Nigeria resolves issues over .ng management

After years of dispute, Nigeria has resolved issues about how its .ng country code top-level domain (ccTLD) should be managed, formalizing its relationship with ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers).

The death four years ago of Gabriel Olalere Ajayi, who was at the time the domain manager for Nigeria's ccTLD, kicked off a controversy that rocked Nigeria's ICT sector.

A ccTLD is a two-letter Internet domain reserved for a country, under which Internet addresses are registered. The creation and delegation of the management of ccTLDs is performed by IANA (the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority), under contract with ICANN.

But after Ajayi's death, the fate of the .ng domain was in question, as various factions in Nigeria argued about how the Internet should be managed and promoted in the country. The Nigeria Computer Society (NCS), a professional organization, the Nigeria Internet Group (NIG), a nongovernmental body, and the Nigerian Information Technology Professionals in the Americas (NITPA) all became involved in the dispute.

The controversy attracted the attention of then-President Olusegun Obasanjo, who directed that a neutral body be set up to manage the affairs of the .ng domain. The Nigeria Internet Registration Association (NiRA) was established in the wake of Obasanjo's directive.

Before Obasanjo's directive was executed and as NiRA worked to conform to ICANN guidelines, temporary management of the .ng domain was given to the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), the Nigerian agency chartered to develop IT in the country.

NiRA is now formally taking the .ng management reins from NITDA, according to NiRA President Ndukwe Kalu.

"It is a new dawn for Nigeria and Nigerians and come January 1, 2009, the new race and journey will start to make (.ng) the top 20 ccTLD domains of the world and place Africa on the Internet map firmly," Kalu said.