Market News

BY  Okechukwu Nnodim, Abuja

Assets and cash worth more than N700bn have been recovered through the whistleblower policy of the Federal Government, the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, said on Tuesday.

In 2016 the Federal Government commenced the implementation of the whistleblower policy in its drive to stem corruption in Nigeria.

On the side-lines of the National Conference on Whistleblower Policy in Abuja, Ahmed told journalists that since the implementation of the policy four years ago, the government had been making recoveries.

said, “The whistleblower policy has been implemented since 2016 and till date we have been able to recover funds into the treasury.

“Over N700bn has been collected in which some are in foreign currencies such as dollars and also some physical assets have been recovered.”

She added, “What we want to do now is step up the process by working towards producing the whistleblower protection law.

“This meeting is gathering inputs for that to be possible so that when people provide information, they should be very well protected.”

The primary goal of the policy, according to the finance minister, is to strengthen the fight against financial crimes and corruption.

This, she said, would be by increasing enabling laws on whistleblower, as implementation was being carried out by representatives of anti-graft agencies, Office of the Attorney-General of the Federation and Inspector-General of Police.

During the conference, the Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo, in his virtual speech said the first initiative of the current government was to validate control and ensure compliance in public financial management system.

He said the whistleblower policy would develop a tool to expose corruption and corrupt practices in government.