After we criticized the JDA Website (http://www.nigeriasaotomejda.com/) yesterday, we were surprised to see an alert from the odious RB poster the tuneman noting that the site was down at 9 a.m. today. It's about time the Authority took its responsibilities a little more seriously, and those certainly include meeting its own announced deadlines and maintaining a steady and clear flow of information, answering its telephones promptly and responding quickly to emails.
Update: The site is back up at 11:40am EST, with no apparent changes.
Dozens of posts on RB have told of callers unable to get an answer for hours, endless busy signals and a lack of fresh publicity material that would explain, for instance, why no awards were announced on Dec. 31 as promised in a Nov. 15 speech at the opening of the latest bid round by Presidential Advisor Edmund Daukoru.
Nigeria's place in the business world's esteem can certainly be improved by polishing its Websites and email handling; we noted in a recent post that emails to five Nigerian daily newspapers were returned from the addresses posted on their sites. You can't help but feel the non-working addresses - only one of which had an over-quota problem - were an answer to the relentless Nigerian Advance Fee scam letters that have blanketed the Internet for years.
But closer to home, we couldn't help but notice the irregular spacing of text on the Website of Chrome Oil Services - an elementary and amateurish issue - and after the site got plenty of hits because it included a rare photograph of Emeka Offor, its chairman, the photos were taken down. That wasn't such a bad thing, because with the exception of Offor's bland photo, they all looked like mug shots from a police file.
Contrast those to the snazzy one of Engineer E.O. Fobi at the First Atlantic Bank Website, which is otherwise not so hot, either. There, many of the pages are apparently under construction and the same one keeps coming up when you hit many different links. The photos, though, are just fine (see "Fobi's No Fool," below).
Some of the newspaper Websites, however, have excellent designs. The Guardian, for instance, has great news and navigation, and the magazine NewsWatch has a great archive, quickly producing 10 articles including a profile on Emeka Offor. Others, like The Sun Online, look snazzy, but on subsequent visits you note that the news hasn't changed or changed only slightly. The Daily Champion lacks design elements but provides useful reading. None of the sites had anything significant to say about the country's huge hopes for development of the JDZ with Sao Tome. The Financial Standard was unaccountably weak in that respect.
But the revamping of the JDA site may not explain the error messages of today. As all are hoping, there may be news coming out regarding the long-delayed signing of the Production Service Contract with ExxonMobil for Block 1 of the Joint Development Zone. That is tentatively scheduled for Jan. 10, according to UpstreamOnline scribe Barry Morgan's latest effort (see comments on "Down Again On Good News," below).
The delays apparently reflect a decision by ExxonMobil not to seek additional acreage in the JDZ, but there has been no indication as yet that the deal will never be signed (with the exception of my ill-thought post to that effect).
When the JDZ site returns, as it undoubtedly will, we may get a few answers.
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