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Information Super Highway and Nigeria’s National Security Concerns By Abubakar Atiku Nuhu-Koko
The recent confusion over the broadcast of a piece of news item regarding a purported or alleged plan by President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua (UMYA) to resign his presidential mandate upon completion of his much awaited major cabinet overhaul is generating a lot of public commentaries. These are coming following a security crack down on the Channels Television station and its staff by the State Security Service (SSS). The news item was aired by the popular Lagos-based local television station, Channel Television owned by a veteran journalist, John Momoh.
Other Nigerian news services and foreign wire news agencies also picked up and used the news item purported to have originated from the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), a federal government of Nigeria-owned official news outlet.
The Nigerian Broadcasting Commission (NBC), a federal government of Nigeria regulatory agency with oversight over broadcast media in country, also lends its hands in descending heavily on Channel Television station. The NBC suspended Channel Television station’s broadcast licence and sealed its premises for some days before lifting the broadcast licence revocation order.
NAN was quick in denouncing the ownership and authorship of the controversial news piece and distanced itself from the electronic mail (email) address used in circulating the purported resignation plan of President Yar’Adua. It cited a number of inaccuracies in the format used in the composing the purported news item; including serious English language grammatical errors among other poor professional standards. Be that as it may, Channel Television station is now left with a brutalized image and damaged reputation that will take some time to restore.
This mishap is now being blamed on some shadow individuals wanting to create commotion and national security threat in order to achieve their inordinate political ambitions using the instrumentality of the internet - also known as the Information Super Highway. Whether what the unfortunate event was capable of creating a major national security threat or crisis is not in doubt. However, the way and manner the situation was mishandled by the security agencies and the regulatory authority leaves much to be desired. This is not the focus of this write up.
My concern in this write up is to address this issue from the perspective of national policy on information and communication technology (ICT). Specifically, on that aspect that touches on the use and management of the nation’s very important ICT resource endowment – internet country-code Top-Level Domain (ccTLD). This is a two-letter long prefix assigned to all countries or dependent territories. For Nigeria it is: .ng. The TLDs names are assigned by the internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which also operates the internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) and the Domain Name System (DNS) root zone.
There is over ten-year history behind securing the Nigerian ccTLD not fully revealed or disclosed to the Nigerian public by those administering and managing it at the moment. The history has implication for the current ugly situation that developed regarding Channel Television’s broadcast of a piece of news item that was passed through internet super highway to its News desk. The country code top-level domain names (i.e., ccTLDs) and related issues used to be issued, administered and managed centrally by the Internet Society (ISOC) with head office in Reston, Virginia, United States of America (USA).
Briefly, the ISOC is a non-profit organisation founded in 1992 to provide leadership in Internet related standards, education, and policy. Some of its activities and services include ensuring the open development, evolution and use of the Internet for the benefit of people throughout the world; provide leadership in addressing issues that confront the future of the Internet, and is the organizational home for the groups responsible for Internet infrastructure standards, including the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) and acts not only as a global clearinghouse for Internet information and education but also as a facilitator and coordinator of Internet-related initiatives around the world.
Sometime around 1994 or thereabout, some of the centralized services provided by the ISOC from its head office in Reston, Virginia, USA were decentralized and devolved to Geneva, Switzerland and other offices in other countries with national capacities to provide those services in their respective countries throughout the world. Administration of the ccTLDs was among those services decentralized then.
As country by country started hosting and managing their respective ccTLDs, my good friend Mr. Tim Enwerem and my humble self, realizing that no any African country (probably apart from South Africa) had applied to ISOC to host and administer the ccTLD, we decided to make a case for our beloved country, Nigeria.
We then approached ISOC with our request. We were immediately informed that, yes, we could apply to host and be the “Point of Contact (PoC)” for Nigeria’s ccTLD but subject to meeting certain basic requirements and conditions. These requirements and conditions were straightforward and relatively simple to fulfil: a) any public or private organization with an in-country capacity to issue and register domain names to customers/clients (it used to be a free service to customers/clients) and b) such entity must have accessible electronic mailing system (e-mail) in place. It was a shame that in 1994, there was no public or private entity that could meet these elementary requirements as we were told by the officials at ISOC. A search was conducted in our presence and it came out positive.
However, before we left the ISOC head office in Reston, Virginia that day, we promised them that we will be coming back soon to surprise them that Nigeria will fulfil these basic requirements. Our strategy then was to quickly alert then Nigerian Telecommunication Limited (NITEL Ltd) to establish a national in-country capacity for electronic mail system and internet point of presence (POP). This was a Herculean task by all Nigerian standards then.
