The last one year in NIRA, depicts a transformation
exercise has just begun, mostly with recent launch of partnership with NITDA to
switch Nigerians to .ng, the nation’s country code Top Level Domain (ccTLD),
reports REMMY NWEKE.
Preamble:
Barely 13 months ago, the Nigeria Internet
Registration Association
(NIRA) commenced what many industry observers
described as a transformation agenda.
This came soon after its pioneer president, Mr. Ndukwe Kalu,
passed on, hence the vice president then, Mrs. Mary Uduma assumed office as the
president, following an election that took place in August 2010.
One promise, she made was to makeover NIRA from where the
late Kalu stopped due to his untimely death, therefore entrenching a culture of
institutional structures, thereby laying a good foundation based on human
resources with the appointment of a new chief operating officer (COO) among
other staff.
This, nonetheless, spurred NIRA’s supervisory body, the
National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) to partner with the
organisation in several occasion including the recently ended one-day
Switchto.ng workshop, which is expected to criss-cross all the geo-political
zones in the country in no distance time.
Importance of .ng ccTLD:
Speaking at the workshop, Mr. Akinbo Adeola Cornerstone of
My Nigeria Online (MyNOL) and a member of the Board of Trustees, stated in his
presentation tagged ‘Importance of ccTLDs in the Society – Nigeria and You’
said that the on-going transformation on .ng ccTLD would lead to its
development with best practices and uptake among the internet community both
locally and internationally.
While urging members to know their executive board and
secretariat officials by taking time to visit the official website of the group
at www.nira.org.ng, Akinbo stressed that currently, NiRA is focused on
constitutional amendments, fundraising campaign, communications and awareness
as well as participation in strategic events.
Additionally, he called for more active engagement with NiRA
by members, whereas charging the secretariat to beef-up its branding strategy
by reviving mailing lists, regular website update and translation where
necessary. These, he noted would improve membership mobilization and capacity
building.
Benefits of switching to .ng
The Chief Operating Officer (COO) of the Nigeria Internet
Registration Association (NIRA), Mr. Ope Odusan, used the opportunity to list
the benefits of switching to dot ng in this dispensation.
Some of these benefits, he said, include that NIRA is
mindful of the unique opportunity its country code Top Level Domain (ccTLD)
name presents, stressing that dot ng assumes a global significance for many
words by coupling of the TLD with any of the vowels of the English language,
like in ‘Fishi.ng.’
He also said, NIRA intends to exploit these potentials to
continue to make .ng a global registry irrespective of the entry of new gTLDs,
adding that the uniqueness of the .ng ccTLD has seen firms like Google,
Microsoft Domain Developers Fund taking up googli.ng; bi.ng to name a few,
since the Second Level Domain Names were opened.
NiRA, he said, has deployed a robust Internet Domain Name
System that would bring immense economic growth and vitality to the nation,
maintaining that the organisation built a world-class Registry that Nigerians
and their associates would gladly adopt as the TLD of choice.
“Our target to have 250,000 domain names registered in the
.ng Registry will contribute N250 million annually to Nigerian economy,” he
said.
According to him, NiRA has the potential to create over
50,000 jobs directly and indirectly, adding that it offers stable source of
Foreign Currency for the economy, asserting, “Dot ng ccTLD is a platform for
the Nigerian Internet Ecosystem.”
Internet ecosystem:
In the Internet ecosystem, he said, the online commerce,
e-government services, access to valuable information and knowledge would
thrive in addition to a boost in academics through effective research resource
and participation in distance learning programmes.
On the aspect of job creation, Odusan said that there exist
some job avenues for the Information and Communication Technology (ICT)
professionals, such as new generation of jobs like webmaster, content manager,
and web developers, in addition to industry entrepreneurs and domain agents’
likely spurring job creation engine for local software application and content
developers.
He explained that tax incentives for companies currently not
using .ng domain to switchto .ng do exist, especially for unemployed graduates,
underscoring the fact that stakeholders could market their skills beyond
Nigeria via the internet and earn foreign income while at home.
... Remember charity begins @ home:
He then urged Nigerians to take the saying that charity
begins at home to heart with encouragement of the Federal Government and its
institutions, through the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs). Pointing
out that FG should institute necessary government policies and mandates for .ng
adoption to pave the way for what he described as “holistic approach to NiRA
growth.”
Systems, he said, would be developed and coordinated for the
technical standards to boost local administration of key infrastructure, even
as process of documentation and operation of critical infrastructure, policies
and procedures, regulation and service delivery, should be people oriented via
institutional capacity building and mobilisation.
