Frankly speaking, it is imperative to state that at the Nigerian home front, the concept of whistleblowing has existed for ages without the general populace coming to the full realisation of what this concept entails.
Take, for instance, Section 35 No. 48 of the “Civil Service Reforms Act of 1988,” which created the “Audit Alarm Committee” to be chaired by the Auditor General for the Federation (AGF). Its primary responsibility, among other things, is to raise alertness and sanction any public officeholder who is presumed to have committed an act of “financial impropriety” within the land.
Read also: Stemming the incidence of money laundering via the Whistle Blowing policy
In this instance, the “Audit Alarm Committee” is a true picture of what whistleblowing entails in Nigeria. Interestingly, in order to project the concept of whistleblowing and fortify it with the required statutory backing, the Nigerian government enacted and signed into law the Whistleblowing Act (WBA) of 2017, preceded by a luncheon on December 21, 2016, by the then Minister of Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun ACCA. According to her, the policy was to motivate patriotic citizens to report criminal acts such as mismanagement or misappropriation of public funds and assets (like properties and vehicles), financial malpractices or fraud, collecting or soliciting bribes, corruption, diversion of revenues, unapproved payments, splitting of contracts, procurement fraud, kickbacks, and over-invoicing, to mention but a few.
It is important to report the giant strides the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN) has made to support the concept of whistleblowing. As part of its strategies to ensure high moral, financial, ethical, and legal standards by members in the discharge of their duties, ICAN established a whistleblower’s protection fund. The aim of the fund, which has an initial take-off capital of Fifty Million Naira (#50m) only, is to protect all ICAN members and the public from any form of reprisals or victimisation when an alarm is raised on financial impropriety by public or private establishments, individuals, or groups within the country. The essence of the fund is to assist whistleblowers in litigation expenses reasonably incurred in the course of discharging their duties. The Council of ICAN considers whistleblowing a crucial instrument to detect and report all manner of corruptible tendencies, fraud, and mismanagement in the public, private, and not-for-profit sectors. The institute is aware that whistleblowers have a critical role to play in the promotion of public interest. The establishment of the institute’s whistleblowers fund is part of ICAN’s mandate to protect the public interest and promote integrity and accountability, which are crucial conditions for democracy, rule of law, and sustainable development.
In addition to what ICAN has been doing in the area of whistleblowing, it is worthy of note that the US Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Act of 2002, Subtitle 8, i.e., Corporate and Criminal Fraud Accountability Act, provides certain protections for whistleblowers. Again, Section 1107 of the SOX Act further provides criminal penalties for persons against whistleblowers.
A closer look at the entire whistleblowing policy reveals that it has suffered setbacks, primarily attributable to issues such as fear of losing one’s life or threat to life, fear of losing a job, faulty lines of reporting or communication in both civil and public service, victimisation and harassment against whistleblowers, and lastly, the principle of confidentiality in most workplaces is also a hindrance to the full implementation and actualization of the whistleblowing policy within the nation.
These myriad problems highlighted above that mitigate against the whistleblowing policy can be arrested via the provision of adequate security cover for the whistleblowers, the provision of incentives and a better reward system for whistleblowers, putting in place comprehensive insurance cover for whistleblowers, protecting the identity of the whistleblowers, and adequate punitive measures to sanction defaulters.
Read also:Olukoyede urges Nigerians to embrace whistle blowing to combat corruption
No doubt, the whistleblowing policy, if properly instituted and implemented accordingly, will attract loads of benefits to us individually and collectively as a nation. The list of benefits includes, but is not limited to, promoting the integrity and reputation of Nigerian government institutions, bringing into public knowledge any incidence of abuse of office and mismanagement of government funds that can be channelled into the provision of basic infrastructures, helping to forestall the occurrence or manipulation of government financial records, promoting the principle of public interest in all ramifications by us as individuals and collectively as a nation, guaranteeing public trust, and establishing high confidence levels among government institutions and parastatals.
It will assist in bringing to the forefront allegations of misappropriations and, above all, expose all manner of money laundering and terrorist financing activities within the system, thereby making the Nigerian business environment an investment hub or destination that is devoid of insincerity, corruption, embezzlement, and the like. More importantly, foreign direct investment (FDI) will be greatly attracted when the business environment is free from all forms of money laundering activities.
Kingsley Ndubueze Ayozie MSc (Finance) Lagos, MBA, ACSI (UK), FCTI, FCA — a Public Affairs Analyst cum Chartered Accountant by profession, writes from Lagos.
