NIPC tops 2024 FOI compliance ranking

The Nigerian Investment Promotion Commission (NIPC), has ranked first in the 2024 National Freedom of Information (FOI) ranking compliance among 245 Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs).

This was disclosed during the unveiling of the rankings by the Public and Private Development Centre (PPDC) and Cohort on Monday in Abuja.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports the theme of this year event is, “Mainstreaming Access to Information and Participation in the Public Sector in Nigeria aimed to promote fiscal transparency and accountability among public institutions’’.

Analysing the FOI Ranking, James Emmanuel, Data Analyst, the International Centre for Investigative Reporting (ICIR), said that the MDAs were ranked based on their proactive, level of disclosure and level of responsiveness to freedom of information requests.

Emmanuel further explained that during the assessment only 1.22 per cent of 245 MDAs were fully proactive.

He said that 6.94 per cent of the MDAs were partially proactive while 91.84 per cent of the MDAs were non-proactive.

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He explained that the three parameters used in the assessment were proactive disclosure, level of responsiveness to request for information and level of disclosure.

According to him, the total points was 100 points, 60 points for proactive disclosure, 20 points for level of responsiveness and 20 points for level of disclosure.

On her part, Ms Victoria Etim, Programme Officer, Rights to Know (R2K), Nigeria, an NGO, said that part of the challenges faced during the assessment was an inactive website of some MDAs.

“Basically, we look into government websites to see if they have pertinent information on their website and we found that a number of the institutions did not have.

“No data from their website and that has been a huge problem for us in the assessment.

“We want to encourage the non-performing MDAs to do better next year,” Etim said.

Earlier, the Chief Executive Officer, PPDC, Lucy Abagi, underscored the need for government agencies to be transparent and answerable to the public.

She also stressed the need for the agencies to field the citizens with information to monitor and participate in governance.

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Abagi said public institutions should voluntarily release relevant information and provide timely access to public information for informed decision-making

According to her, doing these would create a more open, accountable, and responsive government.

NAN reports that the key objective of the ranking is to assess the level of proactive disclosure of public procurement data by public institutions.

The ranking is also used as a means of advocating for and promoting fiscal transparency and accountability amongst public institutions. (NAN)