‘Fear of reprisal stalls whistleblowing in public service’

African Centre for Media and Information Literacy (AFRICMIL) has hinted that public servants are afraid of reporting corrupt practices and wrongdoings in their workplaces for fear of punishment.

Executive Director of the centre, Chido Onumah, made the disclosure, yesterday, in Abuja at a workshop for law enforcement and anti-corruption agencies on whistleblowing and whistleblower protection in Nigeria with the theme: ‘Strengthening Anti-Corruption and Promoting Accountability through Whistleblowing and Whistleblower Protection.’

According to Onumah, public sector workers are not reporting wrongdoings in their places of work because they have become victims of vicious retaliation in the absence of a protection law and despite provisions for their safety as captured in Section 6 of the whistleblowing policy.

He said: “Faced by lack of protection, citizens, mostly public sector workers, began to lose interest in blowing the whistle on corruption and other types of wrongdoing because of fear of consequences.

“Workers are facing all kinds of punishment from suspension, through denial of salaries and other benefits, punitive transfers, denial of promotion to outright dismissal.

“The result of these various attacks is a steady reduction in the volume of disclosures recorded over the years, thus making it seem as if the policy has been abandoned.”

Onumah urged security agencies to leverage the gathering and come up with a stronger resolve to investigate reports of corruption and wrongdoing and protect compatriots from becoming victims of impunity and abuse of power only because they made disclosures against corrupt and other illegal practices that threaten society’s wellbeing.

In his presentation, a Deputy Director from the Ministry of Finance, Johnson Oludare, regretted that some members of the public had not embraced the whistleblowing policy and would always blame lack of sincerity by government.

Disclosing that within a few months of its introduction, the Federal Governnment was able to recover huge sums of money, the director expressed concern that Nigerians were yet to take total ownership of the fight against corruption.