The official website of the National Assembly is down despite guzzling billions in annual budgetary allocations, checks by 21st Century Chronicle have shown.
This newspaper had searched the national parliament’s website, www.nass.gov.ng, between February 10 and March 24, 2021, but couldn’t find it on the internet. It’s not, however, clear how long the website has been missing.
This development is coming despite federal government annual ranking of websites of federal public institutions to bring them to global standard as a panacea for effective implementation of the national e-government masterplan to improve Nigeria’s ranking among the comity of nations.
The National Assembly allocates billions from its huge annual budget for the maintenance of the official website.
The website of the country’s highest law making body is notorious for delayed updates, missing information, unavailable materials, among others, even when it was active.
The national parliament was allocated N134 billion in 2021, an amount many Nigerians said it’s too much for the 469-member bicameral legislature.
NASS bureaucrats idle?
Findings by 21st Century Chronicle have shown that the maintenance of the parliament’s official website is being handled by its administrative branch, the Management of National Assembly.
The parliament rarely publicises the breakdown of its first-line-charge budget despite persistent demands by Nigerians.
In May 2017, the 8th National Assembly under the leadership of Senate President Abubakar Bukola Saraki, released a 33-page document detailing the line-by-line expenditure of its N125 billion budget for 2017.
The Management of the National Assembly, was allocated N14.9 billion, comprising N6.7 billion personnel cost, N6.2 billion overheads and N2 billion for its capital votes.
The NASS management has, among others, a directorate of research and information which supervises the website.
There are four departments under this directorate namely: statistics, information and publications, research, and library.
Under the office of the Clerk to the National Assembly, there are still departments for public affairs, information technology and communications.
About N1.85 billion was spent on internet access, ICT consulting, IT services and other related subheads by the national parliament in 2017, according to the breakdown.
NASS website missing – Experts
Checks on Website Planet, a portal that “checks to see if a website is down across the globe or only on your computer screen” returned with www.nass.gov.ng is down, and a message “Our server in the USA cannot access your website, it is probably broken. www.nass.gov.ng server can be overloaded, down, or unreachable because of a network problem, outage or a website maintenance is in progress. You may check the site status later.”
Checks on another website, Site24x7 that checks website availability from over 60 locations worldwide and makes sure the customer can access it revealed that www.nass.gov.ng was not available in popular hosting locations such as the USA, Canada, Australia, Singapore and the Netherlands.
Website ‘active’ on Senate, House social media handles
Even though not functional, www.nass.gov.ng is listed on the official Twitter handle of the National Assembly, @nassnigeria as its website but a click redirects a visitor to the non-functional webpage. The same website is listed on the Twitter handles of the Senate and House of Representatives, @NGRSenate and @HouseNGR, respectively.
Findings by 21st Century Chronicle indicate that the cost of renewing a website hosting is between $150 to $400.
Hosting MDAs websites is free – NITDA
Information on the official website of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), indicates that the .gov.ng sub-domain is a national resource for the use of the government and the benefit of the Nigerian people.
It said the domain will be available for all tiers of governments from the federal to the local government.
It further states that the registration of .gov.ng domain name is free and will always be free.
“NITDA will continue to support NIRA to make the registration of government domains free. Reasonable fees may be charged by NiRA Accredited registrars to cater for associated services that go with the registration of .gov.ng domain names.”
During the 2019/2020 ranking of the public agencies websites, Director General of the Bureau of Public Service Reforms (BPSR), Mr. Dasuki Ibrahim Arabi, said the number of MDAs fully in compliance with the approved criteria for the scorecard jumped from 39 to 53 percent.
Consultant took over NASS website – Spokesperson
When contacted, the NASS director of information, Emmanuel Agada, said the website may be undergoing an upgrade for optimal performance.
“I understand that a new consultant took over the management of the site. I will update you ASAP,” he said.
