President Goodluck Jonathan on Tuesday dissociated himself from a statement made by his Special Adviser on National Assembly Matters, Senator Mohammed Abba-Aji, on the Freedom of Information Bill.



The President reacted on the heels of the barrage of criticisms the statement attracted.



Abba-Aji had on Monday in Maiduguri, Borno State, said he was disappointed in the House of Representatives which passed the bill last week and expressed the hope that the Senate would throw out the bill.



He threatened that in case the Senate passed the bill he would ensure that Jonathan did not give its assent to turn the bill into a law. He also boasted that he worked against the bill when he was a Senator.



But the House of Representatives and the Nigeria Union of Journalists on Tuesday questioned the motive of Abba-Aji in opposing the bill with the House saying that any opposition to the bill at this stage was an opposition to its legislative oversight.



The spokesman of the House, Mr. Eseme Eyiboh, told THE PUNCH that any opposition to the bill was “therefore an opposition to our legislative oversight.”



Eyiboh noted that though there were “some professional issues to be addressed,” it was wrong for people to continue to tag the bill “a media bill” just to paint it black.



“We passed the bill out of the conviction that it will enhance governance and transparency in the conduct of public business. The man (Abba-Aji) may just be expressing a personal opinion, which the House cannot deny him. But, we were convinced that Nigeria needed the bill; hence we passed it,” he said.



The National President of the NUJ, Mohammed Garba, condemned what he described as the “negative pronouncement” of the presidential special adviser noting that whoever was opposed to the passage of the must be a corrupt person.



Garba spoke on Tuesday when he visited PUNCH PLACE, head office of the Punch Nigeria Limited.



“It is quite unfortunate and unbelievable. It is an indication that Abba-Aji is most likely ignorant of the importance of the bill and he needs to be properly enlightened about that. Anybody that is against the freedom of information bill must be a corrupt politician and he must have something that he is hiding,” Garba said.



A member of the House of Representatives and one of the key sponsors of the bill, Mrs. Abike Dabiri-Erewa, asked Jonathan to immediately kick out Abba-Ajji and denounce his statement, else his words on the FOI bill would be taken to be the mind of the presidency.



“The president should either sack Abba-Aji or denounce his statement or do both,” the lawmaker said in a statement.



Dabiri-Erewa said she had been vindicated that forces working against the passage of the bill were outside of the National Assembly. She described the stand of the presidential aide as “retrogressive, undemocratic, and an insult to Nigerians whom President Jonathan seeks to lead for another four years with bad advisers like Abba-Aji who himself needs an adviser.”



Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media, Mr. Ima Niboro, told journalists at the Murtala Mohammed International Airport, Lagos, on Tuesday that Abba-Aji lacked the capacity to speak for the president.



He said, “Abba-Aji was speaking as an individual and not for the Federal Government. I speak for the President; information minister speaks for the government; and in the matter of law, the Attorney General, who is the chief law officer, can speak for the government.



“So, since this statement did not come from the any of us, he (Aba-Aji) is purely speaking for himself and I want it reflected that way.”



The FOI Bill commenced its journey 11 years ago. While it was passed by both chambers of the National Assembly in the last legislative session, former President Olusegun Obasanjo refused to sign it into law thus forcing it to start the journey afresh in 2007.



The House of Representatives, almost after four years and agitation by stakeholders, last week passed the 34-clause piece of legislation. The Senate is expected to also pass it this week.



While the bill seeks to confer access to public information by all citizens, many had wrongly expressed the fear that it was essentially a media bill.



Abba-Aji queried the support for the bill, stressing that no government or organisation would offer its official secret to members of the public or the press.



The former senator insisted that all public institutions had information that must be closely guided for the benefit of peace, progress and development of the society.



He said Nigerians should be wary of opening the nation’s secret to the rest of the world “through this unpatriotic FOI Bill.”



Abba-Aji who claimed that the Nigerian press remained the freest, said there were classified information even in the United States of America.



On the constitutionality of the bill, he argued that every public officer, including the president, was under oath of secrecy.



“That is in the constitution and this is what this new bill is trying to oust,” he said.


http://www.punchng.com/Articl.aspx?theartic=Art20110302256551

Make una live this man alone make he lead now

See the way the blabbing idiot fooled himself, I'm sure he'll seriously be begging for his job now