The long
march of democracy in West Africa seems to be well underway. In July 2009, I
wrote a weekly
commentary marveling about Ghana’s multiparty democracy. Wistfully, I asked
the rhetorical question: “Why is democracy in motion in Ghana, and on
life-support in Ethiopia?”
In May 2011,
in another commentary I expressed my admiration for Cote
d’Ivoire President AlassaneOuattara
when he publicly asked the International Criminal Court (ICC) to conduct an
investigation into gross human rights violations in his country, despite the
high risk that he and his top leaders and supporters could potentially be
implicated in such an investigation. I rhetorically asked: “Could the election
of AlassaneOuattara signal
the beginning of Africa’s second independence? Is there hope for the end of thugtatorship in Africa and the
beginning of a new era of democratic governance, openness and political
accountability?”
Hope springs
eternal in Africa and light is now visible at the end of Africa’s thugtatorship tunnel. On May 31, 2011, Nigeria’s
newly-elected president GoodluckJohnathan’s
lifted the dark curtain of secrecy that had shrouded Nigerian politics for
decades by signing a freedom of information act (FOIA). Nigerians now have the
legal right to demand open government, political accountability and
transparency.
Meanwhile,
democracy in East Africa remains on life support. It suffered a massive stroke
in Ethiopia in May 2010 when dictatorMelesZenawi declared election
victory by 99.6 percent. Since 2005, Zenawi has put
that country’s tiny private independent press on the ventilator and tethered
the rule of law to the heart-lung machine. He put human rights in intensive
care and has managed to anesthetize the population into silence. A couple of
weeks ago, he secretly sought to negotiate a deal with the Governing Board of
the Voice of America (VOA). If the VOA blacklists and blackballs his critics in
the U.S. and banishes them from ever appearing on VOA broadcasts, the
electronic jamming will be lifted. Last week, Zenawi’s
henchmen appeared before the Human Rights Committee of the U.N. High
Commissioner for Human Rights to boldly claim that the independent press
operates freely in the country, there is not a single instance of official
torture and so on.
In Uganda, YoweriMuseveni, who seized power
in 1986, became president-for-life in 2011. In Kenya, democracy survived by the
skin of its teeth after 1,500 people were killed and 600,000 displaced in
election-related violence in 2008. Somalia? What more can be said about
Somalia?
Freedom of
Information in Nigeria
Nigeria’s FOIA,
like Ouattara’s request for an ICC investigation, is
one of those bellwether events that could be used to determine whether Africa
is poised for a second independence from thugtators
in uniform or designer suits. The law has been in the planning and deliberation
process for over a decade. It aims to deal with the core problems of governance
in Nigeria – endemic corruption, lack of accountability and transparency and
official secrecy. GbengaAdefaye,
President of the Nigerian Guild of Editors, explained that the Act “has expanded
the frontiers of press freedom for Africa’s most vibrant press.” He praised Johnathan for his “personal commitment to openness,
transparency, accountability and good governance.”
The consensus
among Nigeria’s opinion leaders is that the law will not only serve to improve
governance but also empower citizens and enhance their ability to effectively
participate in the democratic process. Armed with critical information on the
functions and operations of government institutions and performance of political
leaders, citizens could help keep government clean, expose and fight corruption
and hold accountable those officials who rob the public treasury and abuse
their powers.
The law
establishes “the right of any person to access or request information” from “any
public official, agency or institution.” One need not give a reason to request
information. A public agency must provide the requested information within 30
days. If the information is not turned over, the person requesting can get a
court order to compel disclosure. The law makes a narrow exceptionfor information that is likely to “ jeopardise national security,
affect the conduct of international affairs or would amount to the release of
trade secrets of the country.”
All “public
institutions” are required to keep “records and information on all of their
activities, operations and businesses”. The information to be kept include a
wide variety of documents ranging from organizational manuals, official
decisions, rules, regulations, planning documents, reports and studies to
applications for any contracts, permits, grants, licenses or funds and even the
names and salaries of public employees. Such information must be “widely
disseminated and made readily available in print, electronic and online
sources, and at the offices of such public institutions.”
A public
institution may deny a request but must “state reasons for the denial.” If a
“wrongful denial of access is established, the defaulting officer or
institution shall on conviction be liable to a fine of N500,000.00].”
Any public employee who “willfully destroys any records kept in his/her custody
or attempts to doctor or otherwise alter same before they are released” is
subject to imprisonment for one year.
Unfreedom of Information in Ethiopia
In 1991, Zenawi as a victorious rebel leader declared, “Now is the
beginning of a new chapter. It is an era of unfettered freedom.” Twenty years
later today, we have an era of “unfettered” unfreedom
of information. While Nigeria is opening its political process to the light of
public scrutiny, Zenawi has blanketed the country
with an electronic information blackout and kept busy drawing up blacklists of imaginary enemies he wants to censored and gagged
in the U.S. and elsewhere.
