Information and Communication Technology (ICT) as a Panacea for Overcoming the Challenges of COVID-19 Pandemic: A Study of Academic Staff Performance in Tertiary Institutions in Enugu State, Nigeria

The sudden outbreak of COVID-19 and its consequential lockdown led to the closure of tertiary institutions across the globe. The closure had severe implications by stopping academic staff from going to work and performing their jobs. However, to navigate the implication of the closure of tertiary institutions on teaching and learning, ICT and its accessories were leveraged to enable the academic staff to work remotely. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the adoption of ICT in cushioning the effect of the pandemic on the performance of academic staff in tertiary institutions, using Enugu State as a study base. Technological determinism theory was employed in the analysis. The methodology used is a cross-sectional survey that leveraged qualitative and quantitative approaches. Data were collected using both primary and secondary sources. The population of the study is 8,034, with a sample size of 381. However, 312 questionnaires were used after retrieval from the respondents; sorting, cleaning, and scoring. We coded and analyzed the data using descriptive statistics from the IBM SPSS version 28.0, leveraging tables, percentages, and content analysis. The study adopted a Chi-Square (X2) test of hypotheses. Findings revealed that tertiary institutions leveraged ICT to cushion the effects of COVID-19 on academic staff performance, work-life balance, training and development, and safety during the pandemic. The study recommends full digitization of tertiary institutions, staff training and re-training, adequate funding, constant power supply, and development of indigenous capacity in ICT. Purpose: The study investigated how ICT was deployed as a solution to navigate the implications of COVID-19 pandemic lockdown; thereby enabling academic staff members of tertiary institutions who hitherto were forced out of offices and thus unable to perform their jobs were able to switch to remote/digital work arrangement using ICT tools/devices and platforms.Methods: A qualitative and quantitative field survey that leveraged both primary and secondary data was adopted to descriptively content analyze data to arrive at the findings.Conclusions: ICT played crucial role in sustaining teaching and learning in tertiary institutions during COVID-19 pandemic. And thus, should be developed and sustained as a veritable tool in times of workplace disruptions such as witnessed during the COVID-19 in order to preempt similar future outbreaks.Implications: Technology is driving education sector more than before, and should be adequately harnessed and funded to enable local schools to compete favorably at the global stage.Limitations: Digital incompetency on part of the employees, high cost of procuring, maintaining and servicing ICT devices, poor electricity supply, Internet downtime, and poor funding are hampering advancement of technology in tertiary institutions in Nigeria.