By Ushang Ewa
Months after the Cross River state, Governor Ben Ayade created a full fledged Ministry of ICT in Cross River State, findings by CrossRiverWatch reveal that almost all state owned websites and their affiliates are either left for long durations without updates, or not functional at all while others have bugs and coding errors.
The official website of the state government which is www.crossriverstate.gov.ng when visited severally over the course of one month showed only a few press releases from the government, a profile of the governor, Benedict Ayade and his wife, Linda Ayade and a photograph of the deputy governor, Ivara Esu while every other thing was from the past administration.
The Ministries, Departments and Agencies, MDAs dropdown menu is outdated with those functional under governor Liyel Imoke still displayed with newly created ministries such as ICT, Transport, Power and several others not listed on the site. Some links when clicked, displayed a page ridded with coding errors.
Also, the Commissioners list is outdated as none displayed on the site is still in office as all vacated office with their principal, former governor Liyel Imoke.
The Carnival Calabar Queen site could not be accessed as the domain had been flagged by the host seemingly for failing to renew subscription.
Also, the official carnival website had no information regarding the 2015 carnival with the festival website the only one functioning with a few events uploaded to the site which still had features of the 2014 festival dominant.
State owned media affiliates like The Giant Strides and Mofi News links embedded on the state website failed to open severally and when opened, displayed nothing.
The ICT Commissioner, Ofu Ayia when contacted on telephone, thanked this reporter for showing interest in the affairs of the state. He acknowledged the websites were down but quickly added the reason why.
He said that, “yes they are issues and this is due to several technical issues which began with a thunder strike in some ICT installations but they are been fixed and will be updated soon”.
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