The Importance of Whistleblowing in Nigeria

In this episode, Zainab Ibrahim and Godwin Oneacholem provided insights into the concept of whistleblowing and its implementation in the Nigerian context. They  explored ways to safeguard whistleblowers and described how to blow the whistle anonymously using the CORA whistleblowing tool.

Transcript

Intro : [00:00:02] You're listening to Partners United on Accountability, brought to you by Shehu Musa Yar'Adua Foundation.

Zainab : [00:00:11] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Partners United podcast on Governance and Accountability. Brought to you by Shehu Musa Yar'Adua Foundation. Today we'll learn about the importance of whistleblowing and fostering accountability and transparency in Nigeria. I am happy because I'm joined by Godwin on the from the African Centre for Media and Information Literacy, which is AFRICMIl. It's a non-governmental organisation that focuses on media information advocacy and it aims to promote media information literacy as a tool component in enhancement of democracy and good governance. So it's great to have you here Godwin. AFRICMIL recently launched an anonymous whistle-blower platform in July this year, which will return to. So in the meantime, briefly tell us what whistle-blowing is.

GODWIN : [00:01:03] Whistle-blowing is simply when a worker or a citizen passes on information on an act of wrongdoing. The information submitted has to be something about wrongdoing. It also could be called making a disclosure or blowing the whistle. So whistle blowing is when a worker or a citizen passes information on wrong doing. And that's acts of wrongdoing may not necessarily be something that Whistle blower has witnessed. It could be something or an information passed on to that whistle blower as well. It doesn't have to have witnessed it, but it has to be an act of wrongdoing. That's what simply whistle blowing is passing information on an act of wrongdoing by citizens or anybody, a worker that's whistle blowing.

Zainab : [00:01:57] Thank you for that picture, Godwin. So basically, it can be an act of I'm passing by or my sister came back home and told me how she, a police officer, harassed her. So that can also mean taking the initiative to report that can be an act of whistle blowing.

GODWIN : [00:02:13] Exactly. Exactly. It doesn't have to be something you witnessed.

Zainab : [00:02:17] All right. Thank you for that. So I know AFRICMIL has been at the forefront of whistle blowing activities and initiatives in Nigeria. Can you tell us about your recently launched Corruption Anonymous (CORA) initiative, and also how one can use the tool to blow the whistle.

GODWIN : [00:02:35] A whistleblowing reporting platform recently put together by AFRICMIL and Yar'Adua Foundation. And we are grateful for Yar'Adua for this collaboration in this regard. It was put together to enhance the cause of accountable democratic governance in the country. We discovered that over the years we have lacked the knowledge of what to report and the channels through which that reporting can be made. Government has a reporting platform. People are afraid to go there. People are, you know, kind of jittery about confronting government officials to say this is what is happening. So it's a good thing that we had this platform together. And lastly, just last July, we believe that it will complement the platform managed by the Presidential initiative on continuous audit and make it much easier for citizens to submit tips anonymously, anonymously, without fear of being exposed, and confidence that the tips submitted will be treated. In the end, the goal is to have a citizenry that is sensitized to its role in fighting corruption.

GODWIN : [00:03:45] Thank you, Godwin. I feel like the key word there is anonymous, because imagine having to use the actual government platform to report discrepancies in the government so people will be hesitant about that. So it is very important that we have organizations independent of the government to that people can feel comfortable reporting such activities. So the federal government of Nigeria recovered nearly $178 million in stolen government funds. That is a lot of money. And in the first two months of implementing the whistle blowing policy, according to reports, your latest study on Nigeria's five year supreme policy indicated that Nigerians hesitation to report perceived acts of corruption. So basically, the situation situated that one quarter of the respondents are unwilling to report any form of corrupt practices. while three quarter of respondents have stopped reporting cases of looted funds entirely. Why do you think this issue is Africa will do anything to change this behavior?

GODWIN : [00:04:47] Yes. First of all, let me state why this is so why people are reluctant to come up with information first. Whistleblowers are afraid of literally two things. One, the fear of reprisals, the fear of punishment that they will come after them, that deters them. The second thing the fear is, even if I make this report, is there a commitment is they will to take action. So those are the two major drawbacks whistle blowers face. One, that they will be punished. There will be retaliation. Then secondly, that even if I make this report, what will happen knowing in this kind of society? So those are kind of disincentivizes whistle blowers. Yeah. What is AFRICMIL doing? You keep talking to people. Keep engaging. We just came back recently from Ilorin and Anambra. We were going back there to do step down to let people know that it's in your own interest to report wrongdoing in your communities, to report. If you notice fraudulent practices, you have a duty as a citizen. It's even a legal as well as a moral duty for citizens to report wrongdoing. You know, So we keep talking to them.

