The order, issued via a circular by the state's Head of Service, Adesegun Ogunlewe, says "no government functionary (public servants and public office holders) should grant press interviews or issue press releases without the concurrence of the Ministry of Information and Strategy." According to the circular, the government "observed that some public officials have formed the habit of granting informal interviews and, in the process, divulging official information on public policies which are still under consideration and are not yet approved for action by government." It added that government officers who may be required "to represent their political heads and read speeches at events" must "limit themselves to the contents of the written speeches which must have been cleared appropriately prior to the event by their political heads."
This is strange. How can public officials be turned to mere robots like the visuals that occasionally come out of North Korea's hegemonic government? This is Lagos State, which is arguably the most cosmopolitan state on the African continent. A state that is aiming for a megacity status cannot be seen to be disconnected from international best practices. Globally, openness and transparency are key ingredients to building accountability and trust, which are necessary for the functioning of democracies and market economies. Protection of free flow of information is not only a fundamental human right, a responsive government should ensure that this right is consciously promoted at all times. Governor Babatunde Fashola's explanation that the order was to properly structure the government's information flow, with a view to ensuring that the public got the right and desired meaning at all times, is beside the point. Only a genuinely free press can hold our governments of whatever political persuasion to account.
The order is a slap in the face of the people that overwhelmingly voted the government into office in the April 2011 elections. In a country that passed the Freedom of Information Bill into law in 2011 after many years of a hard-fought struggle by activists and the mass media, Lagos State cannot hide under any order to reinstate what operated before as this is an attempt to reverse the gains of the FOIA. The order is a clear violation of the spirit of the FOIA.
It is wrong for Fashola to assume that citizens do not have any role to play, even in policies which are still under consideration. Information dissemination is crucial to the workings of a modern government. When a democratic government suppresses information – as Lagos is unwittingly trying to – it creates room for suspicion and speculation, which, in turn, breeds distrust between the government and the governed.
The order will also stifle freedom of the press, which every government recognises as the Fourth Estate of the Realm. Most times, the media need to confirm their stories before publication, and such an order will be inimical to the practice of journalism. Stories that need to be confirmed from commissioners and political appointees will probably be delayed or never come out from the bureaucratic maze.
The administration's curious fixation with constraining the rights of its officials is not new. The governor made a similar order during his first term (2007-2011) before a public outcry prompted him to drop the directive. Apart from very sensitive security issues, the public has the right to have access to information about the government up to the minutest detail. A very important reason why the order cannot stand is the fact that certain information is often required urgently by the public to resolve some challenges. With the order – in addition to Nigeria's painfully slow bureaucracy – vital requests for information from members of the public won't be of much use by the time the requests have passed from the originating ministry to the Ministry of Information. This should not be allowed to happen in a modern society as it will affect the citizens' ability to make quick decisions on business and social activities in the state.
The administration should know that, with modern technologies, it is self-defeating for any government to horde information. Instead, government agencies and departments should harness new technologies to put information about their operations and decisions online and readily available to the public. Executive departments and agencies should also solicit public feedback to identify information of greatest use to the public.
Our governments should end any appearance of opaqueness. Openness strengthens democracy and promotes efficiency and effectiveness in government. Fashola should create an unprecedented level of openness in government and not diminish it. Instead of clamping down on free expression, He should clean up the information dissemination system in the state by making it more transparent. The mark of a truly accountable government is its openness. Fashola has the moral duty to prevent Lagos State from slipping into a jungle by reversing the order.
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