FG has paid N375.8 million to 20 whistleblowers since 2016 – Adeosun reveals

– Kemi Adeosun has said that N11 billion has been recovered through the whistleblowers policy in Nigeria

– The minister said the money was recovered from December 2016 till date

– She said N375.8 million has also been paid to 20 whistleblowers who provided information that led to the recovery

Nigeria’s minister of finance, Kemi Adeosun, on Wednesday, August 15, announced that the N11.6 billion has been recovered by the federal government from tips received from whistleblowers.

Adeosun said the money was recovered between December 2016 when the Whistleblowers Policy was launched till date.

According to the minister, a total of 5,000 tips have also been received by the federal government from various whistleblowers across the country.

Adeosun however said the federal government only acted on 365 of them leading to the payment of N375.8 million to 20 whistleblowers who provided information that led to the recovery.

Speaking further, Adeosun said the policy has been one of government’s most successful new initiatives.

She said over half of the tips came from public servants touching on issues like contract inflation, ghost workers, illegal recruitment, misappropriation of funds, illegal sale of government assets, diversion of revenues and violation of Treasury Single Account (TSA) regulations, among others.

Adeosun said: “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 there 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,” Adeosun said.

“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 ongoing, or is about to occur, we implore you to come forward and report it. You can submit your information anonymously and confidentially through the online portal, by email or by phone and if you choose to disclose your identity, I assure you that it will be fully protected,” the minister added.

Meanwhile, TRACKNEWS. NG previously reported that the federal government said in the first three months, its new whistleblowing policy has provided 282 tip-offs out of which 154 were actionable.

The Nigerian government started the whistle-blower policy some months back to tackle endemic corruption and it is reaping rewards.

Festus Akanbi, a government official said that some of the actionable tips involved “contract inflation and conversion of government asset to personal use”, “ghost workers” and “payment of unapproved funds.”

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