By Kayode Robert Idowu
Whistleblowing by norm has always been a hazardous undertaking. Frontline anti-corruption agency, Transparency International, says the conventional mandate of whistleblowers is to call out wrongdoings and expose the truth about suspected illicit deals that authorities in affected jurisdictions would want kept out of the know. “The world is facing the combined threats of a global pandemic, global heating, and deep structural inequalities made worse by entrenched corruption.
Often, the illegal acts that exacerbate these crises are only brought to light by individuals who blow the whistle on the wrongdoing they encounter in their daily lives,” the agency said in a recent newsletter commemorating this year’s World Whistleblowing Day on 23rd June.
In Nigeria, whistleblowers are promised some payoff on recovery of illicit assets that they facilitate under the whistleblowing policy of the Federal Government. But if anyone hoped they could make easy cash from just playing the snitch, they had another think coming going by government’s latest clarification of that policy.
Qualifying for reward as a whistleblower, by the clarification, does not consist in merely providing information about such funds but also in taking up responsibility to retrieve same back into government coffers. This is the insight gained from explanations provided last week by the Office of the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice Abubakar Malami.
According to Special Assistant to the Justice Minister on Media and Public Relations, Dr. Umar Gwandu, whistleblowers would get rewarded only after they successfully recover suspected illegitimate funds for government, and not for merely providing actionable information about such funds.
He explained that the procedure for engaging a whistleblower or recovery agent under the government’s whistleblower policy involves a proposal being submitted to the Office of the Attorney-General, upon which a letter of engagement is issued to the whistleblower/recovery agent where the disclosure is assessed to have some prospects of success; and then, the whistleblower/recovery agent is expected to signify in writing the acceptance of the engagement.
Here’s the interesting point, in Gwandu’s words: “The recovery agent or whistleblower is expected, upon acceptance, to not only trace the assets but recover same and have it deposited in a designated asset recovery account maintained by the Federal Government in the Central Bank, which is usually provided to the recovery agent in writing.” He added that where such funds are subsequently claimed to have been lodged by a whistleblower / recovery agent, the Central Bank issues acknowledgement of receipt to the Office of the Attorney-General on demand.
“It is the satisfaction of the above elements that entitles the whistleblower or recovery agent to a claim of success fee, and the payment is usually effected by the Federal Ministry of Finance and not the Office of the Attorney-General of the Federation,” Gwandu further explained. For avoidance of doubt, he stressed that recovery is not about merely exposing the existence of government funds in suspected illicit accounts, “it is about establishing that the funds in the account are looted assets or illegitimately warehoused, and following that up with actual recovery and lodgment of the funds in the designated asset recovery account through judicial and extra-judicial means.”
Unless there are other ways of understanding what the AGF’s office meant, the gist is that the onus lies on a whistleblower / recovery agent to trace as well as retrieve suspected illicit funds and deposit same into government designated account before qualifying for a reward. The minister’s aide provided this explanation in response to a whistleblower, John Okupurhe, who had petitioned President Muhammadu Buhari alleging that he was not paid his due reward for exposing some $1.034billion (over N387billion) said to be secretly kept by the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) with Unity Bank Plc rather than in the Treasury Single Account domiciled by the Federal Government with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
Okupurhe alleged that upon learning of the purported account used to collect illegal revenue from vessels, he informed the Office of the AGF in line with the whistleblower policy and an agreement was signed stating that he would be entitled to a reward if the information proved credible. According to him, the information he supplied exposed the alleged secret account, but the Attorney-General’s office has been feet-shuffling in reluctance to pay the whistleblower’s commission as agreed.
Parties concerned have rejoined to Okupurhe’s claims and counter-alleged credibility deficits on his part. The Nigerian Ports Authority denied operating the stated account warehousing the purported sum with Unity Bank. Rather, according to its General Manager, Corporate and Strategic Communications, Jatto Adams, the organisation operates another account having some $1.057million in it that had been frozen since 2010 over a garnishee litigation, but was transferred to the judgment creditor late in 2019 in line with the Garnishee Order Absolute.
Unity Bank, for its part, asserted that Okupurhe’s allegation is “false, baseless and lacking in merit whatsoever,” stating: “As a responsible organisation conducting its business with the utmost professionalism and due regard for all extant regulatory and statutory requirements, the bank’s banking relationship with the NPA is without any blemish.”
Whatever may be the credibility quotient of Okupurhe’s narrative, the factor at issue is how whistleblowing works. Conventional notion of whistleblowing is that it is largely an undercover act because the safety of the whistleblower might be jeopardised by forces whose illicit acts are being exposed. “All too often, they face retaliation…leading to dismissal, as well as legal challenges, attacks on their reputation and even physical harm,” Transparency International says in its newsletter.
Some of us have deep reservations as it were over the whole idea of dangling the carrot of promised reward as inducement for whistleblowing, given that such promise could corrupt the whistleblower’s motivation and honesty of purpose. But procedures outlined by the Attorney-General’s office make the whistleblowing role more grotesquely overhand, transactional and mercenarial. The stated process of engaging the whistleblower sounds more like a business contract than a social contract. That in some way dilutes the integrity factor.
A bigger issue is the stated responsibility of the whistleblower to trace, recover and restore illicitly appropriated assets to government. The African Centre for Media and Information Literacy (AFRICMIL), in a statement last week, disputed this mandate as inconsistent with the Federal Government’s whistleblowing policy. According to the group, Section 12 of the whistleblowing policy FAQ document available on the Federal Finance Ministry’s website prescribes that: “A whistleblower responsible for providing the government with information that directly leads to voluntary return of stolen or concealed public funds or assets may be entitled to anywhere between 2.5 percent – 5.0 percent of the amount recovered.
To qualify for the reward, the whistleblower must provide government with information it does not already have and could not otherwise obtain from any other source publicly available to government. The actual recovery must also be on account of the information provided by the whistleblower.” AFRICMIL Coordinator Chido Onumah argued that the duty to ensure recovery of illicit assets is statutorily that of security agencies working with the administrators of the whistleblowing policy, saying no reasonable citizen would expose stolen or hidden public funds if he is also the one to recover the funds and deposit same in a bank.
This writer aligns in toto with AFRICMIL’s arguments, because the sense in seeking to make a sheriff in overdrive out a whistleblower who ordinarily should stay behind the scenes is inscrutable. The whole arrangement as laid out by the Attorney-General’s office seems like government aims at making it difficult to play the whistleblower, but that contradicts its avowed enthusiasm in waging war against corruption. Perhaps there’ is need to reevaluate this commitment.
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Source: https://thenationonlineng.net/malami-and-the-whistleblower/