Date Published: 08/19/09
AUGUST 19, 2009 PRESS RELEASE
FOI BILL: CRITICAL AND KEY TO WINNING THE ANTI-CORRUPTION WAR
When Hillary Rodham Clinton, the US Secretary of State visited Nigeria last week, she said in a Meeting with Civil Society that the anti-corruption war in the country has failed due the inability of the EFCC to sustain the efforts made previously. And two days after, five Banks Chiefs where sacked by the CBN-the Nation’s Apex Bank due to gross mismanagement or so the Banking Sector Watchdog would have us believe. Some have myopically attributed the CBN’s actions to a Northern Agenda, apparently because its current Governor is of Northern extraction. No doubt, this may be true, especially in a country where many feeds their cynicism and despair with racial sentiments but we are neither toeing that path nor pursuing that line of thought because we are of the opinion that race should have no place in the life and law of Nigeria in the 21 st Century, but then the CBN hasn’t help matters either as it has failed to make available to the Press or at least published the facts and documentations behind its actions last Friday. The CLO believes that if there was an FOI law in place, it would have helped the Media and indeed the general public in laying to rest all of the insinuations, speculations and misguided statements flying around in the last few days.
In the last ten years, the promoters of the FOI Bill have been labouring fruitlessly to get it signed into law.
The introduction of the FOI Bill several years ago in this country promised a fresh breath of hope not only for the downtrodden, but more importantly, for the socio-political and economic repositioning of our nation. But a decade has passed by and we are yet to see the Bill become law.
In other realms, FOI legislation is already making tremendous impact. The global anti-corruption watchdog-Transparency International in a report said, Corruption flourishes in darkness and so any progress towards opening governments and inter-governmental organization to public scrutiny is likely to advance anti-corruption efforts. The report entitled, “Using the right to Information as an Anticorruption Tool”, focused particularly on the impact of FOI legislation across Eastern Europe-the former communist bloc in which government was a by-word for secrecy and deception…New access to information is making government more accountable and there is a continuing drive to persuade governments across Africa to adopt similar measures.
FOI Surveys around the World by David Banisar and Privacy International revealed that Freedom of information (FOI) is an essential right for every person. It allows individuals and groups to protect their rights. It is an important safeguard against abuses, mismanagement and corruption. It can also be beneficial to governments themselves – openness and transparency in the decision-making process can improve citizen trust in government actions.
FOI is essential for public participation. Democracy is based on the consent of the citizens and that consent turns on the government informing citizens about their activities and recognising their right to participate. The public is only truly able to participate in the democratic process when they have information about the activities and policies of the government. Public awareness of the reasons behind decisions can improve support and reduce misunderstandings and dissatisfaction. Individual members of Parliament are also better able to conduct oversight. Confidence in the government is improved if it is known that the decisions will be predicable. FOI laws can improve the enforcement of many other economic and political rights. In India, the FOI laws are used to enforce rations distribution by revealing that food vendors are not providing the government-subsidized food to impoverished citizens. This has resulted in substantial changes in the food distribution system to ensure that citizens are getting their food while vendors are getting adequate compensation. Others are using it to prompt officials to respond to longstanding problems with roads, buildings and jobs. In Thailand, a mother whose daughter was denied entry into an elite state school demanded the school’s entrance exam results. When she was turned down, she appealed to the Information Commission and the courts. In the end, she obtained information showing that the children of influential people were accepted into the school even if they got low scores. As a result, the Council of State issued an order that all schools accept students solely on merit. In the US, FOIA was used to reveal instances of government-approved torture and illegal surveillance.
Other laws such as Data Protection Acts and some FOIs allow individuals to access records held by public and private entities. A right of access and correction to personal files ensures that records on individuals are accurate and decisions are not based on out-of-date or irrelevant information. It also ensures that people can see what benefits or services they are entitled to and whether they are receiving their correct amounts. In South Africa, the private access provisions of the Promotion of Access to Information Act have been used against banks by individuals who want to know why their applications for loans are denied, minority shareholder to obtain records of private companies, a historian who is researching how a private utility company operated during the apartheid era and environmental groups wanting to know about possible environmental dangers of projects.
FOI laws also improve how government bodies work. Decisions that are known to be eventually made public are more likely to be based on objective and justifiable reasons. The New Zealand Law Commission found in 1997 that “the assumption that policy advice will eventually be released under the Act has in our view improved the quality and transparency of that advice.” The Australian Law Reform Commission and Administrative Review Council found “the [FOI] Act has had a marked impact on the way agencies make decisions and the way they record information…[it] has focused decision-makers’ minds on the need to base decisions on relevant factors and to record the decision making process. The knowledge that decisions and processes are open to scrutiny, including under the FOI Act, imposes a constant discipline on the public sector.”
FOI is considered a key tool in anti-corruption measures as reasons for awarding contracts and other financial transactions must be documented and justified. In India, grassroots social activist groups use the right to know laws to obtain information on local public works projects and reveal the amounts said to have been paid at public meetings where community members are then asked if the projects have been completed, and how much they were paid. These have revealed many instances in which actual payments were less than the amount that had been recorded as given to people who had died and supplied to projects never completed.
In countries that have recently made the transition to democracy, FOI laws allow governments to break with the past and allow society and the victims and their families of abuses to learn what happened and better understand. Almost all newly developed or modified constitutions include a right to access information from government bodies as a fundamental human or civil right. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, most Central and Eastern European countries adopted laws to regulate access to the files of the former secret police forces. In some countries, these files are made available to individuals to see what is being held on them. In other countries, the files are limited to “lustration” committees to ensure that individuals who were in the previous secret services are prohibited from being in the current government or at least their records are made public. In Mexico, President Fox in 2002 ordered the declassification of all the files of previous human rights abuses so that the families could find out what happened to their loved ones who disappeared. In the US, the National Security Archive has made thousands of requests and has obtained information from the US government on records relating to human rights abuses in Mexico, Peru and Chile that they then made available to the Truth Commissions in those countries.
One of the irrational arguments that have been put forth by the antagonists of the FOI Bill in the National Assembly is the possible new fillips to the media on its conduct of investigative journalism. Restricting access to information deprives the press of the legal authority to publish what they even know is true. But the Bill does not intend to empower the journalists or the wider media industry with such exclusive rights and privileges that will not be available to the rest of the public. And the more the government delays the passage of this Bill; the longer it delays the day of eventual prosperity in this country. In the first instance, the Bill will promote transparency. The activities of those who complicate information in order to misinform and scuttle investigation will be reduced. Heightened transparency goes hand in hand with credibility and confidence. The unending Halliburton probe and the scuttled Siemen probe are other cases in point that are certain to result in the greater good if there is an FOI Law in place in this Country.
We submit that the Anti-Corruption War in Nigeria would continue to be a plaything if the FOI Bill as presented in the National Assembly is not signed into law. Nigerians are thus called upon to mount the needed pressure on their elected Representatives to do what is right for the overall good. As James Madison said, “Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own governors, must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives. A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy or perhaps both.”
Comrade Eneruvie Enakoko
(CLO Chairman in Lagos)
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Civil Liberties Organisation (CLO), Lagos 13, Soji Adepegba Close, Off
Allen Ave, Ikeja/Lagos. Tel: 234-1-08033188864, 4939324-5, 7746694.
Fax: 01-4939324, P.O Box 53328, Ikoyi, Lagos. Email:
clolagosnigeria@gmail.com, clolagos@yahoo.com, Website: www.clo-ng.org
