Fresh Awareness Campaign Begins on FoI Act

Labaran_Maku

Series of sensitisation workshops aimed at familiarising various sectors of the society with the Freedom of Information (FoI) Act and increasing

Series of sensitisation workshops aimed at familiarising various sectors of the society with the Freedom of Information (FoI) Act and increasing their usage of the law are ongoing, a statement issued by Media Rights Agenda (MRA), has stated.

According to the body, the workshops, which took off in Kaduna and later Abuja recently, were held at the instance of MRA, with support from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) of the United Kingdom through the British High Commission in Abuja.

The statement, which was signed by the Senior Programme Officer, MRA, Mr. Ayode Longe, said the objective of the workshop was to improve the understanding of civil society and grassroots organisations of the FoI Act.

It is also to build their capacity to effectively make use of the Act to obtain information of interest to them or relevant to their work from various public institutions as well as to monitor the effective implementation of the Law.

Similar workshops will take place in Calabar on February 6 and 7, for representatives of civil society and grassroots organisations in the South-east and South-south zones; and in Lagos on February 10 and 11, for organisations in the South-west zone.

In addition to the workshops for representatives of civil society and grassroots organisations, other workshops would be held for journalists from the print and broadcast media in Kaduna on February 14 and 15.

Another workshop would also be held in March for information officers from selected Federal Ministries, Departments and Agencies to sensitise them on the implementation of the Act.

The workshops are parts of a wider project to increase the level of participation in governance by citizens, using the Freedom of Information (FoI) Act. 

Other aspects of the project include reprinting of copies of the FoI Act to make the text of the law more widely available to the public than is currently the case as well as producing and printing copies of a Citizen’s Guide to the FoI Act to assist ordinary citizens have a better understanding of the provisions of the law and how to use it.