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Tuesday, November 10, 2009

THE IRONY OF E-PORTAL

E-portal is something that rings bell in the ears of almost all youths in higher institutions and those seeking the Almighty admission. Majority of students can simply define the computing term (E-portal) based on the function they used it for in their various universities. Some will tell you it is the icon they click on when they want to check their screening results in their aspiring institutions of learning. While those that have scaled the hurdles of UME{University Matriculation Examination} and Post-UME will tell you it is a link on their institution’s website which takes them to the registration page each time a new semester commences.
The tale of woe in the mouths of majority of Nigerian students in various universities, and the prospective ones, has always been similar in all institutions (Polytechnics and Universities). E-portal has become the bane of students (both intending and bonafide). It is now an insuperable and recurring obstacle that students now fast and pray to overcome. The worst hit in this electronic endemic, called e-portal are students still vying and milling to get a space (an admission) in their chosen schools. Their subconscious has been stacked with it without their knowing. If only they had known that it is not any evil-day that they should loathe. Facility E-portal is a web programming that comes with comfort in data management, thereby making it easier for an administration and its stakeholders to access information without the exertion and boredom of rummaging through avalanche of files.
Facility E-portal is a powerful web-based facility that allows institutions to access and manage a variety of administration; it enables stakeholders to keep track of their resources. It allows students to check their academic performances and teachers can also reach accurate facts about students immediately (www.sero.com). But this has never been the story when students try to access their results online. With E-portal, students have got the rungs in their admission ladder total four. It is one that has become a daring examination conducted by no mean body, which intending students have to write without the aid of various forms of examination malpractices that give respite to the seemingly academic numb-skull. It is one pit that various institutions has indirectly dug to give students a run for their admission. It is what successive admission-seekers experience with patient anxiety of what their results or admission list holds for them, each time it is released.
Some weeks ago, Obafemi Awolowo University broke rare ground by releasing the Post-UME results of over 40,000 prospective students within 24 hours. This gesture was lauded and gladly received by all, as they perceived it as a welcome development which will dispense away with the unnecessary stress prospective students get subjected to when accessing the school’s E-portal. Some had even been downbeat about it, saying that like limited vehicles that convey people to their various destinations, the E-portal will soon wear the garb of sluggishness in answering to every student’s click and electronic knock. This was trenchantly reviled by the upbeat; they posited that due to the glaring technological advancement of the school in releasing the result within a day, their (the pessimist) opinion may be far from the truth. As if on the pessimists’ cue, students were once again at the mercy of this ‘great’ E-portal. Some who got their results printed very early were tagged and counted as the luckiest. The rest were subjected to Post-UET (Post University Examinational Trauma). Those who got illegally helped by their ‘mercinaries’ during the said examination, could not get the same succour that was given to them during the said examination. They were also part of the struggling pack
The intending students of Federal Polytechnic Ede, Osun State became a willing audience in the e-portal saga. Theirs was quiet humorous, which pitched their tents against the wrath of the school’s authority. The school authority announced through their e-notice board that registration of chosen applicants closes after two weeks from the date the admission list was uploaded on the school’s website. The said list had been declared released by the school authority through their website few weeks ago. But the announcement seems to conflict with what was actually uploaded on the site, only scrap of the list could be found on their e-portal. This has given rise to purported spurious speculation. It was presumed that the school might have refused to pay the programmer of the website what is due. Some students of the institution, who were forthright in their views, confirmed the claim as a recurring decimal in the institution. This they hinged on the indebtedness of the institution to its web-programmer, leaving the students to bear the ultimate doom.
University of Ilorin’s case was one which would make anyone laugh till his eyes get swollen with tears; theirs {University of Ilorin} was a sorry state. Since the applicants of the institution wrote their Almighty entrance examination, the facility e-portal had gone on sabbatical, it could no more be visible on its site, even when it has been reported in some quarters that the result had been released. Students are left to form a search party in recovering the e-portal from where it had mysteriously gone to.
With its (e-portal) feat in the educational sector of our country, it {E-portal} has bravely won for itself an anthem:

E-portal, How Great Are Thou!
No Examination Impersonation or,
Examination Malpractices,
Could Ever Make Ye Succumb,
Ye Are Great!

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