The Bureau of Public Service Reforms (BPSR), and Nigeria Extractive Transparency Initiative (NEITI), have jointly emerged the most compliant companies in terms of Freedom of Information (FOI) law complaint.
This was announced at the launch of the 2022 FOI Compliance Ranking organised by the Public and Private Development Centre (PPDC) on Wednesday in Abuja.
While the Debt Management Office (DMO) came third on the ranking, the National Orientation Agency (NOA) came fourth; while the Nigerian Investment Promotion Commission (NIPC) emerged fifth; Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission (ICRC) came sixth; National Commission for Colleges of Education (NCCE), was seventh; and Bureau of Public Enterprise (BPE) came eighth among others.
Speaking at the event, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO), PPDC, Jubril Shittu, said that the BPSR and NEITI came tops because they proactively disclosed requested information on their portal.
Shittu said the PPDC had been consistently advocating the disclosure of public finance expenditure information to promote a more transparent and accountable government, as well as increase citizens’ participation, thereby leading to improved public service delivery.
According to him, the rankings are to commemorate the International Right to Know Day, and that it is conducted to ascertain the compliance of public institutions to the Freedom of Information Act (2011) based on the disclosure of public finance expenditure information.
“Today is September 28, which is globally known as the access to information day all over the world. The various people that are celebrating access to information. So, what we are doing today, along with our cohort partners, is to look at what the Nigerian experience is and we have been doing this for the past 10 years.
“Since the passage of the Freedom of Information Act in 2011, which opened up the space for the public to ask for information from the ministries, departments and agencies. So, this ranking exercise looks at the level of responsiveness of ministries, departments and agencies.
“It also looks at the proactiveness of the disclosures of information from these ministries, departments and agencies, as well as the level of partiality in terms of the disclosure whether they’re disclosing in full or in partial terms.
“So, this year, we rank 250 institutions and as you are aware, there are 700 ministries, departments and agencies. So, this just shows that we have quite a lot to catch up on. But we should also recognise that in terms of the efforts of the various ministries, departments and agencies, we’ve reached a level of increase from the previous years,” he said.
In his keynote, the Minister of State, Budget and National Planning, Prince Clem Agba, said that the federal government is making necessary efforts to ensure the data of Nigerians are protected for national development.
Agba, represented by the Deputy Director, Agric and Rural Development, Mrs. Oluyide Adesola, said, “The government has taken cognizance of emerging data protection laws and regulations in the international community geared towards protecting privacy, identity, lives and property as well as fostering the integrity of commerce and industry in the data and digital economy and has realised the imperative importance of developing data protection rules and regulations to protect the personal data of Nigerian citizens and residents.
“It is in view of this that the Nigeria Data Protection Regulation (NDPR) 2019 was passed and it is the pioneer, comprehensive Regulation on data protection in Nigeria.”
