Political Conference Committee Recommends Quick Passage of FOI Bill

ABUJA, FRIDAY, MAY 20, 2005: The Committee on Anti-Corruption Reforms of the National Political Reforms Conference (NPRC) has called for the urgent passage into law of the Freedom of Information Bill presently before the National Assembly.

The immediate passage of the Bill is one of the short term measures proposed by the Committee to combat corruption in Nigeria.  It said the enactment of the Bill into law will enable civil society and the media to have access to vital information.

The Committee on Anti-Corruption Reforms, headed by former Supreme Court Justice Chukwudifu Oputa, is one of the 19 Committees set up by the Conference.  It was charged with suggesting ways and means of combating the menace of corruption in Nigeria.

The Committee also recommended that the Whistle Blowers Bill, which is also pending before the National Assembly, should be enacted into law to formally protect whistle blowers, which it describes as informants who expose corrupt practices.

The Committee observed that secrecy of declaration of assets by public officers and the restriction of access to the declarations made by public officers constitute a serious impediment to the critical functioning of the Code of Conduct Bureau.

It said: “The Bureau is not given the resources to verify written declarations made by public officers, and it is further hampered by the fact that declarations are kept away from members of the public who are best placed to alert the Bureau on false declarations or deliberate or fraudulent omissions by public officers in declaring their assets.”

The Committee noted that enquiries made by members of the public in respect of public officers’ declarations are largely frustrated by:

·         The requirement that a member of the public seeking to inspect a public officer’s declaration must swear to an affidavit and attach his photograph.  The Committee noted that this could compromise the safety of such persons.

·         The fact that even if the declaration he wants to inspect is that of his councillor, he is required to pass through his State capital and go to Abuja with his affidavit to inspect the declaration.

The Committee regretted that although Paragraph 3(c) of the Third Schedule to the 1999 Constitution gives every citizen of Nigeria the right to inspect the assets declaration of every public officer subject to such terms and conditions prescribed by the National Assembly, for more than five years the National Assembly has not prescribed any conditions.

It noted that although the Bureau on its own prescribed certain conditions which the Committee adjudged to be too restrictive and prohibitive, even those conditions have been struck down by the courts as being unconstitutional on the ground that it is the National Assembly that ought to have prescribed them.

The Committee said in a situation where the Bureau is seriously handicapped in its verification activities due to lack of funds, members of the public would have been the major source of information on defaulting public officers.

According to the Committee, the report submitted to it by the Bureau showed that it (the Bureau) has received only 357 petitions between 2000 and 2005, out of which only 23 (or 0.5 per cent) were sent to the Code of Conduct Tribunal for prosecution.

It stressed that “The result is that failure to give the public easy access to declaration results in few reports from the members of the public and only 0.5 per cent of these reports are accurate owing to lack of access by the members of the public.

The Committee noted that the Bureau was consequently wasting a lot out of the little time and resources available to them to sift through a large amount of inaccurate information.

It suggested that declaration of assets by all public officers should be published both on assumption and after leaving office and that such declarations should be verified and offenders prosecuted.

The Conference will reconvene in plenary sessions from May 23 when it will begin consideration of the reports of the various committees.