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MacArthur foundation Raises Strong Voice For Whistleblowers Protection

Published

5 years ago

September 18, 2020

Joel Ajayi

…..As Stakeholders call on Buhari, NASS for urgent legislative action

A major stakeholder in the fight against corruption in Nigeria, the MacArthur Foundation says Nigeria must now move beyond policy to legislation to institutionalize and protect whistleblowers in the country.

In his intervention at a Radio Town Hall Meeting in Abuja, the African Director of Macarthur Foundation, Dr. Kole Shettima said that the next step for Nigeria is going beyond the whistleblower policy.

His words: “The next step is to have a law that will support the whistleblower. Although this has been an issue in the National Assembly for sometimes now.”

Shettima assured that MacArthur Foundation in collaboration with civil society organizations in Nigeria is working hard to ensure more public education on the issue and to see if a law to protect whistleblowers can be passed by the legislature.

Stakeholders have attributed the growing persecution of whistleblowers to the Federal Government’s lack of political will on creating strong institutions and legislation for whistleblower policy.

Participants during a radio town hall meeting against corruption, theme: Whistleblowers and The Challenge of Absence of Legal Protection: Cases of Dismissal of Whistleblowers, held Friday by the Progressive Impact Organization for Community Development (PRIMORG) in Abuja.

The town hall meeting is coming on amidst growing cases of victimization of some Nigerians who exposed corruption in their places of work.

It will be recalled Ms. Fidelia Onoghaife was sacked by the Netherlands Embassy in Abuja after she blew the whistle on OPL 245 fraud. Ameh Joseph, another victim of whistleblowing who spoke from Delta State on phone during the meeting shared his touching ordeal at the Federal College of Education (Technical), Asaba, Delta State after exposing corrupt activities.

“I speak in great dismay of the ordeal of corruption in our great country. I saw the corruption that has been institutionalized with impunity and carried out in routine, a multibillion naira one conferring monstrous financial, unmerited favors to the numerous participants.

“Although I was faced with the alternative of being part of the corruption against this country, I was treated as an enemy and outcast for 10 years.

“The plot to dismiss me as the obstacle to the success of their evil activities was now actualized by the termination of my service on May 13, 2020, to permanently silent my voice.”

Ameh Joseph added: “My challenges are the fears impacted on my children when I was trailed by a tinted car, the cost of maintaining two homes, and most traumatizing is the kids missing fatherly supervision, love, and care from me,” he cried out.

Reacting earlier on the lack of legislation for whistleblowing, a Senior Team Manager, Open Society Justice Initiative, Prof Chidi Odinkalu said the public service is configured in such a way that whistleblowing is discouraged, stressing that the system made it known whistleblowers that they have no hiding place.

“The underlying attitude and configuration about public service space is quite fundamentally opposed to transparency, whistleblowing to any effort to ensure accountability. Our accountability system in the court is not configured to accommodate that either so how do we create an incentive system that accommodates whistleblowers to get some protection,” Odinkalu queried.

According to Godwin Onyeacholem, Senior Program Officer, African Centre for Media & Information Literacy (Africmil), the whistleblower policy remains a policy with no legal backing yet then within the policy there is provision for protection.

His words: “The problem we have is that of enforcement, the government is not complying with the provision of protection, there is a provision for the protection of the whistleblowers within their own policy which was made in December 2016, but they don’t comply with that.

There is no way you can encourage whistleblowers if you don’t protect them. There is no guarantee for zero reprisal. If you want to blow the whistle, make up your mind that there would be retaliation or retribution.”

Onyeacholem faulted the government on the persecution of the whistleblowers. “Government all over are making legislation to ensure that organizations are putting whistleblowers procedures all over but we don’t see that happening here.

“It’s not about the whistleblower, it’s about the willingness within the state itself to ensure that this happens,” Onyeacholem stated.

