State govts struggling to keep pace with digital speed

More and more individuals, businesses and non-governmental organisations operating in Nigeria are joining the Internet users, which rose from 400 million to over three billion between 200 and earlier this year.

But the adoption rate among state governments appears to be a direct opposite of speed at which individuals and businesses are going online.

For instance, many of the states in the North-Central still lag behind in terms of active Internet usage. While they all have world-wide-web, creating content that attract traffic to the sites seems to be a setback.

Nigerstatew.gov.ng, an official website of Niger State, welcomes Internet users to “the new Niger State Government website we are testing.” 

For a website that is test-running, some of the social media pages linked into the redesigned portal were not available on Wednesday. Both Facebook and Google+ were not found while the YouTube channel, which was accessed, has not been updated in the past seven months.

The last post on the YouTube was a video of the inauguration of the state’s Peoples Democratic Party 2015 election campaign organisation. So far, the video has recorded 106 views while the YouTube channel is followed by 33 subscribers. 

There is no much incentive to ‘waste’ precious time on Nasarawa State’s static nasarawastate.gov.org. Photographs and texts published on the site appear like some cut-and-paste materials.

With 44 followers and 47 tweets recorded on its Twitter page, which is plugged into the website, the operator boasts, “We are social.” The attached Facebook is followed by 9,318 users.

     

Plateau State’s Internet activities could also be described as shallow. While its Facebook was not available on Wednesday, the Twitter page, which started posting in February 2015, has 37 followers to its credit.

Its website, plateaustate.gov.ng, which was developed by the Plateau State ICT Development Agency, is poorly updated. Its “latest post” page, for instance, was black when our correspondent visited it on Wednesday. 

The website of Benue State – benuestate.gov.ng – took an average of five minutes to load. On a mobile device, where the majority of Nigerian Internet users access online, it was slower. The implication of this is that many visitors to the site may not wait for that long to access it.

Visitors, however, introduced to the page by beautiful photographs announcing the tourism potential of the state. It also has email and Facebook plug-ins but no Twitter or any other social media platform.

Unfortunately for visitors, there are no phone lines on its contact page. The four contact addresses – Ministry of Information and Orientation, Lagos, Abuja and Kaduna liaison offices – listed do not have a single telephone number through which the officials could be reached. For digital content analyst, this is a major flaw on the part of the owner.        

In terms of speed and resolution, Kogi State Government’s website is many steps ahead of Benue’s. But while Benue gives attention to promoting its tourist potential on the platform, Kogi dedicates its –kogistate.org – to Governor Idris Wada and his acclaimed achievements.

There are no social media plug-ins on Kogi State Government’s website. But visitors can drop a short mail right on the home page. And with the home page crowded with photographs of the governor, clips of the state’s economy and investments, public establishments, blueprints of the administration and several other pieces of information that could be hidden somewhere else, an inpatient user may not be able to navigate the site.

But for the photograph of the governor, the Kwara State Government’s kwarastategov.ng is like a corporate organisation’s hosted portal. It is dedicated to investment and trade partnership deals with national flags of investment partnering firms beaming on the site. A key distinguishing feature of this website is the absence of plug-ins of social media. 

Meanwhile the All Progressives Congress has started a Twitter poll of President Muhammadu Buhari’s performance in 100 days in office. A tweet by the party is calling on Nigerians who believe the President passed to retweet the post while those on the opposing side should favourite it.

A similar survey is also seeking Nigerians’ position in the fight against corruption. Those who want the war to continue are retweeting while those who think otherwise are favouriting the tweet, which went viral on Wednesday.