The Senate on Wednesday passed the Freedom of Information Bill, granting the citizens the right to have accuss to information in the custody of public institutions.
Besides the amendments done on clause 2 of the bill on Tuesday, senators were unanimous in the passage of the other provisions of the bill.
Clause 2 of the FOI bill states that, “Every citizen of the Federal Republic of Nigeria has a legally enforceable right to, and shall, on application be given access to any information or record under the control of a government or public institution or private companies performing public functions, provided the disclosure of such information or release of such record(s) shall not compromise national security.”
After the votes, the President of the Senate, Senator David Mark, noted that the development was a success for senators who summoned the courage to pass the bill.
He said he believed that Nigerians would now have greater access to information and hoped that the bill would be useful to all segments of the society.
Mark noted that the bill was not a media bill saying that any attempt by the media to hijack the bill could weaken the essence of the bill.
He said, “This bill will make information freely available, provide for public access to public records and information and protect public records and information to the extent that it will be consistent with the public interest and protection of personal privacy.
“The bill will also protect serving public officers from adverse consequences for disclosing certain official information and established procedures.
“I want to thank you my colleagues once more for taking the pain to pass this bill which has being in the public domain, we have been the subject of discussion in this country because of this bill on freedom of information.
“At the risk of sounding like a broken record let me say once more that this bill is not a media bill and when the media wants to hijack the bill and give an impression that we don’t want to pass it because people in public offices have something to hide, is wrong.
“With this, we now have opportunity to tell the media to tell us their source of information, because they always say that they cannot disclose their source of information, because with this bill everybody will now get information freely and I think they are very much aware of this bit of it.”
But the Senate President pointed out that there were differences between the FOI bill passed by the Senate and the one passed by the House of Representatives, saying that a harmonisation would be done on the two bills by the two chambers.
The FOI bill was first presented to the National Assembly in 1999 by a non-governmental organisation, Media Rights Agenda.
The House of Representatives eventually passed the bill in 2004 just as the Senate passed it in 2006.
The two chambers of the National Assembly harmonised the bill in November 2006 and forwarded the bill to the then President Olusegun Obasanjo for his assent.
But Obasanjo did not sign the harmonised Bill into law until he left office in 2007.
After President Obasanjo vacated office in 2007, the leadership of the National Assembly resolved to direct the then Clerk of National Assembly, Alhaji Nasir Arab to re-forward the harmonised version of the bill to the late President Umaru Yar’Adua, who took over from Obasanjo on May 29, 2007, for his assent.
But there was a controversy as to whether President Yar’Adua had the legal backing to sign a bill that was carried over from the previous government.
Following the demise of Yar’Adua in office on May 5, 2010, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan became the President of Nigeria, a situation that demanded for another fresh approach to deliberations and passage of the FOI bill.
After much pleadings and appeals by stakeholders, the House passed the bill on February 13, 2011.
Many people included a major sponsor of the bill, the House Committee Chairman on the Diaspora, Mrs. Abike Dabiri-Erewa, were elated.
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