By Tony
Eluemunor
The
whistle-blowing policy has set everywhere abuzz as many Nigerians have turned
it into a lucrative vocation. Indeed, some Nigerians have already earned
huge sums of money with 20 people recently sharing N375.8m . Announcing
this last Wednesday June 7, 2017, the Minister for Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun
confirmed the money has been released. She also said that the money was for the
first batch of whistle-blowers. So, that means another batch may soon be
paid.
Yet, she
also warned that “all payments are taxable and are only made upon confirmation
of the final recovery of assets by the Attorney-General of the Federation that
they are free of legal disputes or litigation”. She carefully withheld the
information that those who gave wrong information have been arraigned in court!
Most important
to the matter at hand, Mrs. Adeosun also said: “a whistle-blower unit in the
Ministry of Finance headquarters has been created with members of staff
seconded from the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, the Independent
Corrupt Practices and other related offences Commission, the Department of
State Services, the Nigeria Police Force and the Presidential Initiative on
Continuous Audit, among others. “The whistle-blower unit is the first line of
response to whistle-blower information, where initial review is undertaken
before cases are forwarded to the relevant investigative agencies”.
With the
above paragraph in mind, the letters an NGO, Al-Mushahid Initiative for
Transparency and Accountability (AITA), Efab Plaxa, Garki Area 11, Abuja, wrote
some officials of the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), Area
Two, Wuse District, Abuja, becomes curious.
One of
the letters, dated 12th April, 2017 will suffice. Its second paragraph
detailed out the reason for writing: “Sequel to a petition against you by some
“Whistle Blowers” under the aegis of some concerned Civil Servants, alleging
embezzlement of public funds and abuse of office against your person in the
course of your Civil Service Career”.
While
that paragraph was left uncompleted, the second one reads “The motive behind
our request for information is to give you a veritable platform for fair
hearing as enshrined in the section 36 of the 1999 Constitution as amended, for
the purpose of clarity and public interest”. For the purpose of clarity
and public interest? Really? Apart from tangled meanings and mangled
grammar, when did the NGO become a whistle-blowing reporting point? Who
included it among the law enforcement agencies?
Two more
paragraphs of two muddled sentences made me understand why a group of NEPAD
workers were laughing uproariously while reading the document. Was the
letter from a real and registered NGO?
That the
letter was signed by an Ambassador; “Amb. Aminu Majidadi made many
to doubt the integrity and status of the authors for they felt no
real ambassador would write “were alleged to caused” in an official
letter.
The
Foreign Affairs Ministry confirmed no Aminu Majidadi exists in the list of past
or present Nigerian Ambassadors. At best, he could be an ambassador with a
small “a” such as an honourary “goodwill ambassador” of some
organisations, say an Ambassador for Peace of Universal Peace Federation
founded by Rev Moon, a South Korean. Truly, an NGO, AITA, has an office
in the stated address.
Beyond
that, the amused group read and re-read the 11th paragraph: “Since your
assumption at NEPAD office, how much has the budget office released so far in
2016 to date under your control”? Amid fits of laughter at the “so far in
2016 to date” phrase, the people explained that the man so queried was posted
to NEPAD mid-December 2016.
I came to
NEPAD office that day to research into how much of the year 2000 to 2015
Millennium Development Goals did African countries meet. But with that
day ruined, I knew I had to come back another day. NEPAD, an
intellectually -tasking office, whose senior staff move from one developmental
summit to another, and producing an endless harvest of developmental
data, is hardly a cash cow. In fact, from the days of Dr. Tunji Olagunju
who headed the office under former President Olusegun Obasanjo, some 70 per
cent of NEPAD allocations have gone into summits and conferences. Though
I have never met the present National Coordinator/Chief Executive Officer
of NEPAD, Nigeria, Hon. Princess Gloria Akobundu, I know that less than a
quarter of NEPAD 2016 allocation has been released. In fact, it is on record
that during the visit of the Senate Committee on Integration and Cooperation in
Africa and NEPAD to NEPAD office for oversight functions, she decried the poor
state of NEPAD office and the condition in which staff work in, according to
news reports.
I will
return to NEPAD for reports on the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM), a
mutually agreed instrument voluntarily acceded to by the member states of the
African Union (AU) as a self-monitoring mechanism - founded in 2003. For now, I
beg the NGO to fault me on any material particular and I also pray the Editor
to grant the NGO a right of reply so that I will further expose how this falls
short of Freedom of Information Act and whistle-blowing policy stipulates - to
banish some ignorance from the land.
Tony
Eluemunor is an Abuja-based journalist.
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