FOI bill: It is all about accountability in govt- ACN

The ACN National Secretary, Sen.Lawal Shuaibu, said in Abuja that the FOI bill was not about pulling down the government but about transparency.

‘’ There’s nothing like pulling down the government with the FOI bill. Why would leaders want to run away from transparency?
Accountability is very important,’’ Shuaibu said.
‘’FOI bill is not about journalism or journalists; it is about every citizen in this country.
‘’FOI only talks about accountability; be accountable to the Nigerian public who gave you the mandate to occupy the seat you occupy, period,’’ Shuaibu said.
Shuaibu also expressed his fears on whether the president would sign the bill or not, saying the bill might just end up like it did, in the past regime.
He argued that  the current National Assembly members should have taken up the process of the bill from where the last regime stopped so that the whole process would not take time.
‘’The National Assembly jointly harmonised and passed that bill in 2007 when I was in the Senate.

In another development the in Kwara State a university lecturer, Prof. Innocent Okoye, has appealed to President Goodluck Jonathan to urgently assent to the Freedom of Information (FoI) Bill recently passed by the National Assembly.

Okoye, who is the Provost, College of Information and Communication Technology, Kwara State University, made the appeal on Wednesday at the maiden edition of the college’s Mass Communication Students Association Week in Malete.

The lecturer, in his paper entitled “Mass Communication Career in a Post-modern Society”, said the FoI Bill would strengthen the journalism profession, its practitioners and the public in the nation’s quest to achieve a corruption-free society.

Na’allah, represented by the Registrar, Alhaji Faruk  Yanganau, said such meaningful engagement would promote overall learning for students and engender community development. (NAN)