Will Politicians Allow FOI Bill Work?

By Tutu Folasade-Koyi

Daily Independent, Monday, November 20, 2006

After five years of its existence, on Wednesday, November 15, the Senate finally passed the Freedom of Information (FOI) Bill into law, a year after the House of Representatives had taken the shine.

Forget the fact that it took more than two years before the Senate could approve and pass the FOI Bill into law. The fact is that it has been done and it is marvelous in our eyes. Isn’t it?

Although the version passed in the Senate and that forwarded to it by the House of Representatives differ slightly, it matters not. Although Senator Tawar Wada (PDP, Gombe) really tried his best to push the bill through as Information Committee Chairman, it matters not to us that it was under watch of Senator Victor Ndoma-Egba as ad hoc committee chairman of the bill that it was eventually passed.

After consideration in a Committee of the Whole, Senate President Ken Nnamani announced that Sections 1-9 were passed as recommended, Section 10 was amended. Sections 11-34 were also passed as recommended. Subsequently, it was read the third time and thereafter, became an Act of the National Assembly. In simple lay-man language, it became law.

For record purposes, this is the correct title of the FOI Bill: “A Bill for an Act to make public records and information more freely available, provide for public access to public records and information, project public records and information to the extent consistent with the public interest and the protection of personal privacy, protect serving public officers from adverse consequences for disclosing certain kinds of official information without authorization and establish procedures for the achievement of those purposes and related purposes thereof, 2006”

Section 1 of the FOI Bill states: “Subject to the provisions of this Act, but notwithstanding anything contained in any other act, law or regulation, every citizen of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, has a legally enforceable right to, and shall, on application be given access to any record under the control of a government or public institution”.

Presenting his report, Ndoma-Egba explained that the bill seeks to “provide a right to access to public information or records kept by government, public institutions or private bodies carrying out public functions for citizens and non-citizens of the country. This will increase availability of public records and information to citizens of the country in order to participate more effectively in the making and administration of laws and policies to promote accountability of public officers”.

The only amended section, Section 10, which is titled: “Destruction or falsification of record”, initially stipulated that it “shall be a criminal offence punishable on conviction with three years imprisonment for any officer or the head of any government or public institution to which this act applies who tries to either willfully destroy any records kept in his/her custody and attempts to doctor or otherwise alter same before they are released to any person, entity or community applying for it”.

The Senate amended the three years imprisonment clause, with a proviso that the court should be allowed to set the required number of years that would serve as punishment for defaulters.

Section 11 deals with access to records. It states that access to a record would be given to the person applying for such access in or the following forms: “(a) a reasonable opportunity to inspect or copy the record; (b) in the case of a record from which sounds or visual images are capable of being reproduced, the making of arrangements for the person to hear or view these sounds or visual images and (c) in the case of a document regarded in phonography, shorthand or in codified form, provision by the government or public institution of a transcript of the document… subject to Subsection (3) of this section, where the application is for information in a particular form, access shall be given in that form”.

Information gatherers in Nigeria know how hard it is to squeeze out information from those who have the power to give it. Now that the FOI Bill has been passed into law, it is hoped that the President would assent to this very important bill before leaving office on May 29, 2007.

Something tells me that with the kind of President we have, whose legendary disdain for the media is a known secret, it is not yet Uhuru for the media. Examples abound. There are several good bills that have been passed into law by the National Assembly but which still await the almighty assent. Whether it would be given to the FOI Bill, only time would tell.