Secret Reporters No place to hide
Secret Reporters
With a presumed intent to reinforce professional capabilities and the social identity on the Bureau’s services, Akin Olaturu’s Accident Investigation Bureau (AIB) may have capitalized on the loopholes that exist in Nigeria’s Procurement processes to siphon tax-payers money by engaging in white elephant projects.
This is evident in its engagement in a non-consultancy service for the Re-Engineering of its Website and Mobile Application at a whooping sum of N11,375,000 in the early quarters of 2019.
Regrettably, despite this humongous amount, the Bureau’s website aib.gov.ng still has the appearance of a low-budget tech project designed by amateurs as on visit, one will be greeted with the message “Warning: Potential Security Risk Ahead” before proceeding to the homepage. A message which simply means that any communication with the website is not secured since its SSL certificate cannot be authenticated.
The mobile application which Tech experts have since described as a sheer waste of public funds also shares similar low-budget features with the website, as the app which is about 26.8mb in size has since its release on March 19, 2020, gotten only 50+ downloads from Google play store with no single review.
However, an app earlier released on August 22, 2017, by InniveTech which now seemed abandoned was also seen in the play store, thus raising the question as to the level of professionalism employed by the Bureau and why a new app was launched instead of upgrading the previous app developed by the Lagos Based Tech company.
Designed at an initial sum of N2.2million in 2017, Tech critics believe that the re-design of the acclaimed dynamic website of the bureau which cost more than 400% the amount previously used in its design is over-bloated judging by its User Interface and such waste of public funds should not be condoned by any agency under the guise of providing technological development.
