Unable to manage two, Nigeria's education ministry opens new twitter handle | EduCeleb
Abdussalam Amoo
9th July 2019
The Federal Ministry of Education in Nigeria has opened a new twitter handle. This is at a time it already had two others.
When EduCeleb.com visited the ministry’s website on Tuesday, a newly opened twitter page was linked to it.
The new page @FME123456 would be the third the ministry is managing in the space of five years.
Its first tweet was shared on 27th May, 2019.
With seven tweets so far in over 40 days after, the new twitter handle may not be differently managed better than its predecessors as more developments relating to the ministry had gone unmentioned there.
A year earlier, the Ministry of Education opened a twitter handle @MinistryFederal  in May 2018. The first tweet on that page was shared on 22nd May, 2018.
The social media managers of the page shared 27 tweets till 13th July, 2018 and the page became inactive with updates for its almost 7,985 followers and millions of Nigerians.
Another twitter handle previously actively used by the ministry is @FMENigeria. It was last active on 7th August, 2017 save for an Eid-el-Fitri celebration message linked to its instagram page @fmenigeria and shared on 7th June. Strange enough, the tweet came three days after the festivities.
@FMENigeria, which appears to be the “longest surviving” twitter handle of the ministry was opened in October 2014 and has so far shared 107 tweets.
The Muhammadu Buhari administration prides itself on efforts to improve education quality as part of other areas of the economy. But there is little to show for this on the social media accounts of the education ministry.
Aside the largely inactive Federal Ministry of Education twitter pages, activities of the ministry are rarely shared on its other social media pages.
On Instagram, one other post was share aside the earlier mentioned Eid greeting were ever shared by the ministry.
In all these, EduCeleb.com observed that its Facebook page had its most recent post on 21st June.
Most of the contents however shared on the page were news reports and pictures of events. There is little self-generated content detailing activities of the ministry on its pages.
When contacted for comments on the development, the spokesperson of the ministry, Mr Ben Goong initially said he was not aware of it as his office does not manage the pages.
He thereafter asked this reporter to show him the pages. In the process of that, he told this reporter off to leave things like that.
“Let it flow like that,” he said. “Let everything on the website be like that. We like it like that.”
He thereafter angrily walked this reporter out of his office threatening to physically arm him.