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The website of the National Association of Nigerian Students,www.nans.com.ng, and its Twitter account are dormant, findings by our correspondent have revealed.
A visit to the NANS official Twitter account, @TheNewNANS, on Thursday, showed that it was last updated on July 3, two days after the ongoing industrial action embarked upon by the Academic Staff Union of Universities began.
On its Twitter page, the association, which boasts a membership strength of over 40 million Nigerian students, flaunts only 394 followers.
Besides, its website has no mention of the ongoing strike as well as efforts, if any, being made by NANS to find an amicable solution to the crisis.
The last time a piece of information was put on the portal was on September 29. Before then, a blog post on the 2013 International Students’ Day got a mention on the page on July 25.
Although NANS appears not to be taking its online presence seriously, just as it is the case of the Federal Ministry of Education, whose website hosting has been suspended for several weeks, ASUU has found an ally in its website.
A check on asuu-ng.org on Thursday revealed that the leadership of the union is making use of the website as a rallying point for its members across the country.
The last update on it, entitled “Message from ASUU President,” was used as a morale booster for members. The ASUU National President, Dr. Nasir Fagge, addressing his colleagues whom he described as “comrades,” urged them “to maintain the spirit of camaraderie and remain firmly resolute” in the struggle.
Besides, there is a special section on the website, with the heading, “Strike update,” where latest developments on the ongoing dispute can be found. The “strike update” is serialised in months. Such a story could not be said of the NANS website.
In fact, the website of the National Union of Ghana Students, a body similar to NANS maintains a regularly updated portal. Its picture gallery looks better organised than that of NANS, while its executive profile section contains basic information and contact details, including e-mail addresses and telephone numbers of all the executive members.
Also, the NUGS is optimising its website for mobilising students for a forthcoming student union elections. Forms for the elections are also downloadable on the website.
When our correspondent contacted the National President, NANS, Mr. Yinka Gbadebo, on the telephone on the state of NANS website, he said the association was currently facing some “technical challenges.”
He noted that the website was fully functional until recently when it was hijacked by the consultant they contracted the project to.
He said the NANS leadership wanted to shut down the website because “it is now being used by the consultant to defraud unsuspecting members of the public.”
He said, “We have a website, but we have problems with the person we consulted it to. Unfortunately, the website’s password was changed and we are just trying to sort it out.
“The person in charge of the website has since been using it for nefarious activities to defraud unsuspecting members of the public. The hijacker has been posting some silly information on it. The information on that website is untrue and should be disregarded; and that is why we are trying to shut it down.”
He added that NANS leadership had commenced moves to launch a new website, using the gov.ng domain. He said discussions with the National Information Technology Development Agency had reached an advanced stage in this regard.
“We are working with NITDA to get a new official and functional website with the gov.ng domain. In the next two, three weeks, our new website should be fully operational, while various social media sites will be imputed on the website,” Gbadebo added.
He said in the interim, the NANS national secretariat, as well as its zonal groupings, was using “several Facebook IDs” to mobilise and sensitise students on new developments pertaining to the strike.
He added that he and other executive members of the association had also been moving from one geo-political zone to another, reaching out to members.
“I have a personal Facebook account and the national secretariat and zones have several Facebook IDs where we publish articles to educate our members about the ongoing struggle,” he added.
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