Since 2010, Zenawi has electronically jammed the broadcasts of the
Voice of America, Deutsche Welle and the Ethiopian
Satellite Television (ESAT). Following the 2005 elections, he managed to
totally decimated the independent press by shuttering
newspapers and jailing journalists. Last month he jailed two young journalists, WoubshetTaye, deputy
editor of Awramba Times (a struggling weekly paper)
and one of the few female journalists in the country, Reyot Alemu of Feteh (another
struggling weekly paper) newspapers, on bogus charges that they were
“organizing a terrorist network.” According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, “Alemu
had recently criticized the ruling party’s public fundraising method for a
major dam project on the Nile, and Taye has
critically covered local politics as the deputy editor of his newspaper.”
Last week, Zenawi jailed Swedish photojournalist Johan Persson and reporter Martin Schibbye,
on charges that they crossed over the border from Somalia without
accreditation. Press repression in Ethiopia is so massive and intense that Zenawi even censored World Press Freedom Day events this past May. Ethiopia has
the second lowest Internet penetration rate (after Sierra Leone) in sub-Sahara
Africa. Every Ethiopian pro-democracy website is blocked from access in
Ethiopia.
President
Ronald Reagan said, “Information is the oxygen of the modern age. It seeps
through the walls topped by barbed wire, it wafts
across the electrified borders.” If that is true, Ethiopians today must be
suffering from an acute case of hypoxia and breathing through the heart-lung
machine. Supposedly, Ethiopia has a freedom of information law (Proclamation
No. 590/2008 – A Proclamation to Provide for Freedom of the Mass Media and
Access to Information.) Anyone who has carefully studied this proclamation will
be impressed by the lofty platitudes, truisms and boilerplate legal clichés and
verbiage borrowed from the laws of other nations. But as a piece of
legislation, it is hollow, vacuous and meaningless. In Article 4, it provides,
“Freedom of the mass media is constitutionally guaranteed. Censorship in any
form is prohibited.” Yet the proclamation bursts with heavy-handed censorship.
Onerous burdens are placed on “editor-in-chiefs”, “media owners”, “publishers”,
“importers”, “printers”, “distributors” and ordinary citizens who seek to
gather or disseminate information through an elaborately camouflaged system of
registration, certification and licensing requirements. It compels
self-censorship through direct threats of serious criminal and civil
prosecution for “offenses committed through the mass media” (Arts. 6-9; 41.)
Under the
proclamation, citizens supposedly have a right of “access, [to] receive and
import information held by public bodies, subject to justifiable limits based
on overriding public and private interests.” But the “justifiable limits”
include non-disclosure of any Cabinet documents or information (Art. 24), any
information relating to the “financial welfare of the nation or the ability of
the government to manage the economy of the country” (Art. 25), and any
information on the “operation of public bodies [including] an opinion, advice,
report or recommendation obtained or prepared or an account of a consultation,
discussion or deliberation… minutes of a meetings…” (Art.
26). Simply stated, no information may be released on the activities of
government ministers and officials, banks or any other official financial
institutions and the internal proceedings or external reviews of public institutions.
To top it all off, any public body may refuse a request for information if it
determines for any reason the “harm to the protected interest which would be
caused by disclosure outweighs the public interest in disclosure.” (Art. 28.) Such
is freedom of information by smoke-and-mirrors.
Nigeria now
has a reasonable chance of having openness and transparency in government with
its FOIA. For decades, Nigeria’s government has suffered a reputation as one of
the hopelessly corrupt in the world. Allegations of massive graft, fraud,
abuse, waste and conflict of interest in government have persisted year after
year. Despite anti-corruption laws and enforcement efforts, the problem of
corruption in Nigeria has not diminished. The Nigerian judiciary and law
enforcement agencies are criticized widely for lack of integrity and
professionalism.
There are
many who say implementation of the law will be nearly impossible because of the
prevailing culture of corruption in Nigeria. No one believes the FOIA is a panacea
to the problem of corruption or governance in Nigeria, but the availability of
a legal tool that can be used aggressively by a determined few in the media
could put a big chill on the criminal activities of the thugs and gangsters
that have a chokehold on power. Minimally, Nigeria’s FOIA could be used to
name, shame and prosecute some of the most corrupt officials and create broad
public awareness for clean honest government.
It is said
that “absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Freedom of information is the
principal tool by which the absolute powers of dictators can be curbed. African
dictators, like hyenas on the African plains, like to operate in the dark
invisible to the prying public eye. It is through freedom of information laws
that these hyenas could be forced out of the dark and into the public square
and be held accountable.
Hope springs
eternal in Africa. The rising sun of democracy over North Africa is casting
rays of hope on West Africa. The sun that rises for North and West Africa will
also rise for East Africa. The African Lords of Darkness should not feel
victorious because keeping a nation in the dark does not mean the people are
blind, deaf and dumb. The light of freedom shines in the hearts and minds of
the oppressed during the day and at night; and there is no power on earth that
can put out that light. Those condemned to live in darkness should always
remember that night always turns into light; the moon, the stars and the
heavens shine brightly in the darkest of nights, and it is always darkest
before the dawn. Until dawn breaks, let us reflect on the words of Shakespeare:
“There is no darkness but ignorance…I say, this house is as dark as ignorance,
though ignorance were as dark as hell; and I say, there was never man thus abus’d.” I say there was never nation thus abus’d.