GODWIN : [00:06:05] We're going back in another two weeks to do step down in communities in these three senatorial districts. The last one we had, we are in the capital city, Ilorin and Awka, but this time around we are going to the three senatorial districts in Kwara, as well as the three senatorial districts in Anambra, to do stepdown training, to let people know that you have a duty as citizens in Section 24. It's there as a citizens, you have a duty to report wrongdoing. We keep engaging people, letting people know that this is where we are. In terms of this, tool. It's not a law yet we let people understand that it's still a policy that was made through an executive order in 2016. It remains a policy. So this is how you can engage it for now, because it is not a law. That's what we are doing. The only way we can reduce wrongdoing, corruption in our society is to keep talking about it. To keep engaging people about it, to keep letting people know the negative effects of fraud, corruption in the society. So that's what we are trying to do. We keep doing it.

Zainab : [00:07:11] Thank you so much, Godwin. Like they say, knowledge is power, and I think that's the first step. So now the whistle blowing policy states that a whistle blower should disclose information to the federal government of Nigeria. That's through the Federal Ministry of Finance, of course. So how does AFRICMIL all play its own role there? Is there like some sort of partnership with the ministry or any other government agencies to implement this initiative?

GODWIN : [00:07:34] Oh, yes, there is a relationship, the partnership, because without engaging PICA, they are the administrators of the whistle blowing policy. They are the only institution or government unit in the federal Ministry of Finance that administers that manages the whistle blowing policy, whether it is in terms of reporting, whether it's in terms of rewards and things like that. PICA is the institution where all these things are resolved. So without engaging them, without partnering with them, without collaborating, there is no way we could successfully have implemented CORA to this level. We've had a mutually rewarding working relationship with PICA.

Zainab : [00:08:14] Thank you for that, Mr. Godwin And for those of us that don't know PICA is the Presidential initiative on continuous audit. This brings me to my next question, which is on whistle blower safety, and I believe this has to be the biggest concern when it comes to whistle blowing. So tell us what proactive safeguards does Cora have to protect whistle blowers?

GODWIN : [00:08:34] Proactive, that's what. So again, there is no way we can proactively safeguard a whistle blower in the absence of a law. For now. You see, the sad part really is that in the policy itself and the whistle blowing policy itself, Section 12 of that policy talks about protection of whistle blowers, people who make disclosures and are facing reprisals, punishment, retaliation. But then what we have observed in our engaging and I like the point you made about the protection of whistle blowers being the most challenging part of our job. And indeed it is because we've engaged Cora on three plants. Yeah. First, you know, sensitising creating awareness. Second, working with Speaker out for honest implementation of the policy. And then the third leg of the work is protection of people who have demonstrated that courage because it takes a lot of courage to blow the whistle and. That has been the most difficult part of this job. Right now, we have about six whistle blowers in the public service who are being victimized, going through all sorts of punishments. The latest one is the guy in the federal ministry of who reported employment fraud in the federal Ministry of Works and Housing. We are engaging him now. His life is under serious threat. And we've been talking to organizations and we are talking to Amnesty International now to see how to evacuate this guy because he's facing threats every single day. So there's no practical way of really, you know, what we do is to tell people that, one, it's a good thing, it's an honorable thing to do. But there is a danger. There is no guarantee for zero reprisal. There is no guarantee that I blow the whistle and nothing happened to me.

GODWIN : [00:10:32] We are not going to tell you that if you blow the whistle, there are people who obviously are not happy, people you reported. They might want to come after you. We let them know that that is a strong possibility. But we also encourage you to go ahead because we will be there once that kind of reprisal or retaliation or punishment begins to happen, we will be there for you. We will ensure that you are protected in some way, whether in terms of funding for a particular you know, we will always be there for you. We like to know that what we do is a reactive thing. mostly once it comes to punishment of whistle blowers. So we will step in once we know that you are being punished one way or the other, whether through denial of promotion, whether through punitive posting, like taking somebody away from an office in Mabushi or somewhere in kuje, Gwagwalada for reporting wrongdoing, those kind of feel. So we step in there and then engage the institution involved that, no, this is punitive. We are punishing this guy and the onus is on you, you, the employer, to tell us that we are not taking this action because of what he did. So you have that responsibility to let us know that you are not transferring this guy from this particular area to this area because of what he did. So those are the kind of things we do. We don't do proactive, We do reactive. Once we know that you are facing punishment, we come in. So Exactly. So that's what we do.

Zainab : [00:11:58] These are the issues. It takes such bravery for one to actually go up and decide to whistle blows and. 

