The African Centre for Media and Information Literacy
(AFRICMIL) has restated its call for an honest implementation of the federal
government’s whistleblower blower policy.
This was contained in a statement on Thursday by Chido
Onumah, the Coordinator.
It criticised the recent comments by the Attorney General of
the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, that whistleblowers
can only get commission from loot they expose after a series of processes.
AFRICMIL said Malami suggested that beyond providing
information or exposing stolen public funds, whistleblowers would have to
recover the funds and lodge them in stipulated accounts before they are
rewarded.
“You do not expect a whistleblower to be so shabbily treated
that the only conclusion an unbiased observer would reach is that there is a
grand plot to deny him his due”, it noted.
The centre accused the AGF of misreading the whistleblowing
policy document released by the federal government in December 2006.
It stressed that there is nowhere in the document that says
whistleblowers have a responsibility to recover funds after providing
information to the relevant authorities.
Section 12 of the whistleblowing policy FAQ document says:
“A Whistleblower responsible for providing the Government with information that
directly leads to the voluntary return of stolen or concealed public funds or
assets may be entitled to anywhere between 2.5%-5.0% of the amount recovered.
“In order to qualify for the reward, the Whistleblower must
provide the Government with information it does not already have and could not
otherwise obtain from any other publicly available source to the Government.
The actual recovery must also be on account of the information provided by the
Whistleblower.”
Onumah pointed out that the document only says
whistleblowers would get their reward following the supply of information that
leads to the voluntary return of stolen or hidden funds or assets.
“It did not say whistleblowers must recover the funds or
assets as the AGF is interpreting”, he stressed.
AFRICMIL said the duty of ensuring recovery is statutorily
that of the security agencies working with the administrators of the
whistleblowing policy.
The organization cited the Ikoyi apartment incident where
upon the exposure of funds concealed in the apartment, security agents moved in
and recovered the looted funds.
“That recovery was not made by the whistleblower but by
security agents. And the whistleblower was rightly paid what is due to him even
if after some embarrassing official delay,” the statement added.
The organization advised the AGF to retract the portion of
his statement that has “distorted the facts in the whistleblowing policy
document”.
It warned that failure to do so would be “a costly
disincentive to the patriotic duty of whistleblowing”.
“No reasonable citizen will blow the whistle on stolen or
hidden public funds if he is also the one to recover the funds and deposit in a
bank”, AFRICMIL added.
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