With Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs) violating the Freedom of Information (FoI) Act brazenly, there is a compelling need for defaulting public institutions to be heavily sanctioned for sanity to reign and for an open society to be guaranteed. Withholding budgetary allocations or other benefits from those institutions or their officials, stakeholders say, could be the magic wand needed, SUNDAY AIKULOLA reports. 

The Freedom of Information (FoI) Act was enacted to make public records and information more freely available and to protect, and provide access to public records, all in a bid to ensure records are consistent with the public interest.

Additionally, it was to protect serving public officers from adverse consequences of disclosing certain official information without authorisation. It also established procedures for the achievement of afore stated aims and objectives.

Enacted by the National Assembly, this legislation states that everyone is entitled to the right to information. In Section 7(5) of the Act, wrongful denial of access to information to members of the public who request such constitutes an offence punishable with a fine upon conviction.

But worrisome data released by the Media Rights Agenda (MRA) on the 2024 FoI Act outlook revealed that of the 1, 316 Ministries, Department, and Agencies (MDAs) that have budget entries yearly, 1, 306 of them (representing 99.2 per cent of the total) have no budget entries for FoI activities.

This means that only 10 MDAs have budget entries for FoI activities, representing 0.8 per cent. This is very abysmal and requires urgent action.

The 10 MDAs are the Office of the Head of Civil Service of the Federation; the Federal Ministry of Labour and Employment; the Federal Ministry of Works; the Federal Ministry of Budget and Economic Planning; the Federal Ministry of Housing and Urban Development; the National Library of Nigeria; National Commission for Colleges of Education Secretariat; the National Directorate of Employment; the Federal Ministry of Environment, and the Nigerian Law Commission.

Section 29 (6) of the FoI Act gives oversight powers to the Attorney General of the Federation to ensure that MDAs comply with the FoI Act. But curiously, the Federal Ministry of Justice and the Office of the Attorney General had zero budgets for FoI-related activities in 2024 and hence had no moral authority to enforce compliance.

Among others, FoI Act activities require budgeting for training and capacity development; proactive publication of information; record keeping and management; responding to requests for information, legal support, and litigations.

In the United Kingdom for instance, British-American-born journalist and freedom of information campaigner, Heather Rose Brooke, through the FoI Act helped to expose the 2009 expenses scandal, which culminated in the resignation of the Speaker of the House of Commons, Michael Martin, dozens of members of parliaments stepping down in the 2010 general election, and multiple members of parliaments being jailed. This goes to show how effective the implementation of the Act could be in sanitising public institutions and engendering accountability.

According to a Professor of Broadcast Journalism and the Dean, Faculty of Social Sciences, Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago Iwoye, Dele Odunlami, the prevarications, and buck-passing by politicians and MDAs, especially state governors are all designed to cover their tracks.

Politicians, he noted, would always capitalise on assumed lacuna in the constitution to hide their insincerity on any issue, no matter how laudable, progressive, and straightforward the issue may be.

“On the FoI Act, they hide under the cover of federalism to argue that the law has to be domesticated by their respective state assemblies while the MDAs capitalise on the lack of readiness and selective application by the Federal Government to evade compliance. I think the way out is for stakeholders in the struggle for the enactment of the FoI Act to initiate litigation at the Supreme Court to set aside, or make a declaration on the needlessness of domestication of a lawfully enacted Act of the National Assembly,” he suggested.

He added that non-governmental organisations (NGOs) like the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP), MRA, the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ); the Nigerian Guild of Editors (NGE), activists, and other stakeholders need to intensify public advocacy for the implementation of the FoI Act, and for the blacklisting of organisations, individuals, and governments that refuse to obey the law because of its importance for accountability, transparency, and national development.

According to the Executive Director of MRA, Edetaen Ojo, there are many issues responsible for the high level of non-compliance with the Freedom of Information Act by public institutions.

To Ojo, one of the challenges is the poor level of funding for the implementation of the Act and FoI-related activities by public institutions. This, he said, can be seen in the level of allocations contained in the fiscal spending.

He further explained that what this means is that in many cases, MDAs simply do not have the resources to carry out the duties and obligations imposed on them, by the Act, including responding to requests for information.

“This needs to be addressed. The Federal Government can begin to deal with this problem by directing all its MDAs to ensure that they make provisions in their yearly budget proposals to enable them to carry out different duties and obligations that they have under the Act,” he suggested.

Based on a systematic assessment of duties and obligations that MDAs have and how much is averagely required to fulfill them, Ojo added that the government can also prescribe a minimum amount that every public institution should allocate to the implementation of the Act to ensure that they are fully complying with the provisions of the law, stressing that such a minimum amount can be automatically included in their budgets in cases where MDAs have deliberately neglected to make provisions.

Agreeing that compliance over the last 13 years has consistently remained at less than 10 per cent of public institutions every year, he further suggested that the Attorney-General of the Federation, who has the oversight powers for the implementation of the Act, should collaborate with the Head of Civil Service of the Federation, and the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) to enforce the requirement under Section 29 of the Act.

That section mandates all public institutions to submit their yearly implementation or compliance reports to the Attorney-General of the Federation, and also publish such reports.

He said: “By working with the Head of Service and the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, the Attorney-General of the Federation should adopt a set of administrative sanctions and penalties, which will be imposed on defaulting public institutions that violate the Act. Such sanctions could include, for instance, withholding budgetary allocations or other benefits from those institutions, or their officials.”

Since the Act was enacted in 2011, no single public institution or official has been prosecuted by the Attorney-General of the Federation for non-compliance, despite numerous cases where it has been established that these institutions wrongfully denied applications for information.

In some instances of wrongful denial, many courts have directed the Attorney-General to take action, but this has never happened. Ojo confirmed this worrisome outcome saying: “Such a situation creates a culture of impunity for non-compliance with the Act and encourages public institutions not to comply since they know that there will be no consequences for their disobedience.

“Regarding adjudication of cases, the Federal Government also needs to put measures in place to ensure speedy adjudication of cases. It makes no sense whatsoever that in a situation where members of the public ought to be able to obtain the information they are seeking within seven days, as provided by the FoI Act, they end up spending one to four years or more in court waiting for a decision on whether they can get the information or not.

“The Act provides that where any applicant has been denied access to information and such applicant has approached the court for a review of the matter, the suit should be heard and determined summarily. This provision of the Act, which is intended to ensure that cases are speedily disposed of, is mandatory, but it is also not being complied with even by the courts.

“The authorities need to encourage the courts to prioritise FoI cases to discourage delays. Even more worrying is the fact that in many cases where the courts have ordered various public institutions to disclose the information requested, such public institutions have failed to comply even years after the cases were concluded and the decisions rendered,” he lamented.

While describing such situations at “unacceptable,” he stressed that the courts should strictly enforce compliance with their decisions and orders.

On his part, the Executive Secretary, Broadcasting Organisation of Nigeria (BON) Yemisi Bamgbose, believes that FoI Act has some encumbrances, which make it impossible to compel any agency of government to provide information.

Bamgbose pointed out that the Act didn’t categorically mention journalists, or media practitioners as the ones that can evoke the principles of the Act.

Prof. Jide Jimoh of the Department of Journalism and Media Studies, Lagos State University (LASU) said: “It is obvious that MDA’s are not enthusiastic about the implementation of the Act because there are many things they want to hide. If there are no budget provisions for training or capacity building, it shows they are not interested in it.

“You saw the number of years it took to get the Act. But we must not give up. On the side of journalists, there’s a low level of requests. We must encourage our people to use the Act. Maybe, if we continue to talk about it, change will come.”