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2. Statement of the Problem
Babatunde Alabi Alege and Stephen Olufemi Afolabi
Some fifty years after independence, the education sector in Nigeria is still grappling with many
challenges. These include acute underfunding, poor facilities, shortage of qualified teachers
especially in core subject areas, poor teaching and learning environment, decayed infrastructure, and
very low research activities in higher institutions. There is also the problem of access, mass failure in
senior secondary school certificate examination, examination malpractices and cultism. Recent
studies revealed that about 10 million children who are supposed to be in school were not there while
current national enrolment ratio is about 57% in public schools. Between 2003 and now, there have
been several new national and global initiatives. The Jomtien World Conference on Education for all
(EFA) in 1990 was sponsored by the World Bank, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and
Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the
United Nations Children Emergency Fund (UNICEF) to bring education to everyone irrespective of
race, colour, creed, physical disability or socio-economic status. Similarly the Millennium Development
Goals (MDGs), drawn from the actions and targets contained in the Millennium Declaration is to be
achieved by the end of 2015. In the past, Nigeria had made several attempts at making education
accessible to Nigerians. The old western region started free education during Chief Obafemi
Awolowo’s regime. In 1976, the Universal Primary Education Scheme was launched. Among the
reasons adduced to its near collapse are poor management, poor infrastructure, high rate of illiteracy
as a result of limited access to, poor retention in, and poor quality of basic education. As a result of
this, the Federal Government re-launched the UBE programme in September 1999 as a radical
intervention strategy for ensuring access to quality basic education (UBEC, 2008). A major challenge
of the reform for the education sector therefore is the need to reform the curriculum so as to bring it in
line with the strategic objectives of NEEDS and MDGs. To this end, the country developed a national
Policy for Information Technology that would among others, have a modern ICT-driven educational
system for the effective delivery of educational services at all levels. UNESCO (2004) identified a
number of frameworks for setting ICT for education programmes. These include: policy and vision of
ICT use in schools, technology and infrastructure, curriculum, pedagogy and content development,
professional development, monitoring and supervision. (Adeosun, 2010). To what extent Nigeria has
been able to meet these criteria remains to be investigated. This study therefore determines teachers’
use of Computer/Internet in teaching and learning in secondary schools and examines the
implementation of education policy in terms of the availability of ICT tools in schools and their general
integration for the improvement of teaching and learning.
2.1 Purpose of the study
The study was undertaken to investigate teachers, literacy profiles, attitudes towards computers,
general integration of Information and Communication Technology and also determine the hindrances
experienced by them on the integration of ICT in their teaching.
The study would specifically:
Find out the attitude profile of the teachers in Southwest Nigeria towards the integration of ICT in
their teaching practice.
Find out whether teachers use Computer/Internet in their teaching.
Find out the competency profile of teachers with respect to the use of various computer and
communication environments.
Determine the nature of hindrances experienced by teachers on the pedagogical integration of
ICT.
2.2 Scope of the study
The focus of this research is on computer/Internet use by teachers in Southwest Nigeria. The
study surveyed teachers’ use of Computer/Internet in Southwest Nigeria comprising of Ekiti, Ogun,
Ondo, Osun, Oyo and Lagos states.
2.3 Significance of the study
This study is significant in the sense that it would evaluate teachers’ use of Computer/Internet in
Nigerian secondary schools.
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