Every year on 28 September, the world pauses to celebrate the International Day for Universal Access to Information, a day built on the simple but radical idea that people cannot participate meaningfully in democracy if they are kept in the dark. In Nigeria, the 2026 observance was not a ceremonial affair but a working session, a moment of honest reckoning about the state of transparency in a country drowning in noise. The Media Rights Agenda, working in partnership with the International Press Centre, gathered civil society organisations, legal practitioners and advocates for an event with a theme that could not have been more timely: “Freedom of Information in the Age of Disinformation: Why Transparency Matters More Than Ever.” The room was filled with people who know the struggle firsthand—journalists who have filed Freedom of Information requests and waited months for answers, lawyers who have gone to court to force public institutions to obey the law, and activists who have watched disinformation flourish because official information was either unavailable, incomplete or deliberately withheld. The conversation was urgent because the problem is no longer a shortage of information but a crisis of trust. Social media has made it possible for anyone to publish anything, and falsehoods now travel at the speed of a click, often far faster than the truth can be verified or released. In that environment, the right to know is not merely an administrative nicety; it is the foundation of accountability, informed citizenship and credible public discourse. The event’s organisers also made a point that is often missing from transparency debates: access to information must be gender-responsive. Women and other vulnerable groups, they argued, face particular barriers that prevent them from using the Freedom of Information Act as easily as others. The demand was not for special privileges but for equal and meaningful access—an insistence that the law should work for everyone, not just the powerful or the persistent.
The opening remarks from Lanre Arogundade, the Executive Director of the International Press Centre, set the tone for the entire gathering. Arogundade spoke about the paradox of this moment: information travels faster, reaches wider audiences and can be produced by more actors than ever before, yet the abundance of information has not translated into greater access to reliable public information. He warned that where authoritative information is difficult to obtain, delayed, incomplete or simply inaccessible, the resulting vacuum becomes fertile ground for speculation, misinformation and disinformation. That warning resonated deeply with everyone in the room. In a digital age, silence is not neutral. When a public institution refuses to release documents or when a government agency delays a response to a legitimate request, it is not merely being bureaucratic; it is creating space for rumours to fill the void. Arogundade encouraged participants to keep using the Freedom of Information Act, not as a passive entitlement but as an active tool for demanding accountability. He also stressed that the existence of the law is only one part of the equation. The democratic value of the FOI Act, he argued, depends on how effectively it is implemented and how accessible the process is to those who need to use it. The law cannot be a dead letter. It must be applied, enforced and made practical for ordinary citizens, journalists and civil society organisations. His remarks were a reminder that transparency is not just about having a legal framework; it is about creating a culture in which public institutions understand that the information they hold belongs to the public, and that withholding it without justification is an act of democratic failure.
The discussion then turned to an often-overlooked dimension of access to information: gender. Ayomide Eweje, a Programme Officer at the Media Rights Agenda, spoke candidly about the need for gender-responsive implementation of the FOI Act. She made it clear that this is not about giving women more rights than men, but about identifying and addressing the factors that prevent people from exercising an existing right equally. Eweje noted that there is limited national data specifically measuring Nigerian women’s use of the FOI Act, which is itself a problem because it means policymakers do not fully understand how gender shapes access to information. Women, she argued, need to be better informed about the law and about how it can be used to demand accountability from public institutions. She pointed to an all-women roundtable organised by the HumAngle Foundation in Abuja in October 2024, which had been convened specifically to address what it described as a gender gap in the use of the FOI Act. The recommendations from that session were practical and grounded in reality: increased awareness of the law through local languages, radio and other accessible media, as well as greater institutional support and the integration of FOI into existing accountability initiatives. Eweje explained that a gender-responsive approach should ask whether different gender groups can access information rights equitably, whether public information reflects their different needs and experiences, and whether public institutions collect, store and provide information in accessible ways. She stressed that this approach was not about treating women as a separate category of FOI applicants, but about ensuring that the law truly works for everyone. It was a call to think about transparency not only in legal terms but in human terms, taking into account the real-world obstacles that women, especially those in rural areas or with limited literacy, face when trying to obtain information that affects their lives.