On the product offering, he said NIRA is looking at this by
creating local content with Nigerian centric approach, hence local branding of
international brands for instance, google.com.ng, thisday.ng, airfrance.com.ng,
itrealms.com.ng, champion.com.ng appear in the centre stage of the product
campaign.
This, he pointed out is not to say that the Private Public
Partnership (PPP) for data and information security is forgotten as there are
plans for the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) to enable automated domain
registration via links to NiRA accredited registrars’ websites. The same, he
said, applies to the Nigerian Chamber of Commerce to fast-track registration of
its members on .ng; just as the engagement of Nigerian embassies and missions
abroad in the promotion and adoption of .ng would not be over-looked.
For those desirous of getting .ng, they need to decide on
the name and extension they want to register under such as .com.ng, .org.ng or
.name.ng to name a few, then choose any of the NiRA accredited registrars,
search for availability of such a name chosen and if the name is available,
proceed with registration, then relax “You are now on dot ng.”
The Naming Convention and Levels:
Dwelling on ‘Domain Name Conventions,’ NIRA vice president,
Mr. Sunday Folayan said, it stipulated compliance to certain rules and
regulations as may be set by the Registry in any given country, which in this
case falls with NIRA in line with the domain name policy.
For Folayan, who also is the chief executive officer,
Skannet Limited, a domain name is made up of several levels of domains with levels
being separated by . (dot). He cited for instance ‘we.keep.you.sleepi.ng ‘ is a
domain name, hence, levels are read from right to left.
“.ng is the top level domain alias TLD; dot ‘sleepi’ is the
second level domain alias Second Level Domain (SLD), dot ‘You’ is the third
level domain (3LD); ‘Keep’ is the fourth level domain (4LD) and ‘We’ is the
fifth level domain (5LD),” he explained.
The NiRA Domain Name Policy, he said, is currently operating
on Version 1.0 since May 5, 2008, which described NiRA’s rules for the
registration and use of domain names within the .ng domain and its sub-domains.
Even as NiRA’s policies are available online at the organization website.
NIRA, he said, disallows names in certain domains, therefore
reserves the right to maintain the some list of domains that ‘Shall Not’ be
available for registration or could be withdrawn if already registered.
No go areas in .ng:
Citing an instance with ‘Offensive Names’ he described it as
words determined by NiRA to be offensive to the Nigerian community; ‘Restricted
Names’ are names that would give wrong impression if used, such as Military and
Government to name a few. As well as ‘Premium Names’, which he said are domains
with generic words only, thus commanding premium value in terms of Naira and
Kobo. Some of these premium domains he listed to include ‘cooki.ng and bi.ng’
among others.
He further said, Nigeria’s SLDs comprised of .com.ng for
commercial purposes and is open for registration; .edu.ng is for degree
awarding institutions; .sch.ng is for non-degree awarding schools; .gov.ng is
for governmental organizations; .mil.ng means it’s for Military and related
purposes; .org.ng - Non-Gov Organizations and open; .net.ng – networks;
.mobi.ng - mobiles and .name.ng for personal names and still open respectively,
while .premium.ng is by auction only.
NiRA, Folayan said, does not allow certain characters and as
such, does not currently operate Internationalized Domain Names (IDN), which
allows domain names in the natural languages of the users. Just as he listed
characters allowed by NIRA to consist of 26 Unaccented Roman Characters; that
is, from ‘A to Z’ both in small and capital letters respectively, in addition
to the 10 Western digits from 0 to 9, coupled with (-) hyphen.
Character combinations, he said, must conform with domain
names rules which states that it must be a maximum of 64 characters for now;
not case sensitive like ‘AGe and AgE’ saying they are the same; while the first
or last character of a domain name may not be a hyphen, there cannot be two
hyphens in a name, even as domains cannot start with xn followed by --.
The second level domains (2LD), he said, could only be
offered for sale via auction, whereas, some third level domains (3LD) could
only be offered for sale via auction with an instance of ‘internet.com.ng’ so
also that 3LD domains may not be a single character.
Even though, he added that generic restrictions may apply
for each SLD or 3LD they may also have restrictions related to these
sub-domains; for example, the .edu.ng may have restrictions which are different
from those for .gov.ng.
Best practices:
Domain names, he advised, are more useful when they conform
to best practices, short and popular names are better than long and detailed
names, maintaining that to register any 3LD domain within .gov.ng, State
Government entities must register the full state name or the official
abbreviation of the state name similar to that used in vehicle license plate
registration.
