The Freedom of Information Bill will change the way we do things, says Senator Victor Ndoma-Egba (SAN)

Excerpt from interview with Senator Victor Ndoma-Egba (SAN), Chairman of the Senate Committee on Media and Public Affairs and Chairman of the Ad Hoc Committee on the Freedom of Information Bill, published on Page 110 of ThisDay, The Sunday Newspaper of October 8, 2006.

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ThisDay: With all what have been happening, one is beginning to wonder How the Senate is going to really balance politicking and legislative business in this last lap, given the fact that you have so many bills to attend to and the Senate is intervening in these other issues arising by the side.  What has the Senate leadership done to balance these?

Senator Ndoma-Egba: Well, the leadership has prioritised the bills and we will be looking more at those bills with high reform value.  The bills that will be institutionalizing what we have done so far or what government has done so far, those would be the bills that would engage our attention.  You would recall that as we came from our recess, the first thing we did was to take the various tax bills.  So, we are done with the tax bills.  Yesterday (last Tuesday), the report of the Ad-Hoc Committee on the Freedom of Information Bill was laid on the table, because we believe also that the Freedom of Information Bill would change the way we do things, would change how we have accessed information from public institutions.  The moment the public has, as of right, access to information held by public institutions, it would enrich the process of discourse and debate; and it, will also open up governance and the moment governance is opened up, accountability becomes an issue.  So, those are the kinds of bills we are looking at and, again, of course, we have the 2007 budget to work on.  It will not be possible to take everything, but we are going to select those bills that will have significant impact on how we do things.