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 Daily
Independent Online.
* Tuesday, June 22, 2004.
Anatomy of Nigeria’s Internet domain name
row
By Shina Badaru
IT.Telecom Editor
January this year was to mark
a turning point in the titanic battle for control of Nigeria’s .ng domain
name.
It was when the Nigeria Internet Group
(NIG) decided to literally, “bare it all” in the celebrated domain name
dispute. Its riposte to counter the Nigeria Computer Society (NCS), which
has waded into the fight following renewed spate of controversy sparked
by various interests seeking control of the domain name.
The dispute returned to limelight
following a December 8, 2003 letter by Minister of Science and
Technology, Professor Turner Isoun to President and CEO, Internet
Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, Dr. Paul Twomey, seeking
redelegation of the domain name control from Mrs. Ibukun Odusote, who at
the time was the administrative point of contact (POC) to NIG.
Isoun’s position seeking the transfer of control to
NIG, as against the NCS preferred by Mrs. Odusote sparked a row among the
various contenders for the domain name.
NCS subsequently reacted by dispatching
another letter countering the minister’s position to ICANN and another to
President Olusegun Obasanjo seeking his intervention into the issue.
The battle has also pitted NCS against the
National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), which
supports the choice of NIG as the controlling body over .ng.
It was also an issue that was to snowball
as the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the
U.S.-based body that controls the Internet ran into difficulties in
arbitrating over the issue following deep divisions among contenders.
Nigeria’s failure to reach a consensus was
taken to the world stage when the minister and NCS dispatched separate
letters to President/CEO, ICANN, Dr. Paul Twomey.
They canvassed differing stances on the
choice of entities to control the registration and control of the .ng
name when its technical management is transferred to Nigeria.
NCS also wrote President Olusegun Obasanjo
to protest the re-delegation request made by Isoun to ICANN.
The .ng domain name dispute has defied
resolution within the last half of a decade when some members of NIG
tried to wrest control of .ng from one of its founding members, Mrs.
Odusote, the former admin contact.
Mrs. Odusote, in whose name the .ng domain
name for Nigeria was formerly registered was also the administrative
contact recognised by ICANN for registration of the Internet name
resource.
She had favoured transferring the
management of the domain name to NCS as against NIG based on allegation
that the latter is not representative of the nation’s Internet community.
Under ICANN rules, two entities, an
Administrative Contact and Technical Contact are recognised for domain
name registration. Mr Randy Bush of U.S.-based NSRC currently functions
as Technical Contact for Nigeria.
Minister of Science and Technology, Isoun
had in his letter told ICANN he had the authority of the Federal
Government of Nigeria to seek the re-delegation of the .ng domain name
from Mrs. Odusote to NIG.
According to the minister, all available
opportunities for amicably resolving the impasse in the administration of
the TLD have been extended to her and exhausted.
Isoun added that the general consensus of
stakeholders and the Internet Community in Nigeria support re-delegation
to NIG while adding that NIG is technically and administratively
competent to run the .ng TLD registry.
“In view of the foregoing and given Mrs.
Odusote's antecedents of evading re-delegation, on one hand, and/or her
ineffectiveness in administering the TLD in the interest of the Internet
Community in Nigeria, on the other hand, it is the position of the
government of Nigeria that Mrs. Odusote has no present or future
intention of either amicably re-delegating the TLD to NIG or properly
administering the TLD in the interest of the Internet Community in
Nigeria”, Isoun had alleged.
According to him, “it seems clear to us
now than ever before, that what Mrs. Odusote is interested in is to
continue to hold the government of Nigeria, and the teeming members of
Nigeria' s Internet Community to ransom on personal, selfish and largely
unjustifiable grounds, without any regards whatsoever to the patriotic interest
of Nigeria.”
The minister added, “the foregoing
represents the circumstances that have caused us to request that you
re-delegate the administration of the TLD from Mrs. Odusote to NIG as
soon as possible, in accordance with the wishes of the stakeholders and
the Internet Community in Nigeria as well as the Government of the
Federal Republic of Nigeria.”
