A non-governmental organization, African Centre for Media and Information Literacy (AFRICMIL), has called for public support of the whistleblower policy of the government.
Speaking at a media workshop for journalists on whistleblowing and whistleblower protection held in Lagos on Thursday, the coordinator of the group, Chido Onumah, said: “Since 2017, AFRICMIL has been working on a project tagged Corruption Anonymous (CORA) which is supported by The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The project is designed to build public confidence and support for the whistleblowing policy of the government of Nigeria.
“We began by engaging this project on three major planks which include creating awareness and sensitizing the public to the importance of whistleblowing as a tool for fighting corruption and checking other forms of wrongdoing in the society, advocating honest implementation of the policy, and ensuring effective protection for people who are courageous enough to blow the whistle. However, of late, following the renewal of the project for another three years, we have added a fourth platform of engagement with the sole objective of working for the institutionalization of whistleblowing as a vital mechanism for transparency and democratic good governance in Nigeria.
“In a bid to ensure a successful implementation of the CORA project, AFRICMIL has built strategic alliances with relevant stakeholders like the Presidential Initiative on Continuous Audit (PICA), a unit in the Federal Ministry of Finance, Budget & National Planning, that is charged with the responsibility of managing the whistleblowing policy, anti-corruption agencies, civil society organisations, a coalition of public interest lawyers and, of course, the media.
“As part of the activities for achieving a desirable outcome for the CORA project, AFRICMIL has, over the last four years, organized training programmes and stakeholders’ meetings at different times with all institutions with which we have collaborated. It is in furtherance of deepening this component of activities lined up for this project that this media training is being organized purposely for journalists that we have painstakingly selected from the print and electronic media.”
