By Chimezie Godfrey
Freedom of information needs to be complemented with right to Information says Director, Abuja School of Social and Political Thought, Dr Sam Amadi.
Dr. Amadi made the assertion at the North Central Town Hall Meeting of the Nigerian Guild of Editors, held Friday in Abuja.
He advised that as Nigeria prepares to put together the final processes for the 2023 general elections, one of the most important issues for public discourse should be freedom of information.
According to him, it is not conceivable to think about a robust democracy that is not built on the foundations of freedom of expression and the press, adding a free press is part of the universe of freedom of information.
Amadi who also said that a free press is both a beneficiary and a facilitator of freedom of information, noted that development depends on the quality and accessibility of information, and the responsibility that editors and allied professionals in the media industry owe to society to promote access to and equitable use of information.
He therefore argued that freedom of information to be truly meaningful there is need for it to be complemented with right to information.
He said,”Of course, all of us can imagine how difficult it is for us to gain access to information we need at all times. The technology may be easy, but the availability, the financials and other costs of accessing the information may not be cheap and easy. But, thankfully, the costs of gathering and disseminating information are tumbling down.
“In spite of the costs of access to information, whether in terms of technological constraint or financial disability, more and more people are able to access vital information they need for the pursuit of their life ends. We will expect more and more reduction in the cost of information as technological advancement and diffusion make information easier and cheaper to generate and consume.
“But the availability of information is not the same as its accessibility, even as they are related. Information may be available but not easily accessible.
“To be truly meaningful, freedom of information needs to be complemented with right to information. This right may be a moral right in the sense that people ought to have them, but they need to be legally provided for people to effectively enjoy them.
“It is not enough that they are morally desirable or inherent to people. There should be a legal authorization for people to enjoy them. So, the right to information should move from being a moral right to a legal right.”
Speaking on why does right to information matters, he said the most basic life would need a lot of information to flourish, starting from domestic affairs to external relations.
“Of course, we all can relate to the importance of information in our life as individuals and in our corporate existence as a people in a society, in a community or a nation-state.
“The most basic life would need a lot of information to flourish, starting from our domestic affairs to our external relations. Information is like the air that we breathe. But we often forget or downplay its importance. Just like many other things in life, there is an asymmetry to information. Some have more of it; and some have less of it.
“The degree of access and utilization of information affects the prospect of our human flourishing. Because of the consequences of the asymmetry of information, we have a growing clamor for equality of information or at least, equality of access and opportunity for people to access the information relevant and necessary for their livelihood,” he said.
On freedom of information and democracy, Dr Amadi pointed out that information is a critical resource for the choices humans make.
“Choices are central to freedom. Without the ability to make the right kind of choices we may not enjoy the freedom that the constitution and international human rights promise us.
“So, at a personal level, the life of freedom requires freedom of information. Information should be available in accessible form for us to use them to improve the decisions we make about our wellbeing.
“But there is a social dimension to the instrumental value of information. This relates to social cooperation in an arena of politics.
“Democracy is a system of government that is based on the right of the people to make choices. Democracy is famously defined as government of the people by the people for the people.
“The idea of democracy is that legitimacy of government system derives from the nature of its constitution. legitimacy is not conferred by results of governance but by how a government came to be,” he argued.
