Nigeria at sixty: An analysis of user participation in an online national competition amidst the Covid-19 pandemic

Abstract

Activities across the world were halted due to the COVID-19 pandemic in the year 2020. Events such as sports, national celebrations, international exhibitions and conferences were cancelled or postponed due to the restrictions posed by governments to mitigate the pandemic. The Information Communication Technology (ICT) sector being loosely constrained by the restrictions, was mandated to facilitate some of these events. In this research, we made computational analysis, by leveraging an Information Technology (IT) platform (Website) to conduct pre-anniversary competitions in celebration of Nigeria’s 60th Anniversary. The aim of using the website was to gather Information regarding the pre-anniversary competitions to determine user participation in online events across Nigeria. Initially, information about the site was propagated via various media outlet to call for participation. Activities performed by participants across all states of the nation (Nigeria) were recorded, as well as the site activities for a designated period of time. An extensive analysis was conducted using the Google analytics tool. Performance show that much needed to be done to improve and engage citizens in participating in national events, which employ IT platforms as an alternative to the main event during the COVID-19 pandemic.