Utomi urges more push on FOI Bill
Dr. Pat Utomi of the Lagos Business School has called on Nigerians to provide information on the benefits of the Freedom of Information (FOI) Bill, which has scaled through second reading in the National Assembly. Utomi, who made the call on an on-line debate on the FOI Bill, said he was titillated by the passionate expressions of Nigerians on the proposed Act. He advised them to support the Bill and ensure it is enacted into law, even if it leads to preference for an opaque system in the short-term prism.

Utomi urges  more push on FOI Bill

By Emmanuel Ukudolo,

Correspondent, Lagos

Dr. Pat Utomi of the Lagos Business School has called on Nigerians to provide information on the benefits of the Freedom of Information (FOI) Bill, which has scaled through second reading in the National Assembly. 

Utomi, who made the call on an on-line debate on the FOI Bill, said he was titillated by the passionate expressions of Nigerians on the proposed Act. He advised them to support the Bill and ensure it is enacted into law, even if it leads to preference for an opaque system in the short-term prism.

He enunciated a strategy that includes flooding the media and direct mail to critical players with evidence of goodies derivable from passage of the Bill. Utomi said he is convinced there is enough evidence from elsewhere in the world that the FOI is in the longterm best interest of corporations and political leaders.

“For example, following the global financial crisis that resulted in the Great Depression early in the last century, many governments took a very statist response by strongly regulating the financial system.

In the United States, Justice Brandeis, taking the traditional American suspicion of legislating protection of the people, argued that the problem was not one of legislation, but one of sunlight. The rulings that brought more transparency into corporate America, recent transgressions not- withstanding, is the reason access to finance is easier in the United States than anywhere in the world,” Utomi said.

Utomi argued that the result is that the process of creative destruction and wealth creation proceeds faster there (Rajan and Zingales book Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists is one of the best discussions of this subject). He also alluded to the work of the Cadbury Commission on Corporate Governance in the UK as another serious example. According to him the Cadbury Commission is at the heart of the success of financial markets like the Stock Exchanges in driving growth.

“In a similar manner a politician who has 'enjoyed' the abuse in opaque systems will do well to learn from the once powerful who were brutalised by successors who took advantage of the same opaque nature of the system.”

 He argued that it may be possible to persuade President Obasanjo to think of his own experience in the hands of power rather than what he may feel about journalists, adding that sunlight is good for human progress. “It profits both the weak and the strong, the rich and the poor”.