Availability and Access to Government Research Data and Freedom of Information in Nigeria: An Evaluation of Selected Government Websites

Government research data (GRD) are required for growth of democratic culture in line with freedom of information (FOI) law in Nigeria. This paper investigated availability and access to government research data in Nigeria to determine the implications in implementation of FOI law in the country. This study adopted webometric analysis approach to examine the websites of 34 selected websites of government key agencies. Findings reveal that only 26.5% of the 34 agencies have GRD in their websites while two of the agencies have no official and functional websites. Also only 10(29.4%) of the 34 agencies have evidence of using their website to address FOI requests and only 1(2.9%) has FOI Department, while only only 3(8.8%) have FOI portal in their websites. The paper concludes that the agencies have not shown enough commitments in implementation of FOI law using their websites.