“States are encouraged to make 4LD available to local
governments and state government departments and agencies,” he suggested,
adding that generic names are not allowed, citing an instance with instead of
shipping.gov.ng it should be nsc.gov.ng. Just like the generic SLDs are not
allowed on 3LDs, for instance, “you cannot register com.org.ng, org.com.ng,
mil.com.ng.”
Folayan reassured that there are rules and conventions that
govern the choice and registration of domain names, hence, the naming
conventions have been carefully created to avoid confusion, and make it easy
for users to navigate on the Internet. As a result, NiRA as much as possible
abides with global best practices, in the implementation of domain names, even
as there is no internationalized domain yet in .ng.
Supervisory role on .ng ccTLD:
Mr. Lazarus Ikoti of the National Information Technology
Development Agency (NITDA), who dwelt on “Implementing Compliance with
Government Domain Policy,” noted that with Section 6 of the Act establishing
NITDA of 2007, makes provisions for functions of the agency, comprising Section
6(b) which particularly gave NITDA the power to make guidelines for the
establishment and maintenance of the appropriate infrastructure for Information
Technology (IT).
Additionally, he said, that Section 6(m) specifically enjoined
NITDA to accelerate internet and intranet penetration in the country and
promote sound internet governance thereof. He stressed at the one day workshop
that the aforementioned Section 6(m) mandated NITDA to give effect to the
second schedule of the NITDA Act, describing Section 1 of the second schedule
as very instructive.
Subject to the provision to this act, Mr. Ikoti pointed out
that the agency shall advise the federal government generally on matters that
are related to the management and administration of Nigeria’s country code Top
Level Domain, as well as enjoined to setup procedure and criteria for second
level domains and qualification for domain name registrars and host.
Compliance to .ng governance:
He said NITDA has been charged to develop a policy to
supervise and manage .ng ccTLD, said that Section 6 of the enabling Act, NITDA
Act 2007 provided guidelines to facilitate the establishment and maintenance of
appropriate infrastructure for information technology and systems application
and development in the country for public and private sectors, urban-rural
development, the economy and the government. Just as NITDA is to accelerate
Internet and Intranet penetration in Nigeria and promote sound Internet
Governance by giving effect to the Second schedule of this Act.
Liable offences and .ng as a national resource:
According to him, Section 18 indicated that subsection (a)
for a first offence, should be fined N200,000 or imprisonment for a term of 1
year or both such fine or imprisonment; and (b) for a second and subsequent
offences, to a fine of N500,000 or to imprisonment for a term of 3 years or to
both such fine and Imprisonment. Maintaining that the role of NITDA as far as
.ng ccTLD is concerned is embedded in the Act.
Underscoring the ‘Government Domain Policy for Nigeria,’ the
acting Head, Infrastructure and Technical Support Services, NITDA, Mr. Olayinka
Adejube, informed participants that NITDA policy document was based not only on
the need to populate the Internet with government’s presence but also to
coordinate the hosting of government domains especially as regards security of
the domain. Noting that since .gov.ng domain is a national resource for the
benefit of the Nigerian people, the domain would be available for all
governments from the Federal to the Local Government.
Also, he said, NITDA Act has some provisions, for instance,
in Section 6 (a) which stated the mandate to “Create a framework for the
planning, research, development, standardization, application, coordination,
monitoring, evaluation and regulation of Information Technology practices,
activities and systems in Nigeria and all matters related thereto and for that
purpose….”
The section 6(m), Adejube said, stated that NITDA should
“Accelerate Internet and Internet penetration in Nigeria and promote sound
Internet Governance by giving effects to the Second Schedule of this Act” while
should approve the constitution of the management of any such organization
created to carry out the acts mentioned in Section 2 (1) of this Schedule among
others.
Conclusion:
What this workshop plans to achieve is to create and
re-emphasise the trust and mandate from where NIRA is coming from and the need
for Nigerians to own it and become part of the process of adapting penetration
for the nation’s .ng, in line with the welcome address from NIRA president,
Mrs. Mary Uduma, with great expectation that over 250,000 domains would be
achieved before the end of this year.
As a Nigerian, have you decided on where to plug into this
.ng wave? The truth is that the earlier you begin to participate in .ng
affairs, the better knowledgeable you become with the concept and processes of
its ‘Naijaness’. So, take a stand today by taking a step towards being on .ng.
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