Groups Renew Call for Passage of FoI Bill

By Davidson Iriekpen

As the world celebrates the International Right to Know Day today, two civil society organisations, the Nigerian Guild of Editors (NGE) and Right to Know Movement Initiative Nigeria (R2K Nigeria), have renewed the need to pass the Freedom of Information (FoI) Bill.
The groups launched a campaign to enforce Nigerian laws, which contain guarantees of access to publicly-held information.
The organisations identified over six federal Acts and official policy documents that guarantee the public’s right of access to publicly held documents, including Section 39 of the 1999 Constitution; Article 9 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (Ratification and Enforcement) Act (1990); the Archives Act; the Environmental Impact Assessment Act (1992); the Fiscal Responsibility Act (2007), the Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency (NEITI) Act, 2007; and the SERVICOM Charter.
A statement by  NGE President, Mr Gbenga Adefaye, said government elected by citizens need not have anything to gain from secrecy.
He said failure to enforce the access to information provisions in our laws was at the heart of the current rot, decay, high level corruption and misappropriation of public funds currently plaguing our country.
He called on Nigerians to be eternally vigilant in demanding the protection of their rights to information under these existing laws, stating that failure to do so was no longer an option.
The NGE and R2K Nigeria, in unveiling the campaign, called on the Federal Ministry of Environment to respond favourably to the request by the Niger Delta Communities to fully disclose the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Report on the Dredging of the Lower River Niger.
Launched this month, the Lower River Niger Dredging Project covers 572 kilometers and runs through 152 communities in 31 local governments in eight states, including Anambra, Imo, Bayelsa, Delta, Edo, Kogi, Niger and Rivers states. The cost of the project is N36billion and several requests by affected communities for the disclosure of this report have not been acknowledged by government.
Associate Legal Officer,  Open Society Justice Initiative, Mr Maxwell Kadiri,  in his contribution, said, “a government committed to the rule of law cannot decide which laws it finds convenient to obey. The Lower River Niger Dredging project is one of the most expensive public works projects by the government. The Federal Government has chosen to ignore the EIA Act in launching this project that affects the lives of millions of Nigerians in eight different states covering three different and delicate geo-political regions of Nigeria. This is both insensitive and unlawful.”