However, in a swift reaction to the
Minister’s letter, President, NCS, Nwannenna also filed another letter to
ICANN saying that the Minister’s view on the .ng domain name issue was
“personal”.
According to the NCS president, who described the body
as the largest Internet stakeholder community in Nigeria, ICANN should
not grant the Minster’s request for re-delegation of .ng ccTLD to NIG.
The body also told President Obasanjo and
the ICANN president that options for resolving the impasse have not been
exhausted to justify a “forced re-delegation.”
NCS hinged its rationale on the following
grounds:
∑ The government, and the FMST in
particular, is not properly briefed by NITDA on the true state of affairs
regarding the ng ccTLD. This is because Prof Ajayi, the Director of
NITDA, has cultivated a lot of personal relationships with members of NIG
and this makes it difficult for him to give unbiased advice to government
on this issue.
∑ NITDA made no real genuine and
transparent effort to achieve true stakeholder consensus before advising
government to embark on the request for forced re-delegation.
∑ The so-called meetings of stakeholders
called by NITDA were diversionary. The main strategy adopted by NITDA was
to use government power to force things as much as possible. It is this
power that they used to ensure that participants at the meetings were
mainly those that they control. The statistics of participants at the
meetings show this very clearly.
∑ The consistent reference to the modus
operandi of NIG as lacking transparency was established during the
stakeholders forum through comments credited to both the Chairman of the
Board of Trustees as well as the current President of NIG, as evident
from the Minutes of one of the Meetings, written by NITDA.
∑ The claim that NIG has expanded its BOT
in compliance with the “Stakeholders condition“ is false because, other
than providing a list of potential members, no formal inauguration of a
new BOT has taken place and may never take place. The undue emphasis on
the expansion of the Board of NIG is a superficial and false one but
being touted as real in order to be seen to be playing according to the
rules.
∑ NCS does not believe that the proposed
ngNIC can be obtained by merely expanding the membership of the Board of
Trustees of NIG because members of the Board of Trustees of NIG, no
matter how large their population is, will not be in a position to
exercise the amount of control needed to get NIG to administer .ngccTLD
in a transparent and not-for-profit manner that will engender confidence
in the Internet Community in Nigeria and beyond. Such a supervisory role
will better be played by a larger body, like ngNIC, to which NIG itself
should belong.
∑ The Nigeria Internet Group as a
corporate entity did not register ng ccTLD with ICANN. In fact NIG itself
was not in existence by the time ng ccTLD was registered. Thus the claim
by NIG to the ownership of .ngccTLD on the basis of an ambiguous,
general-purpose license granted it for the “provision and operation of
Value Added Network Services”, by the National Communications Commission,
is false, misleading and cannot and should not be entertained.
∑ Mrs Odusote is currently operating as
admin poc on behalf of NCS and so far we have had no reports to justify
the accusation of “ineffectiveness in administering the TLD”. Her
continued insistence on due process and transparency on the issue of ng
ccTLD, as required by ICANN, is an eloquent testimony that she has been
protecting and will continue to protect the "interest of the
Internet Community in Nigeria”. The apparent attack on her person is not
justifiable and the Minister himself can attest to this.
∑ It is the wish of NCS that any group
that is qualified to run .ng ccTLD does so under the supervision of the
proposed new body, ngNIC, which will ensure that such a group is
propelled by the desire to serve the larger Internet community in the
country. The process has to be transparent and earn the confidence of the
Internet Community not only in Nigeria but worldwide.
∑ Other avenues for a free and transparent
resolution of the problem still exist. The option of allowing the Senate
of the Federal Republic of Nigeria to mediate on the matter is yet to be
explored.
The issue not only snowballed but the
combatants’ tone became testy when NIG alleged Mrs. Odusote sold the .ng
domain name control to the Nigerian Telecommunications Limited (NITEL)
for the sum of US$50, 000 at the time.
NIG had alleged that it botched the deal
which would have transferred the control of the national resource to
NITEL.