After failed attempts to convince the bosses at NITEL to join the then nascent information and communication technology (ICT) revolution, I personally almost gave up the battle because of the frustration, humiliation and above all, the galloping costs we were individually incurring without any sign of hope for success.
Suddenly, there was a change of baton of leadership at the NITEL Ltd top management. Nigeria was also being increasingly isolated by the international community following the sad incidences of the annulment of the June 12, 1993 Presidential election results; arrest and detention of key political figures opposed to the military junta under the then leadership of General Sani Abacha (now deceased) and the execution of the Ken Saro Wiwa and eight other Ogoni kinsmen agitating against environmental degradation by oil companies and other political issues with the Nigerian government. The Nigerian Embassy in Washington DC was partially closed; Nigerian Ambassador to Washington DC and the military attaché were all recalled back home.
The overseas wing of the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO) against Nigeria’s military junta wasted no time in deploying the fast growing information technologies; particularly the internet and the electronic mailing system (it was then very rudimentary non-web browser-based system).
Mr. Tim Enwerem was able to establish contact with the helmsman (i.e., the new Sole Administrator) appointed by the military junta to manage the affairs of NITEL Ltd. If I still remember, his name was Mr. Matankari or something close to that. The NITEL Ltd boss was so convinced that Nigeria needed to embrace and join the bandwagon of the fast growing information superhighway as it was then dubbed. But for him to come to an agreement with Mr. Enwerem on the issue, he needed also security clearance from his superior authorities. These people were in the first place, who appointed him to that exalted position.
That process also took another lengthy time to complete. The process involved vetting by the respective offices of the duo of General Alwali Kazir (now retired) who was then the Chief of Army Staff (COAS) or Defence Staff (CDS) and the then Col. Buba Marwa who was then serving as Nigeria’s Military Attaché to the United Nations Headquarters in New York, USA. The then Nigerian military junta considered the hosting and management of Nigeria’s assigned ccTLD as a national security issue.
My haunch then was that, it was the lightening success recorded by NADECO abroad, and the multitude of international environmental and human rights activists, with access to faster means (i.e. the internet and e-mail) of spreading the campaign against the Nigerian military junta that made it possible for military junta and security bosses to give the approval for NITEL Ltd to accept our proposition that NITEL Ltd should acquire the in-country national capacity for deployment of internet and electronic mailing system infrastructures as part of its services. Thus, the way was cleared for us to return to Reston, Virginia and start the process all over again; having secured all the necessary paper work to present to the ISOC.
However, by the time we re-approached the ISOC, another Nigerian with a different strategy and intention, had presented convincing argument (albeit, we discovered that she did not provide the true position of how things were on the ground in Nigeria then) to clinch the very strategic “Point of Contact (PoC)” and national host for Nigeria’s national internet resource endowment. We were told that one Mrs. X (from the Computer Department, Yaba College of Technology Lagos, Nigeria) applied for what were looking for and she had already been assigned with that responsibility for Nigeria.
We were all surprised and shocked as we all knew then, that, the information Mrs. X provided to the ISOC was not the true position on the ground in Nigeria. This we knew since we had to go the extra mile to educate the people at NITEL Ltd about what internet and e-mail were; including showing them Video tapes about internet and e-mail systems!
We demanded and were given the e-mail contact address given to ISOC by Mrs. X. However, ISOC officials advised us to link-up with her to pursue our interest. We wasted no time in doing that. But we were vindicated when we discovered that Mrs. X’s email was routed through a computer server based at the International Centre for Science and High Technology (ICS), in Trieste, Italy. This was largely because as at that time, Nigeria cannot be accessed directly via internet and or any email systems for lack of basic connectivity etc.
Therefore, all emails sent to Mrs. X will have to go through the ICS server in Trieste and then printed out and sent to her by facsimile (i.e., Fax) to Nigeria. We successfully traced and made contact with someone at the ICS, in Trieste, Italy, who was responsible for managing the Nigerian ccTLD on behalf of Mrs. X. He provided us with some useful information but advised us to reach out to Mrs. X for anything regarding the vexed issue.
To cut a very long story short, we found out that going on with project will be hopeless as the Nigerian factor had already been introduced. Plus, a new crop of top management was put in place for NITEL Ltd. The new bosses abandoned the initiative and threw away the baby with the bathwater – typical Nigerian syndrome of lack of policy continuity. While all these were going on, nation after nation, were busy deploying and maximally utilizing their respective ccTLDs, unfortunately, Nigeria was not among them.
The good thing about all these developments that happened after we also abandoned the initiative was that, a new body came on stream – the Nigeria internet Group (NIG) was conceived and established by some smart and enterprising Nigerians as usual. Ironically, Mrs. X was also among the founding members. The formation of the NIG became the starting point for a renewed struggle for the soul of the beleaguered Nigerian ccTLD.
