Connected Development (CODE) has called for the domestication of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in states to enhance development.

The call was made by Kingsley Agu, CODE’s programmes manager, at a two-day training for government officials, CSOs and other stakeholders in Calabar.

”We are concentrating on the FOIA in order to expand the civic space by ensuring that people have access to information to engender development. The FOIA was one of the greatest instruments necessary to access information and supersedes any other law that hinders access to information,” he explained. 

The CODE official noted that domestication in states was one of the major challenges faced using the FOIA despite its passage into law nationally in 2011.

“There is also the issue of lack of awareness among government officials, as many don’t know what the FOIA entails and the power it has given to the citizens to access information from the government,” he stated.

While commending Delta for domesticating the law in 2017, Mr Agu called on other states to follow suit, adding that whether it was domesticated in a state or not, FOIA requests should be responded to.

Similarly, one of the participants of the training, Tanko Ashang, Attorney General of Cross River, said after the training, he was going back to strategize on how to facilitate the domestication of the FOIA.

Represented by Kanu Ubio, the director of the Planning Research and Statistics, Ministry of Justice, Mr Ashang said immediately after the law was passed in the state, they would ensure that it was properly implemented and enforced.

Also, Aniefiok Dennis, chairman of the Akwa Ibom House Committee on Information, said the bill to domesticate the FOIA has been submitted to the house but would undergo necessary corrections peculiar to the state.

Rex Anighoro, the senior special adviser to the governor of Delta on Civic Engagement and Civil Society, said more awareness was needed to enable all Nigerians to understand the FOIA.

“Government exists for the people, and if the office of the citizens must be supreme, the process of engagement between both parties needs to be deepened and synergies created,” he maintained.

On November 1, 2014, the Lagos Division of the Federal High Court, presided over by Justice Okon Abang, ruled that the act was not binding on the 36 states. Mr Abang’s ruling on the act sharply contradicted the judgment of the Ibadan High Court headed by Justice S.A. Akinteye.

The Ibadan court ruled in 2013 that the application of the FoI Act was for the entire federation and “does not need to be domesticated by any state before taking effect in all states across the federation.”

While judging a suit filed by Legal Defence and Assistance Project Limited/GTE against some states over their refusal to provide the information requested under the FoI Act, Mr Abang ruled that the 36 states could not be made to provide any information based on the act.

He asserted that the FoI Act, being an enactment of the National Assembly, was only binding on the federal government and its agencies.

Upholding that the FoI Act was neither a residual law nor was it on the concurrent list of the 1999 Constitution (as amended), the judge ruled that if it was the intention that the FoI Act should be binding on states, the houses of assembly of each of the 36 states should have been carried along in the process of the enactment of the law.

Mr Abang maintained that the Nigerian Constitution empowered the houses of assembly of the states of the federation to make laws for their respective states and not the other way round.

(NAN)