The Freedom of Information Bill

There are a lot of things I don’t understand. I believe that’s understandable because there is no way I am going to know everything. But when you don’t understand simple, very mundane things, then you must be stupid – and I guess I am stupid. That’s why I don’t understand all the fuss about the notorious Freedom of Information Bill now before the National Assembly. Members of the Journalism profession want the National Assembly to pass the Freedom of Information Bill so they can do their job. How preposterous! Even if by some warped magic, the bill gets passed into law and a Civil Servant refuses to divulge some incriminating information, what can you do? Go to court or call the Police? Those who have had any brush with hard-boiled civil servants know what I am talking about.

If there is any Journalist in Nigeria who thinks, in his ultimate naivety, that the passage of the Freedom of Information Bill is going to make his job any easier, he should see a shrinker today. What makes any Nigerian Journalist think that a Civil Servant who has diverted his Ministry’s overheads for the month into the completion of his private estate, is going to surrender such evidence to a journalist without a fight?

Come on folks! Be serious with your job. Do you need the Freedom of Information Bill to dig into the circumstances surrounding the allegation that a serving Minister spent more than N120million to celebrate his wedding anniversary while unions under his Ministry were on strike? Do you need the Freedom of Information Bill to uncover why and how a Civil Servant on grade level 04 with a take-home pay of less than N50,000 drives a Jeep to work and lives in his own N20million mansion? Do you need a Bill of whatever name to assist you ask a Gubernatorial aspirant who allegedly offered all other contestants N25million each to withdraw from the race and allow him a free ride what he has done in his life to make that kind of money short of being Governor of Central Bank?

Lets not kid ourselves, gentlemen of the press. The problem with Nigerian Journalism is not the absence of an enabling law but the overbearing presence of the power and influence of corruption. Show me one – yes one – journalist in this rotten country who can resist the offer of a Lincoln Continental plus ten million Naira to fuel the gas guzzler for one year in order to suppress a story or spin it on its head! You tell your wife the story and see if you will have a wife the next day.

Tata, everybody

Napoleon