Many official websites for Nigerian ministries, departments, and agencies are turning out to be an embarrassment to the corporate identity of the country.
Even as the country strives to attract investors to the country as economic activities remain poignant, there appears to be poor coordination of most websites which are the first point of contact for those surfing from foreign nations to either get information or ascertain the situation of things in the country.
“It is a very appalling approach to business, it shows that the country is not taking its corporate image serious and this is not something that should be condoned in anyway,” says Ayeni Ekundayo, a marketing communication expert and Chief Innovation Officer, BusinessPlus.
“Every ministry has an ICT unit which is usually responsible for things like this, they also have public relations units, and it shows they are not doing things they way they should.”
BusinessDay’s observations have shown it even gets worse as some people have turned government agency websites into revenue earning schemes, notable among this is the website for the Budget Office of the Federation, hosted at http://www.budgetoffice.gov.ng
A visitor to the website, who wishes to download any of the several documents hosted on it, would notice a pop-up window which comes with an advert. Several other clicks through the website, especially when trying to download files, result in more pop-up windows routed through popads.net, a popular provider of online advertising services.
The implication of this is that, every click through the website will generate an income for whoever has embedded the codes on the website.
“If only 0.1 percent of Nigerians visit the website, that will give about 180,000 clicks that will be converted to money for someone who is the webmaster for that website. Some people are playing all these pranks behind the scene on the government,” explains Ayeni.
A cursory look at recent budgets does not seem to show revenue through adverts on websites of government agencies as part of the sources for funding the budgets.
On the website of the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics (NBS), some ‘important links’ are identified at the footer area. Among these are Federal Ministry of Health, hyperlinked to the address; www.fmh.gov.ng, and the Federal Ministry of Finance, hyperlinked to the address; www.fmf.gov.ng. Both addresses show a ‘suspended page’, an indication that the hosting account for each of the websites is no longer active. Curiously, both ministries appear to operate web addresses at www.health.gov.ng and www.finance.gov.ngwhereas they are still referenced on other official portals such as the NBS as fmh.gov.ng and fmf.gov.ng respectively.
The conflicting addresses, though showing government domain extensions, are capable of causing either mistrust or confusion for people who may have official business to transact with the ministries, departments, and agencies of government.
The National Planning website listed some parastatals in its footer, one of which is the Centre for Management Development, hosted at http://www.cmd.gov.ng/ an address which presently shows visitors are ‘forbidden from accessing’ the website.
Also, the website of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) when visited, prompted an antivirus alert stating the “website is unsafe and it has detected elements that may harm the computer”. The EFCC’s media and public affairs page was also showing a “page cannot be found” when visited to reach out to the unit for response as to why the anti-fraud agency’s website is itself being considered a threat to PCs.
Also, for almost two weeks http://nigeriapostcodes.com/ has been unavailable since it expired on December 4. The website is Nigeria’s official portal for information on post codes, an identification system which is useful in identification of individual addresses as well as organizations, mostly required when contact details are being provided for foreign (western) entities.
CALEB OJEWALE
