The FOI Bill

ThisDay newspaper Editorial, 27 November 2006

After snaking through the National Assembly for a pretty long while the Freedom of Information Bill (FOI) was eventually passed by the Senate the other day. The House of Representatives had earlier passed it. With that, what is now left is for the  both chambers to meet and harmonise the bill and for the  President to assent to it. That ought not to take another long while given the significance of the bill.

The passage of the Freedom of Information Bill is a high-water mark in the legislative history of the nation. It has become one of the most important legislative accomplishments of the National Assembly, perhaps ranking only next to the rejection of the presidential tenure extension bill earlier in the year.

The FOI bill which essentially seeks to promote good governance by liberalising the sharing of information between public officials and interested members of the public, was first introduced as a private member’s bill. Jointly sponsored by a group of progressive-minded legislators, the bill, not surprisingly ran into bad weather in both chambers of the National Assembly. Not everybody believed that it was in the public interest or that it was necessary at this point in the development of the country.

Some had misgivings about the bill and the erroneous impression that it would set the media against public officials. The truth, however, is that the bill is not just for the media. It is for all Nigerians, especially those interested in certain kinds of information about the activities of government. It will no doubt empower Nigerians in terms of access to information that will help them take more informed decisions about those who govern them.

After the House passed the bill last year, it was expected that the senate would follow suit but then it seemed that the upper legislative chamber was going to scrutinize the bill more closely. When we wrote an editorial last year urging the senate to speed up action on the proposed legislation, the main thrust of our argument was that a bill that seeks to put vital information in the public domain would be a catalyst to the growth of democracy and aid the campaign against official graft.

After all, who does not know that the reason why embezzlement of public funds and the commission of other serious crimes  is rife is that information about the activities of most public offices is scarce. Quite a number of these offices are run as though they are secret cults.

We believe that if public officials realized that information about their activities can be demanded and statutorily made available to the public, most of them would behave with greater discipline and self-control. To that extent  the resistance that the bill received in the Assembly was understandable. In reality, it is in the nature of man not to want to be held accountable for his actions, however  highly placed he may be.

When it becomes a law (and we hope that will be soon) the FOI Bill is expected to have a domino effect on the quality of governance in the country. It will, for instance, be of great assistance to agencies like the Code of Conduct Bureau, the EFCC and the ICPC. Good governance is impossible without two-way information flow. Those being governed must have information that will enable them to ask relevant questions about how they are being governed. Agreed that it is not every information that can be put in the public domain for security reasons. Still, a good deal of the information needed by the public to take sensible decisions are still kept away from them for no reason. It is to stop this practice that the FOI Bill became necessary. The president should sign it into law without delay and then proceed to put in place the enabling environment to make it enforceable. All bureaucratic bottlenecks that could stand in the way of implementing the bill when signed into law must be dismantled.