Nigeria and the practice of whistleblowing : how not to mobilize citizens’ participation in Anti-Corruption Programme

Relying on the Nigerian case, this study uses the principles of public participation theory to show how faulty anti-corruption designs and imple-mentation processes can exacerbate political corruption and breed ineffective anti-corruption regulations. Applying an exploratory research design and triangulating information from official sources and mainstream literature, the study reveals that the government’s attempt to implicitly and explicitly implement whistleblowing regulations generated design lapses that prioritized monetary recovery above the need for public protection while at the same time worsening the risk of retaliation against whistleblowers. The study reaffirms the need for effective mechanisms to be put in place to guarantee protection against potential risks of retaliation and to discourage self-interested tendencies among potential citizens’ participation. For example, the reward system inherent in explicit whistleblowing regulations can be redefined in non-monetary terms to make whistleblowing less susceptible to abuses by self-serving individuals.