Education is a basic human right. It is the key to the developing of human capabilities. In
the last decade women education and development has attracted the attention of the
international community. A number of conferences, seminars and workshops have been
organized at international, national and local levels to issues related to women education
and development. This is as a result of the growing awareness that "development or
progress in peoples' welfare cannot be achieved where the needs and contributions of half
of the world's population, women, are continually downgraded, marginalized or completely
ignored" (National Population Commission, 1991 p.3). Leahy and Yermish (2003) also
observed that although women constitute half of a given nation's populace, they represent
far less than fifty per cent of the nation's intellectual capital, skilled labour pool, and
economic contribution.
To address this situation, The Fourth World Conference on Women was held in Beijing,
China in 1995. The platform for Action of this conference states that:
Women should be empowered by enhancing their skills, knowledge and access to
information technology. This will strengthen their ability to combat negative portrayals of
women internationally and to challenge instances of abuse of power of an increasingly
important industry… Indeed women's access to new information and communication
technologies (ICTs) has become increasingly imperative if gender parity in education will be
achieved.
Recognizing the transforming power of information and communication technology in
educational processes countries such as Canada have linked electronically over 10,000
schools for the provision of a host of on-line services (Hamelink, 1997). In fact, educators
and policy makers affirmed that information and communication technologies are of
paramount importance to the future of education anywhere in the world and Nigeria cannot
afford to lag behind. The deployment of information and communication technologies at all
levels of education – primary, secondary and tertiary institution no doubt will contribute to
the meeting of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of gender parity in education.