowing policy was no longer attractive because it was not properly implemented.
He said: “There are three reasons. First, most of the whistleblowers find it difficult to claim their compensation after blowing the whistle.
“Second, the usage of the information...
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