The passage of the FoI remains a very commendable effort but one wonders why its implementation remains a daunting challenge. So far, only 60 out of hundreds of parastatals and government agencies have been able to set up compliance structures as prescribed by the law. Although some people argue that the FoI Act is too much of an idealistic legislation because of its civil society origin but law is law. Rather than dwell on the idealism argument, I will rather wonder whether the drafters of the law took the Nigerian context into consideration. Some of these laws are uprooted from foreign jurisdictions and foisted on contexts like ours without adapting them accordingly. I will use a few instances to illustrate my argument as one tries to understand the law further and chart a way forward.

First is that I consider the law as somewhat ambiguous. For instance, the objectives are “to make public records and information more freely available, provide public access to public records and information, protect public records andinformation to the extent consistent with public interest and protection of personal privacy, protect serving public officials from adverse consequences of disclosing certain kinds of information without authorisation and establish procedure for the achievement of the purposes and related matters.” Although the word, public, was mentioned more than 114 times throughout the text of the law, there was no where it was clarified. The assumption will probably be that everyone reading the law will have the same understanding of what public is. Odd! In a country where many private things are done under the cover of public interest, it would have been important to offer some explanation what the law meant by the word, public. Even within the country there are slight differences between what is considered public or private. What is private in Yola may be private in Yenagoa.

The demand for access to public information to be seen as a human right is great but it will take a while. The target for public institutions to respond to the FoI requests within four days is excellent. However, in a situation where many agencies are not connected to the internet or their servers are perpetually down, what do you do? The whole idea of proactive public disclosures sounds very good at least with the amendment of the Official Secrecy Act of 1911. Yet, the culture secrecy prevails in the civil service. It is either as a result of ignorance or wilful negligence. It is either the bureaucrats are deliberately hiding the information or citizens are not yet aware of their rights. Very few government agencies have functional websites that are updated regularly. There are very few designated portals or platforms from where the public can obtain reliable information.

Now, let us talk briefly about the relationship between an FoI regime and the war against corruption. The persistence of corruption despite the application of several remedies means that proper diagnosis might not have been carried out. So before we rush to the discussion of the relationship between (anti)corruption and open society, let us try to find out the underlying causes of corruption in our country. No doubt, the strain of corruption in Nigeria is a peculiar one that inhibits growth. Many countries like us plagued with corruption have managed to continue to grow. A country like Indonesia has a thriving crude oil and palm oil industry amidst high level corruption.

I do not need to over-emphasise the relationship between increased availability of information in the public domain and accountability. However, that relationship is not automatic. Transparent disclosure of information is a necessary but not sufficient condition for accountability. With transparent action, citizens will be expected to demand accountability. Information therefore becomes tools and ammunition for advocacy with which citizens demand an accountability relationship from their leaders. A Freedom of Information regime will therefore only provide us with the information, the rest is in our hands- the citizens. The ability to use the information the right way is another important thing. Often, many people use the liberty of social media to use information wrongly.

For the FoI and anti-corruption reforms to meet, there is a role for anti-corruption institutions. How many of them have so far established functional FoI units within their offices? Does the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Crimes Commission, the Code of Conduct Bureau, Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative disclosing information proactively? What is the integrity of the information obtained?

Whose responsibility is it to bring the government agencies up to speed with proactive disclosure and build the capacity of citizens on productive advocacy? Whose responsibility is it to test the FoI law in its current state and find out what works and what does not and why?