The need to populate dot ng domain name registration among youths, corporate organisations and government agencies, formed a major discussion at the Annual General Meeting of Nigeria Internet Registration Association (NiRA) in Lagos, last Tuesday.
Members of the executive board of NiRA, including members of its board of trustees, said there was need for more awareness creation to enable Nigerians embrace dot ng domain name, which is Nigeria’s identity in the cyberspace.
Chief Operating Officer of NiRA, Mr. Ope Odusan, said NiRA had already mapped out its strategies in the area of capacity building, business goals and business strategies to boost domain name registration in the country.
dot ng domain name is Nigeria’s identity in cyberspace, which identifies Nigerians to an Internet Protocol (IP) address, when carrying out online transactions. The identity ends with the suffix .gov.ng for government agencies; .org.ng for registered organisation; and .name.ng for individuals.
According to Odusan, NiRA is building capacity in the areas of technical skills, registry operations, policy development, marketing and communications, legal services and audit, all geared towards making NiRA less dependent on government for its funding.
“NiRA will review and update relevant policies such as registry/registrant/registrars policies, domain sales policies, and strengthen industry engagement and as well support industry events. We will improve on dispute resolution and develop memorandum of understanding (MoU) and framework for registering operators,” Odusan said.
One of the registrars, who is the President of the Association of Telecoms Companies of Nigeria (ATCON), Mr. Lanre Ajayi, differed in his views to expand the size of NiRA and its board members, advising that NiRA executives should concentrate on the role of NiRA as a registry and policy formulation and regulatory agency, and allow registrars to do more of marketing and awareness creation of domain name registration.
In her welcome address, President of NiRA, Mrs. Mary Uduma, explained a major change in the NiRA calendar, explaining that the calendar year had been altered to begin from January 1 and end in December 31, as against the June 1 to May 31 calendar year.
On the financial strength of NiRA for the year ending December 2011, Uduma said “the audited accounts show that NiRA is not in trouble.”
She reported that some changes were made in the registration and management of .gov.ng domain names for Federal Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) as the Minister of Communications Technology, Mrs. Omobola Johnson, nominated Galaxy Backbone to handle the registrations henceforth, having convinced the Federal Executive Council to direct all Federal MDAs to migrate to .gov.ng in its transformation agenda and e-government programme.
Report of the financial statement of NiRA as presented by Derogba Ola Co, the auditor for NiRA, was generally applauded and accepted by the general members, before issues were raised and discussed at the AGM that was not tied to election.
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