On her part, Mrs. Odusote has alleged that
NIG will not further the ideals of the broader Internet community if it
is vested with national domain name control.
She alleged that some of the individuals
anxiously pushing for transfer of control to NIG, who also run Internet
businesses are merely interested in setting up registry that will
commercialise domain name, a development which she says would amount to
them reaping where they have not sown.
While the lingering domain name dispute
has defied solution over the years, the fresh round of exchanges late
2003 further deepened the rift leaving ICANN more confounded by the new
dimension it took at the period.
According to President, NIG, Dr. Emmanuel
Ekuwem, Odusote’s association with NITEL, “was an outrightly mercantile
platform.”
He alleged that $50,000 allegedly changed
hands under a transaction in which the resource was traded to NITEL.
In one of such public declarations, Ekuwem
accused the Admin POC of bad faith.
According to him, “discussions aimed at
resolving the impasse on the local hosting of .ng ccTLD met subterfuges
on the point of the Admin contact person. Decision arrived at were put on
hold pending “until I brief my Minister and get his approval because it
is not my personal affair, but that of the Ministry.
“Of course we knew that the
Minister, the Ministry and the Admin contact person were one and the same
person! With gratitude to the Nigerian Press (print and electronic) and
patriotic moves by the National Information Technology Development Agency
(NITDA) and the NCC, the use of the Ministry of Information platform
became unwise! Then the search for one more diversionary platform: The
Nigeria Computer Society (NCS)”, he alleged.
He went further to accuse NCS of being a
“spoiler” in the entire .ng dispute, “because its leadership is composed
of men and women who, having been following developments in the IT sector
and travails/history of the .ng ccTLD issue, should have known better and
intervened within the laws of Nigerian, respect for the constituted
authority of a licensor and the legal empowerment of a licensee. Instead,
the NCS chose the path of vendetta against the NIG.”
Ekuwem traced the root of NCS’s alleged
vendetta to 2002
“In the year 2002, the Senate of the
Federal Republic of Nigeria, via its committee on Science and Technology,
intervened by convening a public hearing on the status of ICT in Nigeria.
This was in apparent reaction to the litigation between COAN and ITAN as
well as to the raging controversy on what was Information Technology”, he
said.
He added that NIG had, “in its submission,
informed the distinguished senators that: ∑ Information Technology (IT)
was a convergence of Telecommunication (including broadcasting - the
media) and computers.”
Ekuwem further alleged that NIG earned the
NCS vendetta following its position that a part of a system could not
call itself the whole and an umbrella body was required to accommodate
the interest of relevant bodies: CPN, COAN, ITAN, ATCON, NIG, NSE, COREN,
ISPAN, ISPON, representations from government agencies like NCC, NITDA,
NBC, BON, NUC; relevant NGOs/civil societies, among others.
According to him, “the Senate hearing
ended with a resolve by everyone to work together to form a broadband IT
body or Network. To our
shocking dismay, COAN proceeded to change its name to NCS and set out to lobby
other organizations to join it.
NCS (i.e. COAN, ITAN and ISPON) is an umbrella computer body and
NOT an umbrella IT body. An
umbrella IT body/Network is yet to be formed by all stakeholders in the
industry.”
NIG insists it is duly licensed by the Nigeria
Communications Commission (NCC) to provide Internet Service, which
includes the Management and Administration of Internet Domain Name System
in Nigeria.
It is a position that NCS counters citing
that the interest of the wider Internet community must be taken into
consideration, rather than a sectional and potentially commercial
interest. NIG disagreed.
According to its President, “NCS has
always quoted the first part of our license and deliberately avoided
mentioning the second part that empowers the NIG to manage and administer
Internet Domain Name in Nigeria.
“The Board of Trustees of the NIG was
re-composed to reflect the recommendation of NCS on what constitutes the
broad spectrum of Internet community in Nigeria.”
He said, “the functions of ngNIC as
proposed by NCS are already functions of the already licensed Internet
Domain Name Manager and Administrator in Nigeria: The Nigeria Internet Group (NIG).”
