The Media Rights Agenda (MRA) has accused the federal government of undermining the effectiveness of the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act by persistently under-funding its implementation.
A statement yesterday said only one per cent of federal public institutions have allocations in their 2025 budget proposals for FOI-implementation and related activities.
MRA in a 22-page report titled “A Vote Against Transparency: A Report on Allocations for Freedom of Information Implementation in 2025 Federal Budget”, observed that only 13 out of over 1,300 federal public institutions have provisions for FOI implementation in their budgets, with a proposed total allocation of N230,825,750.00, representing 0.000464 per cent of the federal government’s budget of N49.74 trillion.
MRA’s Programme Officer, Mr John Gbadamosi, in the statement said details of the budget indicated that the government prioritises spending on tangible projects such as infrastructure and other capital projects than on the implementation of the FOI Act.
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“However, as noted in MRA’s 2024 report on this subject, without adequate investment in the implementation of the FOI Act to ensure that the government is transparent and accountable, all other allocations and expenditures for infrastructure, facilities or other development projects would be at risk and could easily be misappropriated.”
He insisted that the long-term benefits of effective implementation of the FOI Act could enhance government transparency, efficiency and responsiveness; engendering greater public participation in governance, improving public trust and confidence in government, ensuring that members of the public have accurate and reliable information about how they are governed.
He also identified the public institutions, which have allocations for FOI implementation and related activities as the Federal Government Staff Housing Loans Board, Bureau of Public Service Reforms, Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria, Federal Ministry of Labour and Employment, Federal Ministry of Works and Federal Ministry of Budget and Economic Planning.
The others are the Federal Ministry of Housing and Urban Development, Federal Ministry of Environment, National Library of Nigeria, National Commission for College Education Secretariat, Federal Ministry of Steel Development, Office of the Surveyor General of the Federation and the Nigerian Law Reform Commission.
He noted that that the level of funding in the federal government’s 2025 budget proposals for FOI implementation and FOI-related activities by public institutions recorded a significant increase of 96.76 percent over the level for 2024 in terms of the amount allocated while the number of institutions with provisions in their budgets rose from 10 to 13.
He however insisted that the total amount budgeted for FOI implementation remained extremely poor.
He called on the federal government to be guided by the 12 specific recommendations contained in the MRA report, including allocating resources to the Federal Ministry of Justice to strengthen its oversight role of monitoring and ensuring compliance by all other public institutions with the FOI Act, such that it can assess the performance of all other public institutions in implementing the Act.
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