E-Governance and Digital Service: Interrogating theCovid-19 Lesson for Nigeria Public Service Delivery

Abstract

The study focuses on the need for the implementation of E-governance towards enhancing digital services as a nexus to have reduced the effect of Covid-19 on Nigeria public service delivery. Consequently, the paper posit that the cardinal channel for public service delivery in Nigeria which have been paper based transactions, bureaucracy, face-to-face contact couldn’t achieved much during the raging days of coronavirus. Public service delivery was near impossible due to the lockdown; there was a huge loss of man hour, income and revenue. Nations (Nigeria inclusive) suffered greatly as a result of the Covid pandemic infliction. In this context, the paper proposes the need for the government of Nigeria through her public service to embrace and implement e-governance to enable the provision of seamless, continuous and timely delivery of public services and marshal resources during times of disaster, pandemic or lockdown. Flowing from this, the paper extracts and examined the constitutive and apparent growing concern for the deployment of ICT vis-à-vis e-governance and digital services in developing nation’s public service especially in Nigeria. To investigate the topic of concern, the researcher used qualitative research method to investigate the problem and collected data from secondary sources. The paper raised a host of questions and made some policy prescriptions.