ADEOSUN: FG recovers N11.6bn, pays N375.8m to 20 whistleblowers

The whistleblowing policy instituted by the Federal Government may have helped to rake in about N11.6bn in monies stolen from government while some 20 whistleblowers may also have earned about N375.8m for their efforts.

This much was disclosed by the Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun, who said Tuesday that the Buhari-led All Progressives Congress (APC) had received over 5,000 whistleblowing tips but that only 365 were considered worthy of critical examination.
Adeosun spoke while delivering a paper titled, “The Whistleblower Policy and its Implications for Public Servants” at the Bureau for Public Service Reform seminar which held in Abuja.

Of the 365 tips received, Adeosun said that over half of them came from public servants. The issues mostly reported on were contract inflation, ghost workers, illegal recruitments, misappropriation of funds, illegal sale of Government assets, diversion of revenues, and violation of TSA regulations, amongst others.

“Part of our work is to analyse trends and take corrective actions. For example many of the salary, tax and pension under remittance cases shared a common thread.

“Several cases where institutions were found to have insufficient funds to meet their obligations often had illegal recruitments which bloated the wage bill and agencies responded by part paying or short paying salaries, whilst applying to FG for salary shortfall payments. We are revising our procedures for approval of recruitment, which will improve our budgeting and control,” she said.

She added, “Equally in many cases where revenue has been diverted to accounts outside TSA, we have reviewed our reconciliation and receipting processes. So the information being provided is useful in driving process improvements.

“If as a civil servant, you have information about a possible misconduct or violation that has occurred, is on-going, or is about to occur, we implore you to come forward and report it.”

The whistleblowing policy was introduced in 2016.