By Derrick Blaze and Emmanuel Dominic
OAU Eportal is everything to an OAU student. How? Well, it is the first and most dominant proof that you are a student; it is where you do everything as a student. You check your results with the Eportal, pay your school fees, and register your courses. Every detail about your studentship is online, so, it is best if you never forget your password. However, some times, especially when you need it the most, accessing the Eportal can be frustrating.
So, on the 12th of March, 2020, an Eportal app developed by an alumnus of the prestigious university was uploaded on the Google Play Store. The developer stated his inspiration for the app.
“Most students do not have the school’s emergency numbers in the cases of unforeseen circumstances. Due to the witness of the loss of two students which was traced to the delay in contacting respective emergency units”
His aim is to also bridge the gap between students and OAU emergency centres/units.Since its upload on Google Play Store, it has been the topic of discussion on social media platforms. However, this app is not available on Apple Store. So, what does this app do? How is it just different from the normal Eportal?
It is a tradition for the Eportal to become annoyingly slow when you need it the most. And it is understandable because over 20,000 students are trying to get access to the Eportal to either check results or register courses. This great amount of pressure on the online Eportal, makes the access really slow and sometimes impossible. This problem seems to be fixed but no one is using the Eportal for now, so we do not really know.
However, there is a new feature that allows freshmen to be in contact with the right excos. Although, when the new feature was dropped, only a few departments had their details available. Hopefully, there will be an update. This is definitely a good development.
As the developer said on the reason for the creation of the app, is to ensure all emergency hotlines are easily accessible to students. Well, he made this possible by putting an offline page on the app showing all the emergency hotlines and the emergency departments they belong to. In this critical period, the creation of this app is more than a blessing. The advantages of this app are really vast that it encompasses the disadvantages.
One of the major fears of students is the fact that their parents or guardians are getting closer to having access to check through on their wards portal either for their results or other information but they would need the passwords, wouldn’t they?
The real question is; how safe is it? Can it be hacked? Will the school accept it through the proper protocols? With over 500+ downloads on Google Play Store, we just might found out soon.
