Many international organisations have recently acknowledged the significance of whistleblowing in preventing institutional corruption, particularly in the public sector. Likewise, many countries have enacted whistleblower protection laws, though a robust whistleblower protection system certainly requires much more than legislation. One challenge in developing effective protection systems is finding empirical evidence to evaluate existing systems. Can we measure the effectiveness of whistleblower protection systems accross different countries? What conditions do we need to make the whistleblower protection system work effectively in the public sector? This paper investigates two cases: South Korea and the Republic of Kosovo. South Korean data comes from the Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission of South Korea, while its counterpart from Kosovo comes from a survey of 400 public officials about whistleblower protection. By analysing both datasets, this paper creates a new index that evaluates the effectiveness of whistleblower protection. Composed of quantitative and qualitative sub-indices, the index serves as a digital comparison tool for assessing whistleblower protection systems across different countries and at different times. In addition to enacting high-quality laws, this index identifies several additional measures that can strengthen whistleblower protection systems in the public sector.

The act of whistleblowing is not common in Nigeria; this can be attributed to the cultural norms of Nigerian society where deference is paid to those in positions of power and it is often viewed as taboo to speak up against them. This problem of not speaking up is further compounded by the lack of robust whistleblowing legislation which protects whistleblowers from reprisals. The need to protect whistleblowers was brought to the forefront after the implementation in 2016 of the Nigerian stopgap policy on whistleblowing, leading to the Whistleblower Protection Bill proposed in 2019, legislation that seeks to provide wider protection to whistleblowers. This article examines this bill, identifying its limitations; it does not rehash previous scholarly debates about whether incentives are necessary, but rather focuses on bringing the Nigerian perspective to the fore, thus contributing to the existing literature in this area.