The theme of targeted access continued when Dr. Abiola Afolabi-Akiode, founding Executive Director of the Women Advocates Research and Documentation Centre, took the floor. Represented by WARDC’s Media and Communication Officer, Olaniyi Olaniyan, she delivered a powerful reminder that for women and girls, access to information is not an abstract right but a matter of survival. She identified several areas where targeted information is urgently needed: sexual and reproductive health, maternal mortality prevention, support services for gender-based violence, knowledge of relevant laws and government programmes, access to justice mechanisms, and protection against technology-facilitated violence. These are not peripheral issues. Without accurate information, a woman may not know her legal rights, may not know where to seek help, may not know what services are available to her, and may not even know that she is entitled to demand answers from public institutions. Afolabi-Akiode insisted that access to information must be transparent and accountable, and that participation and the protection of human rights are essential to the entire project. She also challenged civil society organisations to move beyond creating awareness about the FOI Act. Awareness is important, but it is not enough. She urged them to track responses and non-responses to information requests, to monitor how public institutions are behaving, and to use that data to push for better implementation. Her message was backed by troubling evidence. She cited the Federal Ministry of Justice’s 2023 FOI implementation report, which showed that up to 90 percent of public institutions had failed to comply with their statutory reporting obligations since the Act was enacted. That statistic is staggering. It means that the vast majority of public institutions are not even fulfilling the basic legal duty to document how they handle requests for information, let alone responding to those requests in a timely and complete manner. She pointed to poor record-keeping, inadequate funding, bureaucracy, limited awareness among public officials and delays in responding to requests as some of the main challenges undermining the law.
The legal dimension of the fight for transparency was brought into sharp focus by Alimi Adamu, a legal practitioner who has clearly spent considerable time wrestling with the machinery of the law. Adamu explained that Nigeria’s FOI framework is judicial-driven, meaning that unlike countries that have independent information commissioners to oversee compliance, Nigeria relies on state and federal high courts to compel public institutions to honour their obligations. This is a heavy burden. It means that citizens, journalists and civil society organisations must be willing to go to court, often at great expense and with no guarantee of a timely resolution, simply to obtain information that should have been released voluntarily. Adamu noted that the Supreme Court has settled some important disputes, particularly concerning the applicability of the FOI Act to state governments and to public-funded private entities. These legal victories are significant, but they have not ended the struggle. Administrative resistance remains a persistent obstacle. Even when the law is clear, public institutions continue to delay, to claim that documents do not exist, to demand unnecessary identification, or to simply ignore requests in the hope that the requester will give up. The role of legal practitioners, Adamu suggested, is not just to argue cases in court but to serve as guardians of the law’s integrity, ensuring that the FOI Act remains a living instrument rather than a symbolic document. His remarks were a reminder that transparency is not automatic. It requires persistence, legal knowledge and an institutional culture that respects the right to information. Without that culture, the law will always be under threat, and the promise of transparency will remain out of reach for ordinary Nigerians.
The final speaker to make a lasting impression was Anikeade Funke-Treasure, Executive Director of the Illuminate Nigeria Development Network, who offered a sharp analysis of how the FOI Act can be used to combat digital misinformation and safeguard journalistic integrity. Her message was directed not only at journalists and lawyers but at every Nigerian citizen. She charged members of the public to begin demanding accountability from the National Orientation Agency, which she described as the institution primarily responsible for ensuring that the information space is well sanitised by providing accessible information to the public. Her point was simple: the failure of the National Orientation Agency to carry out its duty has created an information vacuum in society, and that vacuum must be filled urgently. In the age of disinformation, silence is dangerous. When public institutions do not communicate clearly and consistently, social media fills the gap with conspiracy theories, manipulated images and half-truths. Journalists, no matter how diligent, cannot do the work alone. The public has a role to play as well, by demanding better from the institutions that are supposed to serve them and by treating access to information as a civic responsibility, not a favour. By the time the event ended, the message was unmistakable: transparency is not a luxury for the privileged; it is a necessity for democracy. The FOI Act exists, but it needs champions. Public institutions need to be pushed, monitored and held accountable. Women and vulnerable groups need to be brought into the conversation, not as an afterthought but as equals. And ordinary citizens must raise their voices to demand the truth, because in a world filled with disinformation, the only effective antidote is a society that refuses to accept darkness and insists on the light.