Nigeria

Nigeria: .ng ccTLD Domain Registration with a Dead Man

Femi Oyesanya

6/5/2005

Nigeria might be the only Country in the world that currently has the Domain Manager of the Top Level Country Internet Domain name listed as a deceased person. For those who do not know, the overall responsibility of a ccTLD belongs to the Domain Manager. He or she is the overall authority, responsible for coordinating all affairs of the Country Level Domain Name assignment.

Well, since Professor Ajayi, the last known .ng Domain Manager passed away well over six months ago, the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), which is responsible for the efforts to migrate the management of the .ng domain to Nigeria, has not deemed it necessary to appoint another living soul as the Manager of the Nigerian CCTLD. All administrative functions of the .ng Domain can now not be trusted, because a Domain Manager does not exist.

Since Nigeria has not yet appointed a replacement Domain Manager, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has no choice but to continue to list the last known Manager as the one responsible for the affairs of the .ng ccTLD. Ajayi should be rolling in his grave each time he is asked to perform the function of .ng Domain Administrator, and his ghosts should hunt those who continue to name him as the Nigerian Domain Manager.

ICANN, the agency responsible for providing oversight for Internet Domain Names, have over the years established clear directives on how Domain Manager transition should be handled. One of ICANN’s documents explicitly stated the following: “from time to time during the term of this MoU, the Manager may, by notifying ICANN in writing, request a change in the designation of the administrative or technical contact. The administrative contact must reside in the territory of the Delegated ccTLD during the entire period he or she is designated as such. The request for designation of an administrative or technical contact must be made by the Manager's designee and be accompanied by complete and accurate contact information for the newly designated contact according to Section 4.3.”

Well, not only does the Nigerian Domain Manager no longer reside in Nigeria, he is no longer on planet Earth. He died more than six months ago, and Nigeria is yet to name a new replacement. As shocking as this Nigerian incompetence may sound, more shocking is that several months ago, the Nigerian President declared the .ng Top Level Domain Name assignment as a national resource. NITDA then went ahead and created an organization which was named NIRA, a non-profit entity to manage the affairs of the ccTLD. But a review of the Nigerian 2005 budget clearly shows that the Federal Nigerian Government did not allocate any monetary resource to the operations of NIRA. Nowhere in the 2005 budget was any reference made to allocation assistance that will be used in managing the ccTLD as a “national resource”. The Nigerian government declared the ccTLD as a”national resource”, but did not allocate budgetary funding for its operations. Dear! No one ever claimed that Einstein lives in Aso Rock, but how can such a bold public policy statement be omitted in the budgetary process?

International efforts such as the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) of which Nigeria is also involved have noted in several of their “talk shops”

that one of the way forward for ICT diffusion for countries such as Nigeria was the development of Local Content. Localization of the .ng Domain would have been an ideal starting place for hosting Internet content that is indigenous to Nigeria. But without a Domain Manager, the Nigerian ccTLD can not be trusted. .ng Domain Registration continues to be low, in the last count, there were about 2000 registered Domain names.

The new non-profit Organization (NIRA) that was formed to oversea Nigerian’s ccTLD must begin to function according to the purpose that it was established or be named incompetent. A new Domain Manager needs to be named immediately, and the migration of the .ng ccTLD Name Servers needs to begin. Where will the funding come from? Well, let the President call upon his presidential library donors, there is a new charity project in town!