The warning by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), George Akume, to the effect that communication managers across all Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs), who leak official secrets, risk jail is the right foot forward at enhancing national security.
Without a doubt, leaking of official secrets has been a major obstacle to the fight against insecurity and corruption in the country. The sharing of intelligence and synergy between security agencies is being hampered because government officials leak classified documents to the criminal elements, enabling them to either escape justice or ambush and kill the nation’s troops.
At a one-day capacity-building workshop in Abuja, last week, the SGF emphasised the gravity of unauthorised disclosure of government information.
“As you are aware, leaking an official secret is a felony, and there is no defence for such an act either in the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria or the Freedom of Information Act,” Akume stated in a statement by Segun Imohiosen, the director of information in his office.
The workshop, organised by the Bureau of Public Service Reforms in collaboration with the Office of the SGF, focused on the role of the Official Secrets Acts in maintaining confidentiality and national security.
Akume, represented by the permanent secretary of General Services Office, stressed the importance of disseminating correct and truthful information while safeguarding sensitive government documents.
The SGF’s comments underline the government’s commitment to protecting national security through proper information management.
However, condemning the riot act, a civil society organisation, Media Rights Agenda (MRA), noted that the SGF’s preoccupation with secrecy rather than good governance was neither helpful to citizens nor to the government itself.
In a statement by its deputy executive director, Ayoge Longe, MRA said government will face an uphill task in trying to prosecute any of its officials for unauthorised disclosure of information.
He cited Section 27(2) of the Freedom of Information (FoI) Act which protects whistleblowers and states that, “Nothing contained in the Criminal Code or Official Secrets Act shall prejudicially affect any public officer who, without authorisation, discloses to any person, an information, which he reasonably believes to show mismanagement, gross waste of funds, fraud, and abuse of authority or a substantial and specific danger to public health or safety notwithstanding that such information was not disclosed pursuant to the provision of this Act”.
Unfortunately, the MRA’s claims are as misleading as they are mischievous, thus, falling on all fours. It is trite to state that the FoI Act is neither inconsistent nor incongruous to the Official Secrets Act. The FoI, therefore, does not invalidate, vitiate, void or repeal the Official Secrets Act. The extant legal instruments are, in fact, complementary and analogous as they are geared towards the overall objective of ensuring the nation’s security and accelerating its socio-economic and political development.
It does appear that the MRA is unperturbed by the menace of bandits, kidnappers, insurgents, secessionists, militants, oil thieves and the myriads of insecurity ravaging the country and frustrating its developmental efforts. Evidence abounds that the deadly and dastardly activities of these criminal elements are aided and abetted by corrupt and unscrupulous public officers who leak official secrets to them.
Besides the danger to public health or safety, leaking classified or secret documents puts a strain on government, which has to dissipate humongous amount of energy, time and financial resources it would otherwise have deployed to other critical sectors of the economy, to refute the lies thereof.
In less than a year in office, the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration has had cause to rebut a plethora of falsehood resulting from leaked official secrets. For instance, the Minister of Information and National Orientation, Mohammed Idris, had denied reports that the federal government plans to establish foreign military bases in Nigeria. He also faulted reports that the federal government sponsored 289 delegates to the International Labour Organisation (ILO) conference in Geneva, Switzerland and spent N1.5 billion on their accommodation.
On the backdrop of the cataclysmic effect of leaking official secrets, Blueprint is in sync with the SGF on the prosecution and appropriately sanctioning government officials who err in this regard. Provision of security is the foremost obligation imposed on government by the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, as amended, which, being the grundnorm, supercedes any other law.