Senate Schedules Final Reading of FOI Bill for December 14

The Senate has scheduled the third and final reading on the Freedom of Information Bill for December 14, when the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Information, Senator Tawar Wada will present the Committee’s report for debate.

If the Senate passes the Bill, it will bring to an end the six-year sojourn of the proposed legislation in the National Assembly, but will still require assent by President Olusegun Obasanjo to become law.

After a chequered history in the House of Representatives, the Bill was finally passed by the House on August 25, 2004 and transmitted to the Senate for concurrence in September 2004.  It went through the first reading in the Senate on November 23, 2004 and a second reading on February 22, 2005.  It was thereafter committed to the Senate Committee on Information for more critical evaluation and recommendation to the plenary with a directive that the Committee should report back to the plenary within three weeks. 

However, the public hearing organized by the Senate for public inputs into the Bill suffered several delays.  The Committee initially decided to hold a public hearing on March 15 this year.  But the date was changed to March 22 as a result of the death early in March of the mother of the chairman of the Committee on Information, Senator Wada (representing Gombe South Senatorial District).

On March 22, the crisis over the N55 million bribery scandal involving the then Senate President Adolphus Wabara and former Education Minister, Professor Fabian Osuji, blew open. The public hearing was to have been declared open by Senator Wabara, but he was in no mood to perform this function, while the Senate itself was engulfed in the crisis.   After waiting for several hours for the Senate President or another principal officer of the Senate to declare the public hearing open, Senator Wada announced its postponement to April 12.

However, on April 5, Senate Wabara resigned as Senate President in the continuing crisis over the bribery scandal while Senator Ken Nnamani was elected to replace him.  But the Information Committee decided that the prevailing political atmosphere was not conducive to having a hitch-free public hearing as scheduled and again moved it to April 26, when it finally took place.

A broad range of stakeholders, representing a wide variety of sectors within the Nigerian society, including the business sector, trade unions, the academia, religious bodies, the media, the legal profession, other professional bodies, the civil service, and human rights groups made presentations at the public hearing and expressed unanimous support for the Bill.  They all urged the Senate to pass it as soon as possible, although there were numerous suggestions about how to strengthen the Bill and ensure its effective implementation. 

In line with the recommendations at the public hearing, the Information Committee has revised several provisions of the Bill, as passed by the House of Representatives. At the scheduled third reading, Senator Wada will be presenting the revised version of the Bill to his colleagues at the plenary session of the Senate on December 14 for consideration