Nairametrics| The newly introduced policy of rewarding whistle blowers seems to have been a Midas touch by this Buhari administration. Since then, a race seems to have set off among whistle blowers as to who could reveal the largest bounty. However, fraud and corruption in the public service has been the main victim of the whistle-blower fever. Until now.
Not content with the civil service, whistle blowers have now moved to exposing illegal imports and substandard products. And they started it off in grand style- assisting the Standards Organization of Nigeria to uncover what it called “the largest seizure of substandard tyres in one swoop in the history of Nigeria” as about 2 million substandard tyres worth approximately N5 billion Naira were uncovered in a warehouse in Satellite Town, Lagos.
According to Vanguard Newspapers, this warehouse was run by Chinese who imported fake (stuffed) tyres and went on to rebrand them, risking the lives of millions of Nigerians. Two of these Chinese were arrested and paraded before newsmen.
The Director-General and Chief Executive, of SON, Osita Aboloma, who conducted pressmen round the factory said it was ‘intelligence from well-meaning Nigerians’ that made the swoop possible.
“We acted on the intelligence we received from well-meaning Nigerians. This was achieved as a result of inter-agency collaboration. The glory is not for SON alone…We have over 60 containers of tyres; actually stuffed tyres to be precise. Again, even if these are to be standard tyres, the fact that up to five of them were tucked into one, with operators using rods to separate them from one another when they reached Nigeria, the tyres will naturally become substandard.”
Given the poor standard of the tyres, the exposure has gone a long way in reducing the amount of fake tyres in circulation and indirectly, preventing several accidents and unnecessary deaths. And if one thing is certain, it is that with whistle-blowers extending the scope of their operations to other sectors, more and more people will be wary of carrying out illegal business with others.