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The House of Representatives will pass the long-awaited Freedom of Information Bill before the end of the week, Henry Dickson (PDP/Bayelsa), the co-chairman of a new joint committee on the bill has said. Mr. Dickson, on Monday, spoke at a session with civil society organisations including the Media Rights Coalition, Good Society and Justice Coalition and ActionAid. The lead chairman of the joint committee, Ahmed Aliyu Wadada (PDP/Nassarawa), stated that the lawmakers did not oppose the enactment of the bill and would work to ensure it was passed in the House on “Tuesday or Wednesday.”

“For us as politicians, it will do us good if the bill is passed, because there is a lot of misinformation given to the public out there that is not true, because there is a lack of openness on the part of government,” Mr. Wadada said.

“The bill has suffered quite some delay and caused some anxiety and…there were issues about the content of the bill,” said Mr. Dickson.

Sekonte Davies (PDP/Rivers), another member of the committee, blamed the delay in the reenactment of the bill to the fact that “majority of the members have not read it”.

The FOI bill was introduced in the National Assembly in 1999 and was passed in 2007, but former President Olusegun Obasanjo did not sign it into law, forcing the reintroduction of the bill in 2007, shortly after the current session of the national assembly was instituted.

While examining the details of the 34-clause draft bill, the civil society groups suggested that the bill be titled: “An Access to Public Information Bill” or “Access to Information Bill”. The groups also suggested that the bill be amended to include clauses that would allow access to information on Nigeria for not only citizens but non-citizens who may want to do business with Nigeria. The speaker of the House, Dimeji Bankole, had last week in a plenary session, directed committees on information and justice to hold a public hearing on the bill, in order to issue a report for passage this week.