The Imperatives of Information and Communication Technologies in University Administration in Nigeria

Abstract

There is no gain-saying that Technology has converted the entire globe into what seems like a single village. After 56yrs of conceiving the idea, Marshall McLuhan’s notion of global village has been fully demonstrated by the crises generated by the “Covid 19” pandemic. Just as the technological explosion came with a price, it equally has enormous advantages. Chief amongst, which is, the efficacy of the use of Information, Communication Technology (ICT) in university administration. The unprecedented incident of “Covid 19”: has even made this more visible than it ordinarily might have been, as most academic institutions and particularly, universities quickly switched over to the online streaming of most of their activities, totally driven by the use of ICTs as the society trends towards a paperless system. This paper looks at the effectiveness of ICT in university administration in Nigeria, and thus, determines the need to and the values of its adoption against the retention of the erstwhile face-face system of administration. It is thus, a review of the efficacy of ICTs in university administration. The theoretical frameworks adopted for this paper are: Everett Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovation and Thorstein Veblen’s Technological Determinism Theories. The paper concludes that the use of ICTs in universities is of immense value, as the employees and the students benefit greatly from its use in the administrative processes, in spite of the challenges experienced. It recommends that universities should train their administrative staff to acquire the latest ICT skills, the administrators themselves should not rely solely on capacity building trainings from their institutions alone, but they must strive towards self-determined personal professional development. Administrators must strive towards adopting and appropriating these technologies for efficiency.