Nigeria bids bye to dot com
By Sonny Aragba-Akpore,
Asst. Communications Editor
NIGERIA'S recognised Internet name, the .ng, is 18 days old today, ending the nine-and-a-half year-old struggle to host it locally.
A memorandum of understanding on the name was signed between the global interest administrators, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and the Nigerian Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA).
The impact of the local name has been phenomenal. Within two weeks of the signing, at least 400 ministries, parastatals and agencies have been registered, a marked improvement on the previous record in which about 650 organisations were registered in nine-and-a-half years.
Most organisations will now come under the www.ng.tld.nitda.gov.ng, a website already put in place by NITDA for interactive pre-registration before the registration proper.
The already registered government agencies include the Central Bank of Nigeria with the web address "cbn.gov.ng", while that of the police is "police.gov.ng".
The ministry of communication, now has its website as "fmc.gov.ng", while the office of the secretary to the government of the federation is "ofsgf.gov.ng", among others.
With the development, ICANN has formally ceded the right to host Nigeria's country code Top Level Domain (TLD) name locally.
The country has thus, also, formally joined the information superhighway, otherwise known as network of networks, the Internet.
While the membership and hosting rights of other countries were done within such nations, that of Nigeria has been gravitating between Italy and the United States of America (USA) in the last nine and a half years.
The battle for local control had been bitter and rancorous among major stakeholders, including the Nigeria Internet Group (NIG) Nigeria Computer Society (NCS) among others. But a Presidential intervention on January 16, 2004 ceded the authority to host the domain name on NITDA and consequently requested ICANN to that effect.
The Director-General of NITDA, Prof. Gabriel Olalere Ajayi, confirmed to The Guardian at the weekend that ICANN had endorsed NITDA as the Administrative Point of contact.
Although NITDA will henceforth host the domain name, for which it also has the mandate to register all corporate organisations, including government, ministries, parastatals and agencies, its positions will be temporary as the ICANN has suggested that government be freed from the task.
It has advised NITDA to host a stakeholders conference from where a Non Governmental Organisation (NGO) will be formed to take over the hosting ultimately.
Ajayi confirmed at the weekend that a stakeholder conference has been slated for next month.
But while NITDA remains administrative point of contact, an American resident in Washington DC, Mr. Randy Bush, still serves as the technical point of contact for Nigeria's cc TLD.
The endorsement of NITDA puts paid to the authority vested in Mrs. Ibukun Odusote, who held that position as pioneer administrative person of contact since 1995.
The transfer of the ccTLD better known as "redelegation" was effective June 9, 2004.
ICANN President, Dr. Paul Twomey, conveyed this decision to NITDA DG, Prof. Ajayi who was named the .ng manager for Nigeria.
In a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signed between ICANN President and NITDA DG, ICANN recognised Ajayi as the manager of the cc TLD during the duration of the MOU.
NITDA, according to the MOU, is also to acknowledge "that ICANN is, and throughout the term of this MOU shall remain, the Internet co-ordination entity responsible to the global Internet community for the development of policies for the overall co-ordination of the Internet domain name system (DNS) in a manner that maintains it is a stable and interoperable global naming system for the Internet."
The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) has equally endorsed the redelegation of the domain name to NITDA and consequently put that on its website.
Ajayi also noted that local hosting would enable Nigeria monitor and minimise the activities of cyber criminals.
According to him: Through various initiatives by NITDA and the support of President Olusegun Obasanjo, we have been able to take training of the top echelon of the civil service to a level of confidence in Information Technology.
"For instance, through the e-Nigeria, e-Judiciary and e-Government initiatives, we have been able to train top officials on the uses and skills acquisition in IT."
Ajayi said to be able to prosecute cybercrime, the judiciary, law enforcement agents, the police and lawyers must know what cybercrime is all about or what constitutes cyber crime.
He said the Chief Justice of the Federation (CJF), Justice Muhammadu Uwais now interacts with fellow justices across the world online.
Judgements of the Supreme Court are also now on the Internet.
"I tell you, the local hosting will help to develop our content and context of the Internet," Ajayi added.
