International communication class: INFORMATION-LEAKS: WILL NIGERIA BE AN EXCEPTION
(08BE07290) Adeleke Ayooluwa
To start with the bill has been renamed Right to information bill by the NATIONAL ASSEMBLY and this leaves us with a puzzle to solve as to the meaning of this bill. There’s difference between Right and Freedom , right is what you are entitled to while freedom is the ability to exercise this right without restriction hence there’s no right without freedom and we all know that there’s no free freedom in life, many have argued that the freedom in life is choice but I beg to disagree by saying “life is not a choice when you have something at stake”! and this indicates that if the FOI bill was all free then we won’t be having this debate because it would have been signed into law a long time ago. The change in name to me shows something and that is that people may access this information but won’t have the freedom to use it and this the reason President Jonathan said in the presidential debate with himself that there are some part of the bill which has to be taken care of before he can think of signing it.
If I may ask why are some information classified? this question is important because many think it is because of the corrupt practices of the people in government that they classify information, well this may be true but the most important reason why information is classified is because of the danger associated with the general knowledge of it, with this as the case the definition of press freedom is challenged because it read thus, the access to information classified or not classified as long as it doesn’t endanger the people. Every classified information is injurious in one way or the other and that is the reason it is classified in the first place.
clause 2 of the bill provides 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”. There’s no way national security won’t be compromised because freedom is anarchy and the Nigeria security system is not well equipped for the challenges this Bill will pose this is the reason that out of the 54 African countries only 4 have adopted it and out this four only one (South Africa) is well to do today because their security system is up to the task, the three others Uganda, Zimbabwe and Liberia are not in a stable state today reason being that after the bill was passed and access to information guaranteed the rebel forces were able to fight against the government because they know the defense database of the country and so they could challenge the system and use it to their advantage.
I am of the opinion that the bill shouldn’t be passed and that government is protecting us by classifying some information, as Emerson has rightly said that “there are somethings which a wise man should be ignorant about” and one of them is classified information because of the danger it posses to the socio-political cum economic system of the country. I agree that there are huge benefits if the bill is passed but the disadvantages weigh more on logical, moral, economic, technological and political balance than the advantages.
to think that Nigeria will be a pacesetter is an Ethiopian dream that cannot happen, press restriction has come to stay and it will till the end of time
