Editors condemn non passage of information bill

The president of Nigerian Guild of Editors, Gbenga Adefaye has condemned the statement by a member of the House of Representatives that the present National Assembly will not pass the Freedom of Information bill until after 2011.

Mr. Adefaye decried Ahmad Pategi’s (PDP Kwara) statement that “the Freedom of Information Bill will not be passed into law by the National Assembly before 2011 when the tenure of the present administration will expire.”

Mr Pategi, made the declaration at a World Bank forum with the National assembly correspondents with their Ghanaian counterparts on Monday.

“That is a huge disappointment, it shows lack of sincerity on the path of the lawmaker. The FOi bill if passed, will serve the entire populace, rather than journalists alone,” Mr Adefaye said.

“When the bill was submitted to the assembly after their inauguration, they all clamoured for more time to understand the bill despite the fact that only about 20 per cent of them are new to the assembly as most of them were re-elected.

But two years down the line, it is now very clear that these guys are just scared of their time in office,” added the journalist.” Mr Adefaye, however, advised the legislators on their seeming indifference to the FOI bill.

“If they pass the bill it is to their benefit and the benefit of all and if they don’t, we will continue to seek exclusives which will be to their own detriment. We will dig deep and unveil the shadow they are trying to cover-up,” he warned.

Reacting to Mr Pategi’s remark that “a typical Nigerian politician whether in or out of office, is wary of granting the media access to all kinds of information,” the Guild president stated that “he is right because they are crooked in their thinking. If they think they are there to serve in concealment and running government in their closet, they will be exposed.”

“FOI Bill will be passed”

“As time goes on and this democracy is sustained, more credible people would be elected into the National Assembly and the FOI bill will be passed. The public must have access to public records.

“For these people, they would have lost the glory. The FOI bill is a bill that must be passed in this country and for us, we will still continue the lobbying and demand.”

Also reacting to the statement, Lanre Arogundade, Co-Ordinator of the International Press Centre said : “I think this a very disappointing statement, although it is good in one regard that we now know how the mind of the National Assembly is working.”

“The statement confirms the fears of the FOI bill coalitions that either this National Assembly will not pass the bill or give us a faction that is not with the name of the bill, which is what the Senate is doing,” Mr Arogundade added.

Decrying Senate’s approach on the bill, he said that “the bill before the Senate has been revised as the bill now portrays that any citizen seeking information must get permission from either a federal high court or a state high court. We reject the statement and Nigerians want this bill.”