Lagos — The bug of information technology is already sweeping across various institutions of higher learning in the country. Nigerian students are working assiduously towards measuring up to the standard of their colleagues in other parts of the world.

For the average student in institutions of higher learning with access to internet facility, the cyber cafe is a second home. Students browse the internet to chat with fellow students with who they had never met. This is the most pertinent reason why students stake their money to browse. There are several websites where the dating game is permitted.

You can also send text messages through www.sms.ac.com to any GSM handset or through www.virginstudents.com . In foreign countries where technology is more advanced, high school students have personal websites where they showcase their pictures and write about themselves, for instance www.krista homepage.com. The trend is the same in the University of Lagos. For instancewww. rhoda.jesusa

nswers.com or www.masters

troke.4t.com.

At the Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago-Iwoye, a cybercafe has just come alive and it is located right inside the mini campus.

Unilag is like a cyber city, every nook and cranny of the institution has an internet centre. The E-mail facility has helped a great deal towards facilitating contacts. The websites have also fostered goodwill and friendship between people of different backgrounds who have never met. Internet facilities can also be used for research projects. Notable search engines for any research topic are www.askjeekee.com,www.google.com, altavista and Yahoo.com.

Students at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, University of Ibadan and Yaba College of Technology are also enjoying the benefits of the changes brought by the advancement in information technology. Same can not be said of students in various institutions. You can not compare an average student in Nigeria with his counterpart in Malaysia. The question is: when will the government make it accessible to the average Nigerian student? I will share my personal experience with you next week on how I met someone special after about six months of e-mail and phone calls last week.