The Minister of Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun on Tuesday said that the Federal Government has received a total of 5,000 tips from Nigerians through the Whistle-Blower Policy.
She said this in Abuja during a presentation on “The Whistle-Blower Policy and its implication for public servants” which was delivered at a seminar organised by the Bureau of Public Service Reforms.
The Whistleblower Policy which was launched in December 2016, is aimed at addressing the issues of corruption in the management of government resources.
The finance minister explained that out of the 5,000 reports received from Nigerians, about 365 of them were actionable, adding that this has resulted in the recovery of huge sums of money for the government.
Adeosun who did not provide details of the amount recovered when asked to do so noted that out of the 365 actionable tips received by the government under the policy, over half of them came from public servants.
As of June this year, the ministry had said that the sum of N11.63bn had been recovered under the whistle blower policy with about N375.8m paid to 20 providers of information under the policy.
She explained that the actionable tips dwelt on corrupt practices issues such as contract inflation, ghost workers, illegal recruitments, misappropriation of funds, illegal sale of government assets, diversion of revenues, and violation of Treasury Single Account regulations, amongst others.
She said during the review of the information received, it was observed that certain types of tips keep recurring.
For instance, Adeosun noted that 144 or 39 per cent out of the 365 actionable tips relate to misappropriation and diversion of fund; 60 complaints representing 16 per cent relate to ghost workers, illegal recruitments and embezzlement of funds meant for personnel emolument, 56 tips or 15 per cent relate to a violation of the TSA regulations.
She added that 49 actionable tips or 13 per cent relate to contract inflation/violation of the procurement act and failure to carry out projects for which funds have been released, while 34 tips or nine per cent relate to non-remittance of pension and National Health Insurance Scheme deductions.
Source: http://punchng.com/