Ministry of Defence

Although the website of the Ministry of Defence, www.mod.gov.ng, is one with a quick load time, good visual resolution, and is also accessible by major web browsers, it lags behind in terms of content, as a larger percentage of its sections are empty.

A visit to the website on Thursday showed that there was no information on the history, management, vision and mission, functions as well as the general overview of the defence ministry. These sections were blank. Left empty by the website administrator(s).

In fact, the last time a news item on the activities of the defence ministry featured on the website was in April 2012. The website lacks mention of strategic plans of the military, performance appraisal of various military services nor does it contain links to important information for soldiers in foreign missions like it obtains in other countries of the world.

A visit to the website of South Africa’s Department of Defence, www.dod.mil.za, showed some level of commitment with engagement via the portal.

The South African Defence Minister, Ms. Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, not only uses the portal to connect with the rank and file of the military. He also links up with military veterans through a dedicated website for ex-service men.

The SA defence website is also used to feed the members of the South African public with the various reports on the activities of the military services to enhance military-civilian relations.

Apart from updating its website with content for varying degrees of visitors, the ministry of defence needs to also create an engagement with Nigerians by having a social media hub on the portal to make visitors to the site connect real time with the activities of the defence ministry on social media.

Ministry of Transport

After its website, www. fmt.gov.ng, suffered hacking in 2012, by a group known as NaijaCyberHacktivists,” the Federal Ministry of Transport now has a new website, www.transport.gov.ng

Although the new website has good aesthetic design and brilliant visual resolution, some of its sections have yet to be fed with contents, a development that can put visitors off the site.

For instance, a click on the ‘Resources’ tab on the portal brought up a page with the information, “There are no items to show in this view of the ‘Documents’ document library.” Also, the ‘Intermodals’ and ‘Unit’ tabs of the website were empty as at the time of filing this report.

Besides, the Facebook and Twitter plug-ins on the website seem to be there for the fun of it as they failed to respond when our correspondent clicked on the links. However, unlike the website of the defence ministry, the transport ministry appears to see a need to inform members of the public about its day-to-day activities as it recently started posting updates on its ‘News’ section.

Responding to an inquiry by our correspondent on Thursday, the Assistant Director, Press, of the ministry, Mr. Abiodun Oladunjoye said the ministry was working assiduously to get the website fully up-to-date.

“www.transport.gov.ng is on and we are trying to ‘fleshen’ it,” he said in a text message to our correspondent.

Ministry of Lands and Housing

The official website of the Federal Ministry of Lands and Hosing is www.landsandhousing.gov.ng. It contains virtually all the information one needs to know about the workings of the ministry, including its mandate, organogram, vision and mission, as well as important details one needs to know about the homes and property sector.

But the portal appears to be like a book that has been abandoned on the shelf. A search through it at the time of filing this report revealed that there were no traces of regular update of the website.

A click on the “News and Events” returned a photo page and the message, “News and Events Coming soon.” The rest of the section was with no news update.

Ministry of Information

Although the website of the Federal Ministry of Information, www. fmi.gov.ng, is not the best designed in the comity of website of federal ministries, it is a good model for its peers to take a cue from in terms of keeping a portal up-to-date.

The website managers thought it wise to include social media plug-ins on the portal with which the visitors to the website carry on with conversation and other discussions on various social networks.