The Co-Chairman of a new Joint-Committee on the Freedom of Information Bill, Rep. Henry Dickson, has assured that the Bill would be passed into law latest tomorrow.

The 34-clause piece of legislation, which first came to the National Assembly in 1999, was passed in 2007, but the then President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, did not sign it into law, forcing media rights organisations, the media and other stakeholders to renew the clamour for a fresh passage.

Speaker of the House of Representatives, Dimeji Bankole, had last week in a plenary, directed the Committees on Information and Justice to work at a committee level and hold a public hearing on the Bill, with a view to laying a report for passage this week.

At an interactive session between the joint-committee, Media Rights Coalition, Good Society and Justice Coalition, ActionAid and other Civil Society Organisations, the lead Chairman of the Joint-Committee, Rep. Ahmed Aliyu Wadada(PDP/Nasarawa), reiterated that legislators were not opposed to the FOI Bill.

He said: “For us as politicians, it will do us good if the Bill is passed, because there is a lot of misinformation given to the public out there that is not true, because there is a lack of openness on the part of government.”

In his contribution, co-chairman of the Joint-Committee on the Bill, Henry Dickson, admitted that “the Bill has suffered quite some delay and caused some anxiety”.

In the course of a clause-by-clause consideration of the draft instrument with the civil society agencies there, Seriake explained that “the justification for this Bill is that by the Constitution of this country, freedom of information is guaranteed, but there is no corresponding guarantee procedure for access to information”.

The Civil Society team, on the occasion, had variously suggested that the Bill be either titled: “An Access to Public Information Bill, ATI, Access to Information Bill, etcetera.

The Civil Society groups also suggested that the Bill be amended to include clauses that would allow access to information on Nigeria to not only citizens but “foreigners” who may want to do business with Nigeria.

A member of the Committee from Rivers State, Rep. Sekonte Davies, in his contribution, blamed the delay in the re-enactment of the Bill to the fact that “majority of the members have not read it”. Hearing on the Bill is expected to end today.