By Adekunle Adekoya

THIS week, attention is on key ICT indicators for Nigeria as released by SCAN ICT Initiative. By the way, SCAN-ICT Initiative Nigeria is an internationally co-ordinated effort to generate suitable sets of comparative methods and statistical indicators for monitoring, measuring and assessing the impact of ICTs on the social and economic growth, gross domestic product (GDP) and Gross National Income (GNI) of the country.

It is expected to support Nigeria’s transition to an information society by building the capacity to collect and manage the kind of information and data that supports and engineers ICT growth and investment.

Further, Scan_ICT was launched by the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) and the Government of Finland to make available quality data on ICT activities in Africa. In Nigeria, the agency works in collaboration with the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA).

2011 indicators
The 2011 data released by the agency is instructive of progress being made in the deployment of ICTs in the country, at face value and at a glance. Because of the passion I have for the speedy deployment of ICTs in the education sector, I shall focus indicators generated and released by SCAN-ICT for the year 2011.

SCAN-ICT informs that percentage of schools in Nigeria with computer is 62.5 of the total, schools with internet connectivity make up 35.3, while schools with websites constitute 14.0 per cent of the total in Nigeria. Now, we are not told which category of schools — pre-school, primary, secondary, or tertiary.

It is also not known whether universities, polytechnics, colleges of education and research institutes are included. But the National Data Bureau figures indicate that there are 54,434 primary schools nationwide (2008) and 18, 238 secondary schools.

Also there are about 102 universities (federal, state, and private-owned), while private and government-owned polytechnics and colleges of technology are about 98, in addition to some 37 colleges of education. This is not counting the technical and vocational education centres scattered across the land.

What indicators mean
Besides, do schools with computer (EDU1) mean schools where every student or pupil has a computer, or a school where there are one or two workstations in the ante-room of the head-teacher or principal’s office? Are they schools where teachers use computer to teach every subject?

The same applies to the category schools with internet connectivity (EDU2). Do those schools go online during lessons? Do online resources feature in the teaching-learning process? Then the third category — schools with website (EDU3).

As far as can be seen, it is mainly the tertiary institutions that have running websites, mostly the universities. There are primary and secondary schools with websites, but they will mainly be private-owned, and in any case, the indicators released did not specify.

I stand to be corrected, but the SCAN-ICT indicators, as posted on the agency’s portal are not of much use in discerning the picture of ICT penetration in the education sector here. We need to know more to be reassured, because what we see daily, especially in those cities like Lagos, Port Harcourt, Abuja, Kano, and others where ICT penetration is supposed to be proceeding apace in the schools, does not support the indicators offered.