Dimeji Bankole, Speaker of the House of Representatives made news recently, by his sudden favourable disposition towards passing the Freedom of Information (FOI) Bill into law. FOI Bill is the longest in Nigerian legislative history which the current National Assembly has ignored for the past three and half years.

The Speaker has incidentally pledged that the House in the current legislative session would replicate what was done at the 2003 - 2007 session when both chambers of the National Assembly passed the Bill with flourish at the end of their tenure. However, the then President, Olusegun Obasanjo, vetoed the bill, making all the efforts of the National Assembly fruitless.

Bankole who was speaking as guest of honour at a lecture of Muslim Media Practitioners of Nigeria (MMPN) at the National Mosque in Abuja, stressed that in the present circumstance, the House would pressure the President, Goodluck Jonathan, to sign the Bill into law.

"I have always said the FOI Bill will enhance the work of the legislature in asking and getting answers from the executive on their activities and enhance the role of the media in performance of their constitutional role...I am happy the Minister of Information, Labaran Maku, was in the House last week to solicit its passage. We will remind the executive of this solicitation when we pass the bill for their assent," he remarked.

In reaction, however, critics, especially journalists were hardly swayed by the Speaker's pledge. Some even insist that the pledge coming at this time, could be a ploy by the Speaker to win in the April election. Those who hold this view do so on the backdrop that it was the same Bankole's House of Representatives which on Thursday, January 2, last year, rejected deliberations on the Bill with excuses that were hardly convincing to Nigerians. Remarkably, many members of the House then had, on the flour of the House, demanded that the Bill be thrown out in its entirety.

Lanre Idowu, publisher and trustee of Diamond Awards for Media Excellence (DAME), sees Bankole's promise as a welcome development. According to him, Nigerians should not disturb themselves in trying to know whether Bankole and his members would be able to achieve the feat, stressing that the end of the administration was at hand, and Nigeria would soon discover whether he was telling the truth.

He added that Nigerians should not rejoice yet about the statement until they see what version of the bill they would pass.

"There are different versions of freedom of information law, varying from one country to the other. So at the end of the day, we will know what version they are giving to Nigerians, and it is only then we will know whether we are to rejoice or not," he noted.

Notwithstanding, analysts have interpreted the inability of the National Assembly to pass the bill into law since 2007, in different ways.

For instance, there were those who alleged that the House of Representatives, indeed the whole of the National Assembly, were reluctant on passing the bill into law because they feared it would work against them. Though relatively young in age, Bankole has, at different occasions, proven to be solid in political brinkmanship with his survival of the proverbial banana peels of the National Assembly for more than three years that he has been on the saddle.

Sometime in June last year, for instance, there was an explosive rumble in the House when a former Chairman of the House Committee on Information and National Orientation, Dino Melaye, gave the Speaker an ultimatum to resign or be forced to quit. Melaye was also said to have promised to make the House ungovernable if Bankole failed to resign voluntarily. But Bankole had survived the storm, even as Melaye and his colleagues in the agitation ended up being suspended from the House.

Few weeks ago, he once again proved that his staying power was no fluke by surviving the factionalisation of his party, and the removal of his name from the party's list of candidates submitted to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). It was later restored as he was permitted to run for a second term.

Bankole was born in November 1969. He had his early education at Lara Day Nursery and Primary School. He then attended Baptist High School, Abeokuta. He holds a degree in Economics from the University of Reading, England and another in military Technique from Oxford University also in the United Kingdom, before proceeding to Harvard University in the United States of America for a course in Public Finance Managements. He was elected into the House in 2003, and was re-elected in 2007. He hails from Abeokuta in Ogun State.