President of the Civil Liberties Organization (CLO) Igho Akeregha noted that the anti-corruption agencies have not been doing enough to protect whistleblowers. He however urged citizens not to be discouraged in exposing corruption.

At the end of the meeting, stakeholders recommended the following: “that Nigeria needs to create its own mechanism of protection by establishing whistleblower fund which could be administered by the concession of interested action; Civil society organization must continue the campaign for legislation of whistleblower policy; In the absence of the enactment of comprehensive whistleblower law, the executive and legislative arm of the government should be held responsible using the media; and there should be a mechanism to support the victims of whistleblowing and victims should be compensated.

Other participants during the town hall meeting were Suraju Olanrewaju, Chairman, Human and Environmental Development Agenda (Heda Resources Centre); and Tunde Salman, Convener, Good Governance Team.

PRIMORG’s Radio Town Hall Meeting Against corruption series is supported by MacArthur Foundation.

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ELECTING A POPE: THE BURDEN OF MAKING CHOICES

Published

13 hours ago

May 11, 2025

The Gleamer

By Olubunmi Mayaki

“Habemus papam!” which in the English Language means, “We have a Pope.” was pronounced by Prefect of the Apostolic Signatura, a French Catholic prelate, His Eminence, Cardinal Dominique Mamberti from the iconic loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican City on Thursday 8 May 2025 after white smoke billowed from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel. Those Latin words proclaimed to a tensed global audience the result of the election of a new Supreme Pontiff after the death of Jorge Mario Bergoglio (Pope Francis) on 21 April 2025 at the age of 88 years.

The Prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops, Cardinal Robert Prevost (Pope Leo XIV) emerged as primus inter pares (first among equals) from the cardinals after undergoing detailed election rituals, which have been the process of selecting the head of the 2000-year-old Catholic Church for centuries.

A papal conclave, the process by which a new Pope is selected, was held consisting of one hundred and thirty-three (133) College of Cardinals, drawn from different parts of the world converged at St. Peter’s Basilica for a public mass before heading to the Sistine Chapel to cast their votes to elect the 267th Pope. During the mass, part of the choir renditions reminded voters to remember their last day when they would stand before God in judgment to render their stewardship on earth, which is to prevent them from rigging the voting process. At the behest of the senior cardinal deacon, voting formalities were read to the electors, which included- oath-taking- “I call as my witness Christ the Lord, who will be my judge, that my vote is given to the one whom I believe should be elected according to God”. Other processes are banning phones, jamming calls, forbidding speaking or contacting any of the candidates, voting rounds, spiritual pauses etc.

Looking at the voting process, one should be curious about how an election to pick a leader for a religious body could be so systematic and attract such global attention. It is a sharp contrast to elections where political leaders are chosen. Even in the so-called advanced democracies, we have seen electoral flaws and a dearth of political leaders. States are finding it difficult to pick genuine statesmen, giving rise to hegemonic leaders. These political imperia ums are emerging and stoking crises in their domain. Fallouts of elections are no longer favourable due to unpopular candidates forced on citizens.

Africa, as a case study, shows that no matter the rules put in place by the continent’s leaders, our election processes have been fraught with rigging, corruption and waste. In most cases, the leaders who set the rules are the violators of the same process. Governments conspire with electoral bodies to truncate election processes at will. Such political brigandage has destroyed the progress of the continent.

Closing this view, I hope that African leaders will take a cue from the Catholic Church’s election process to reinvigorate and rejig the continent’s faltering political process for the good of its people. Better still; political scholars from the continent can study the Catholic model. The common features of elections in most parts of Africa, especially sub-Saharan Africa, are riddled with vote rigging, violence, human rights abuse, repression, barbarism, crises, untold hardship, and sometimes, outright war. This is the bane of Africa’s development.

The burden of making good political choices should ordinarily rest on citizens. However, politicians have hijacked this process for selfish reasons. It has given birth to bad leaders. If we fail to get it right, what we see is what we get. That is the story of the world politics!

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