The African Centre for Media and Information Literacy has expressed deep concern over the prolonged delay in passing Nigeria’s whistleblower protection bill into law, urging the Minister of Finance, Olawale Edun, to expedite action.
In a letter to the minister on Thursday, AFRICMIL’s Coordinator, Dr Chido Onumah, emphasised that a legal framework to safeguard whistleblowers is long overdue, stressing its crucial role in promoting transparency, accountability, and good governance.
The whistleblowing policy, introduced in 2016 by the Federal Ministry of Finance, was designed to encourage citizens to report fraud, bribery, and looted government funds. However, its effectiveness has waned over the years, prompting the Federal Government to approve a new whistleblower draft bill in December 2022.
Despite this, Onumah lamented that the 9th National Assembly failed to pass the bill into law, leaving potential whistleblowers vulnerable to retaliation.
He said, ‘We cannot emphasise enough that a protection law is long overdue, nor can the critical role of whistleblowers in achieving transparency, accountability, and good governance be understated.
‘As a consequence, accountability in both the public and private sectors has continued to suffer to a large extent,’ the letter stated.
Onumah recalled that during a whistleblowing sensitisation workshop hosted by the finance ministry last August, the minister reiterated the importance of a whistleblower protection law.
He acknowledged that Edun had since forwarded the bill back to the presidency but expressed concern over the lack of progress in moving it to the National Assembly.
Onumah urged the minister to use his influence to accelerate the process, allowing Nigeria to join Ghana as the only West African country with such a progressive legal framework.
‘A whistleblower protection law will be a great leap forward in ensuring democratic accountability in Nigeria, especially as President Bola Ahmed Tinubu currently chairs ECOWAS,’ he stated.