Ekuwem adds thus: If one assumes that the
NCS did not deliberately overlook our license empowerment to also manage
and administer the Internet Domain Name in Nigeria, then we would grant
it the justification to recommend the establishment of ngNIC. Having realized now that the NIG
is empowered to discharge the functions of ngNIC, the NCS is urged to
demonstrate its sincerity by wholeheartedly supporting the NIG and the
government of Nigeria in the application for re-delegation to the NIG.
He urged the NCS, “to immediately withdraw
its petition to ICANN because it is an act of gross disrespect for the
Federal Government of the Federal Republic of Nigeria for it (NCS) to
call on an international organization to ignore an application to it
(ICANN) by a democratically elected government of Nigeria.
According to him, “it is also an
outrageous insult on the Presidency of the Federal Republic of Nigeria
for the NCS to write to it (the Presidency) and at the same time petition
ICANN without waiting for a response from the presidency. The Presidency is a respectable
institution of the people of Nigeria. Nigerians demand an apology from the NCS.”
Ekuwem was to further say that NIG has
invited the Economic and Financial Crimes Committee (EFCC) to investigate
the alleged $50,000 sale of the .ng to NITEL.
Reacting to the alleged sale to NITEL, NCS
president, Nwanenna said that it is not that, “Mrs. Odusote went to NITEL
to say ‘come and buy’”.
However, he would not be specific on
whether there was an actual transaction between the Admin. POC and NITEL
but confirmed that, “we have tried her on the issue”.
According to him, “she has been put on
trial and we didn’t find anything unethical against her. They (NIG) have
not been able to pin anything unethical against her person. If they have
been able to pin any unethical behaviour on her person, ICANN would have
taken it away from her along time ago. The issue of NITEL is neither here
nor there.”
However, President, NIG, Dr Ekuwem
disagrees when he said that the alleged sale to NITEL constitutes 80 per
cent of the root of lingering .ng imbroglio dating back some seven years.
According to him, “she admitted to the
sale before a Technical Committee headed by CEO of Linkserve, Mr. Chima
Onyekwere, to investigate the allegations. This was actually what angered
the Italians who said that why will they continue to administer the
domain name server for free there in Italy while somebody else sits in
Nigeria and collects $50,000 from NITEL.”
According to him, when the Italian
authorities learnt of the sale, that was when they gave an ultimatum to
Nigeria to move the domain server in 2000, “a development which put the
country under a lot of threat.”
“I can inform you that the sale of her
Admin contact personship to NITEL is unethical. It is unethical for her
to have sold what wasn’t hers in the first place and that is why we are
seeking the intervention of the Economic and Financial Crimes Committee
in the issue”, Ekuwem was later to declare.
A top industry analyst doubts if NITDA
will play a fair umpire in the proposed appointment of an NGO to manage
.ng based on the instruction of President Obasanjo.
He says, “NITDA and NIG are so cosy that I
doubt if they will not come up with some game plan to swing things in
favour of NIG.”
Ekuwem said in the heat of the controversy
that advocacy for an alternative body apart from NIG to manage the domain
name is, “a very diversionary suggestion.”
According to Ekuwem, “I call them
diversionary and they also distract in the sense that assuming that the
Nigerian Internet Group has been administering as it has been licensed to
do by the NCC and Nigerians were suffering from the epileptic
availability of the .NG domain name in the cyberspace and Nigerians had
cried out the way they were crying out over Nitel or the way they cry out
over NEPA, saying NIG cannot perform, then they would have justified to
go looking for other agencies or institutions to run the .ng.”
He added that, “we in NIG are what you can
call the digital armed forces of the .ng flag in the cyberspace. We will
stop at nothing to ensure that that flag of our country is hoisted in the
cyberspace and remains hoisted, smoothly, for all time.”
While Obasanjo wants an autonomous body to manage the domain, an
anonymous NCS source says the next few weeks will determine if NIG’s
stance to be the sole pole hoisting that cyberflag changes or stays.
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