It became an internal struggle; between Mrs. X and the rest of the NIG members. Surprisingly however, the federal authorities were uninterested and or not bothered about the very sad situation going on. To add salt to the bleeding national injury, Mrs. X was elevated to the position of Chief ICT consultant to the federal government of Nigeria and assigned a fat budget under the federal ministry of information headed then by the erudite Professor of Geography, Professor Jerry Gana.
This new struggle took almost ten years to get resolved. Tim and I watched the intense struggle from the sideline because we both refused to join the NIG for some obvious reasons.
In 1999, I approached the then Hon. Minister of Communications, Alhaji Arzika Tambuwal and briefed him about the sad story of the Nigerian ccTLD and urged him to intervene to kindly resolve the quagmire in the nation’s national security interest. The struggle later extended to the corridors of power at the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC)/the federal Ministry of Communications, federal Ministry of Science and Technology/the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) and the Federal Executive Council (FEC).
Belated however, it was the Presidential intervention of the then President Olusegun Obasanjo that finally lay to rest, the vexed and scandalous issue with his facilitation of the formation of a “neutral” body to administer and manage this vital national internet resource endowment. That body is the present day Nigerian internet Registration Association (NiRA). Therefore, credit should be given to former President Olusegun Obasanjo for bringing to an end, the national disgrace and humiliation that endured for over a decade.
Sadly however, for the more than ten years the struggle was going on, all Nigerian public and private users and consumers of the internet resource were forced to relay on the YAHOO and later, GOOGLE based FREE domain name addressing system (DNS). It was indeed (and it is still) very sad, shameful and utterly embarrassing to see many federal and state government ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) still using the prefixes such as: @yahoo.com; @gmail.com; @hotmail.com etc instead of using the formal formats such as: @gov.ng; @.org.ng or @net.ng, and @tv.ng etc.
This brings us back to the current crisis, which the Lagos-based private Channel Television Station got messed up. One could easily see the link and relationship of the crisis to the unhealthy and clandestine way and manner our national internet resource endowment was cornered for the benefit of an individual for more than a decade with impunity. For instance, the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) denied having anything to do with the fake or fraudulently produced piece of information that was broadcast by the Channel Television Station; even though it emerged as if it were an authentic NAN product. This is one of the serous dangers and national (and private) security concerns about using unsecured privately provided universal “trade-branded” internet DNS by our public and private entities alike.
For instance, most Nigerians take it for granted that all internet generated communications via the email system and websites/homepages are authentic and thus do not take great precaution before accepting and or using the information filtering through the information superhighway channels. I, personally, do receive dozens of emails on daily basis from fraudsters and conmen/women posing as government officials.
Here are a sample of some of such “419” emails sent to me. For example, two of them were purportedly sent from the office of the Secretary to the Government of the federation (SGF). The messages contained in them were that Ambassador Babagana Kingibe (before he was unceremoniously shoved aside recently by Hurricane UMYA), requested that I should be informed that my name has been nominated among those to be considered for a very important position in the present administration. I should therefore send my full Curriculum Vitae (CV) immediately to the screening committee. I was given some contact names and GSM phone numbers to liaise with.
Here are some of the “419”emails, for example:
From:
Office Of Secretary To The Federal Government <osfg_abuja@presidency.com>
Again, another one from the same source:
I also received another one purported sent to me by the then Hon. Minster of State for Petroleum and Energy, Dr Edmond Daukoru:
From: Dr Edmond Daukoru fedminsterenergy00@yahoo.com.br
Looking carefully at these emails, any cautious person can easily detect that the email address string: osfg@presidency.com is not official (it could also be official as there are still some federal and state government offices using: @yahoo.com and @Hotmail.com DNS). But, interestingly, the email from “Dr. Edmond Daukoru” has a Brazilian ccTLD DNS!
Therefore, we can see that, it was the greed of an individual, which kept the nation hostage for more than a decade and thereby created the room for other fraudulent Nigerians to take advantage of the confused state of the affairs of our national ICT policy and continue to wreck havoc on the national economy, image and reputation.
This sad state of affairs of Nigeria’s ICT policy and its handlers is largely responsible for this decadence. The Government needs to look into this issue beyond the current crisis. For example, all official governments’ websites/homepages and email addressing system and style most be made to conform to international practice. NiRA, NCC and the federal ministry of information and communications should be empowered to implement this standard operating practices and procedures, which are based upon internationally accepted principles, norms and ethics. Any delay will create more and more national security scares of monumental and catastrophic consequences in the future.
Abubakar Atiku Nuhu-Koko Sunday, 21 September 2008 |