GODWIN : [00:12:06] Yes. 

Zainab : [00:12:06] Asides the issue of whistle blower protection. What additional issues have you encountered as a result of utilizing CORA to blow the whistle. 

GODWIN : [00:12:13] Bureaucracy. Sometimes you need ready information. For instance, you want to have information easily from PICA on the number of tips submitted for particular period to a particular period. The number of tips treated which ones are classified tips, by the way, the ones involving politically exposed persons, those ones are treated strictly that then they are unclassified, which involves maybe procurement fraud, you know, controller management fraud. So you want to get this information. You know, it takes years and they tell you that you have to get information from ICPC. We have to do I mean, get EFCC and things like that. So we kind of bureaucracy we encounter, with PICA, slows down the job. You know, it doesn't make it move as fast as we would really want to. And that's a major challenge for us. And the fact that government offices are usually skeptical about engaging whistleblowing even when they see it, that something that should be done that is necessary, that fear, again, that you could be punished, you could lose your job and things like that. We've discovered that people in government really are really, really, really reluctant to engage whistleblowing. But like I said, you know, we can't stop talking about this thing.

GODWIN : [00:13:31] We have to institutionalize it. If we don't, then we will be because it's an effective tool, very, very effective. One of the most creative initiatives, I mean, from this government introduced as a tool for for fighting corruption. So if you don't get citizens to culturally accept whistle blowing, you know, as a way of life, then we wouldn't have achieved anything really in terms of really pushing this anti-corruption fight. Because if people don't report, there is no way we can deal with acts of wrongdoing. People who witness have to report again, we are taking whistleblowing to another level, and that is the level of human rights that even take whistleblowing beyond good governance, economic justice and things like that. Fighting corruption. Whistleblowing is also about rights of expression. People have a right to express themselves when they see something that they have the rights to obtain information or impart information concerning wrongdoing, whether it's human rights violations, whether I said environmental degradation, whether it's all kinds of violations. So whistle blowing. For us is a logical extension of the rights of expression which we want recruits to key into.

Zainab : [00:14:47] You're absolutely right. The discussion must go on. This has been a fascinating discussion. Before we conclude today's session, can you quickly tell us, though, the recommendations you have to promote initiatives like CORA in Nigeria, particularly through collaborations with stakeholders such as AFRICMIL?

GODWIN : [00:15:05] Yeah. The only way to deepen whistle blowing CORA activities in Nigeria is to continue to engage with organizations like yours. Like I said earlier, I mean, there was no way this platform from Partners United would have been a reality without the kind of collaboration we have. And we are looking at other partners in that regard to see how we can work together to escalate whistle blowing, to make it a household name. We are already working with NOA. They are the only organization represented in 774 Local Government. they have offices in the 774 local governments in the country. We are working together, especially towards these 2023 elections, and they are ready to include the Partners United whistleblowing platform in their flier. You know, that will be circulated in all local communities and that is towards using whistle blowing to check electoral malpractices. We formalized that sometime last week. So these are the kind of relations we are trying to build with people so that we can entrench that culture of speaking out. This is bullying is essentially speaking out. Speak up. You know what whistleblowing has come to do for us is it has challenged two cultures, two existing cultures, two age long cultures that that culture of silence, whistle blowing is simply saying don't keep silent. Whistle blowing has nullified that culture. The second culture is that culture of acquiescence that makes you want to see corruption as something legitimate that you want to participate, partake in. So those are the two cultures. Whistleblowing has helped us to know that culture of silence and culture of agreeing to do the wrong thing. Acquiescence. So and that's what we have to keep talking about it and see how we can, like I said, again, again repeatedly, I mean, we can't thank you enough for for this collaboration. And we hope that you seek ways of doing something that entrenched or deep in whistle blowing with other organizations to find other creative ways of letting people know that this is valuable and it's important for citizens to key into it.

Zainab : [00:17:21] This is where we draw the curtains. Dear listeners, we are thankful that you could join us today. Godwin We're so happy that you created time to come and educate us. Do join us When we come back your way with the next episode, we look forward to really having you and have a lovely day, listeners.

GODWIN : [00:17:36] Thank you so much, guys. We are eternally grateful for the great job you do, guys. Regards to Amara, Ikenna and all the great guys in that organization.

Zainab : [00:17:47] Thank you, Godwin. Thank you so much.

Outro : [00:17:51] To join the conversation about accountability in Nigeria, visit PartnersUnited.Org. You can also visit reports.corruptionAnonymous.org. To blow the whistle on any perceived corrupt act or to make a report on accountability or governance issues in Nigeria.