The National Information Technology Development Agency –NITDA, in Nigeria, says it has handed over the administration of the country’s code top level domain .ng string to the Nigerian Internet Registration Association -NIRA.
NITDA is also mandated to ensure Internet governance and supervision of the management of the country code top-level domain (cctld.ng) on behalf of all Nigerians. The .ng string as we all know is Nigeria’s flagship identity and it is the role of NITDA to supervise the management of this huge national resource
The Director General of NITDA, Dr. Isa Pantami, disclosed this at the Sensitization Forum and Presentation of the Reviewed, gov.ng & .mil.ng Policy to stakeholders in Abuja Nigeria’s capital.
“In line with global best practice, where the country top level domain in every country is not directly managed by the government, but by multi-stakeholder bodies’ setup by the government, NITDA has delegated the management responsibilities of the .ng string in Nigeria to NiRA. The government then plays a supervisory role in the administration of the domains” he said.
Dr Patanni noted that, Nigeria has witnessed a significant growth in its name trend saying that the nation’s current domain platform stands at 138,060
“We are happy to see the growth trend of .gov.ng and .mil.ng in Nigeria in recent times. The total number of registered .ng domains from inception till date, stands at 138,060 (as at April 29, 2019). From this number, 2,274 are .gov.ng while 278 are .mil.ng. It is worthy to note that the total number of .gov.ng and .mil.ng domains registered from inception till October 2016 were 1,856”.
“This means that 418 new domains were registered between November 2016 and April 2019, which signifies a percentage increase of 18.3%.This can be attributed to the various drives embarked upon by the agency at ensuring the adoption of the .gov.ng and the .mil.ng.”
According to him, the agency has embarked on various initiatives aimed at ensuring that government business is done on government domains.
Responses to request is now faster as it takes an average of 2 hours to acquire a .gov.ng or .mil.ng domain. With a 24hrs helpline where their technical team can offer assistance on issues relating to domain name service”
Benefits
MDAs using .gov.ng domains will be ranked first when search is conducted through search engines like Google.
.gov.ng or .mil.ng domains offers the confidence that whoever is relating with a particular MDA is sure that such transactions are genuine and free of fraudulent activities.
The .gov.ng and .mil.ng domains are free and they are without rentals and does not require foreign exchange to purchase or subscribe.
Websites that are .ng and are hosted locally will be resolved faster with minimum hops. This is in-view of the high-speed performance offered by the Internet Exchange Point of Nigeria (IXPN). This is important because speed is an important factor in ranking websites.
Meanwhile , In interview with Voice of Nigeria, President of Nigerian Internet Registration Association (NIRA), Mr. Rudman Mohammed said it reduces capital flight, enhances image, ensure cyber security
“the.ng is actually national identify for Nigeria and the cyberspace and it is important we patronise and use it so that the rest of the world can identify official government websites to do business with them and we can identify local organizations that are running business in Nigeria. .ng is local and its being managed by Nigerians.If you go the other option of buying foreign domains the.com or the.net it means you are paying a foreign company which amounts to capital flight.” He said
In explaining the Three ‘R’ Model he said, “We have the, “Three ‘R’model ( The Registry, the Registerers and the Registrants): the Registry (NIRA) manages the infrastructure and does not sell domains to individuals but to the Roisterers (Distributors), who retail domains to the Registrants (End users). We adopted this because it is the best global practice.”
Source: VON
