The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development has hit back at claims the Nigerian government has no online presence by saying its website is strong.
Toyin Baker, Assistant Director of Press and Public Relations, said the ministry has an active and updated website after a newspaper report which said ministries is not active online despite massive funds approved for the purpose.
According to the Daily Trust, Nigeria’s key ministries including the ministries for petroleum resources, defense and agriculture do not have websites that are regularly updated.
“Most government websites are rarely updated, have blank pages or contain links that lead to no pages at all,” the report stated.
But according to the representative of the agriculture ministry, they have recently upgraded their website so it would fully capture the country’s ongoing Agricultural Transformation Agenda (ATA) on a wider platform.
“It is like nobody even wants to ask questions before they go on and starts writing all sorts of rubbish and this not fair. We have a whole unit (Information Technology) dedicated to maintaining and managing the site so what have we done to Daily Trust? [sic]” she asked.
In 2012, the Nigerian government spent more than US$176 million on information technology services and consultancy for its ministries and agencies. Specifically, the fund was disbursed to finance the setting up of data banks, e-governance and simplification of information dissemination, in addition to the digitalization of operations of government agencies.
