Two years on, stakeholders worry over non-use of FoI

Discussants at Wole Soyinka Media Lecture have expressed disappointment that two years after the Freedom of Information Act was signed into law, stakeholders including the academia, journalists and civil society groups are yet to optimally make use of the law to deepen governance.

Stating that there are several issues in the country such as the oil subsidy scam, budget allocations to ministries and agencies and certain operations of the government that require the application of Freedom of Information (FoI) Act for disclosure and transparency, the discussants regretted that the law is grossly under-utilised.

The under-utilisation of the law could have been informed by a passive society occasioned by long rule of the military as Nigerians hardly take up the gauntlet against maladministration. Again the colonial administration handed down the official secrets act which had become the norm in government.

The speakers were the Biodun Jeyifo, professor of English at Cornel University and professor of African and African American studies and Comparative Literature at Harvard University; Abike Dabiri, member House of Representative; Chidi Odinkalu, chairman, Governing Council of Nigeria’s National Human Rights Commission; and Peter Carter, British deputy high commissioner in Nigeria.

The objective of FoI which was to generate knowledge through making public records and information more freely available is to engender transparency in governance and equally provoke public debate which will shape policies better.

According to the discussants, the quality of such debates will assist to build a direction for the nation, direct policies, question profligacy by the leadership and ultimately check corruption. Leading the discussion last weekend in Lagos, Biodun Jeyifo said that though corruption in Nigeria appears too monumental for FoI, he regretted that all the promises of FoI through which the government should be more responsible to the people are not exploited.

He believed that in the face of this monumental corruption and unaccountability, people may have lost faith that FoI can address the situation. In this regard, he said that every modern society needs a vibrant press, recalling that Nigeria won the independence because of a vibrant press.

On her part, Abike Dabiri who said that the government had no breathing space before the FoI was passed, equally said she was not happy that the law is yet to be exploited.

She said that the beauty of the law is to ask questions and said enough questions have not been asked on oil subsidy refunds so far. “FoI is an institution against corruption. It is a radical step forward to get things right. Let us use it to ask the right questions,” she said. In his discussion, Odinkalu who said that FoI came exactly 100 years after the Official Secrets Act believed that the application of the law would not be automatic as Nigerians have lived 100 years under government secrecy.

Another challenge in the application of the law he said, is that Nigeria is an ‘oral society’ that does not have the culture of documenting records.

In his discussion, Peter Carter, British high commissioner to Nigeria said in a democratic country stated that, “It is important that the public gets the information it wants in order to hold government accountable,” as information is power.

Agreeing with Odinkalu that it will take time for the FoI to be embedded in the Nigerian society, Carter said the UK Commission has worked with certain bodies in Nigeria to educate citizens on FoI.