The Nigerian Press and Practice of Journalism Council (NPPJC) bill is like a bolt from the blue. A lot has been said about that strange piece of legislation that somehow appeared to have upstaged a previous one, the Freedom of Information (FOI) bill, which had the support of virtually all stakeholders in the journalism profession. Save its sponsors, we have not seen anyone that has a kind word for the NPPJC; we can understand why.

It does not require a reading between its lines to discern that the effort of the sponsors is primarily to enlist the complicity of journalists through the force of legislation, to protect public officers, who may or may not be involved in corruption and other forms of malfeasance, one of this country's biggest development crises today.

What would motivate a group of legislators, or even the entire National Assembly, to seek to regulate the conduct and practice of journalism in Nigeria is an issue that we have pondered for quite a while. The FOI bill has been with the National Assembly for the best part of the past eight years; former President Olusegun Obasanjo claimed before he left office in 2007 that he would have signed it into law, but had raised some issues on it with the legislature which he thought would have been resolved before his departure, but were not. Section 22 of the constitution enjoins the press, radio, television and other agencies of the mass media to "at all times be free" to uphold the responsibility and accountability of the government to the people.

The FOI bill seeks to reinforce that onerous responsibility that the law has imposed on the press and the mass media generally.

What the lawmakers ought to be concerned with, in our view, is how to advance the cause of a democratising society like Nigeria's, and thereby further open the space for free flow of information that ultimately will make the nation stronger.

On the contrary, what the NPPJC bill now being considered in the National Assembly seeks to do is to effectively throttle the press, muzzle freedom of expression and constrict even the limited space for open discussion that is currently permissible. This is unacceptable, and must be resisted by all freedom-loving people and democratic institutions.

We note some of the positive comments that some have made about what they see as the more redeeming features of the NPPJC bill, namely that they make it mandatory for certain positions in the government machinery, like the office of the Minister of Information and chief press secretary to the president (or to the governor of a state) to be the exclusive preserve of journalists.

The idea behind this provision is seriously flawed, because it seems that those who propose it believe that those positions represent a higher calling to national service than being a journalist. This is a dangerous and misleading assumption. Besides, politicians being what they are, especially in our country, have constituencies that they seek to address when in elective positions. The choice of who to appoint into these positions is theirs to make; it is left for such persons, whether they happen to be journalists or not, to accept or reject.

Particularly tendentious provisions of the NPPCJ bill are the involvement of the President of the Federal Republic and the Minister of Information in the appointment and dismissal of its chairman, and the punishment of media practitioners and their media in cases of accepting inducements to suppress or publish a story. This is a Draconian bill dressed to look like an attempt to improve journalism practice in the country, and ignores the various statutes that are already in place to deal with cases of libel, false and injurious publications.

We also note the response of the bill's main sponsor, Mrs Abike Dabiri-Erewa, to its virtually universal condemnation, that it was work in progress, and that her colleagues and herself were willing to accept suggestions to introduce amendments to it to ameliorate some its obnoxious provisions. Fine. This is our suggestion: abandon the NPPJC bill, reintroduce the FOI bill and hasten its passage.