Revealed: How Tech Whistle Blowers Triggered Banking Tsunami

The battery of claims and counter-charges has succeeded in diverting attention from the existence of whistle blowing, a dangerous safety mechanism which triggered the banking tsunami in the first place, Nigeria CommunicationsWeek can now reveal.
Using portable digital technology, whistle blowing, a conscience-based activity has been transformed into a culture as the blowers exploit the anonymity of technology to bring light to the messy insides of the banking balance sheets.
They presented so called “true position” as the banks tried to make their books presentable to both investors and regulatory authorities.
Nigeria CommunicationsWeek gathered that the bulk of evidence and clues provided by the whistleblowers pressured the Central of Nigeria (CBN) to pursue the audit of the first 10 banks to conclusion.
It will be recalled that in a landmark rejig, CBN last month, sacked five banks chief executives including Erastus Akingbola, Intercontinental Bank Plc, Sebastine Adigwe of AfriBank Plc; Okey Nwosu of Finbank; Barth Ebong of Union Bank Plc and Mrs Cecilia Ibru of Oceanic Bank Plc.
In apparent contradiction, the same apex bank had earlier approved the audited account of Oceanic Bank under Ibru.
Critics of Prof. Chukwuma Soludo, former governor of CBN, said that previous whistle blowings were ignored because the environment was marked by fear and intimidation, in which there was alleged conspiracy to cover up incompetency, mistakes, and possibly criminal behaviour.
According to the critics, governance and safety pathways under Soludo were inadequate and inhibited by a poor institutional culture.
Nigeria CommunicationsWeek however gathered that the challenge of whistle blowing under Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, governor of CBN is how the industry could benefit from those individuals whose criticism, when well founded and addressed, leads to significant improvements.
For instance, the activities of the blowers and banking tsunami present economic safety and professional challenges to the country.
Expert said that there should be a framework to encourage whistle blowing as it will help to save a lot of situations.
They also call on the CBN to articulate a clear policy of whistle blowing by incorporating the process of protecting the blower against related attacks.
The greatest whistle-blower of all time is Mark Felt, a former number two at the FBI, who with Woodward and Bernstein, Washington Post reporters, changed American political history.
But there have been other whistle-blower cases that altered the political landscape.
In 1971, with Vietnam raging, military analyst Daniel Ellsberg leaked classified documents to the New York Times. "The Pentagon Papers," as they were called, revealed that nearly everyone in the Pentagon and state department knew that the U.S. had no realistic chance of winning the war.
The story fuelled anti-war protests and added to the public pressure that pushed the Nixon administration towards peace talks. As for Ellsberg, because of administration misconduct against him, charges of theft and espionage were dropped.