The National Information Technology Development Agency, NITDA, has urged public institutions to adopt the .gov.ng and .mil.ng domain name which serves as internet identity for Nigeria.
The Director-General, NITDA, Dr Isa Pantami, gave this advice on Thursday at the .gov.ng and .mil.ng domain names sensitisation forum and presentation of its reviewed policy to stakeholders in Abuja.
According to him, the .gov.ng was the federal government’s domain while .mil.ng was the military domain recommended for public institutions to serve as an internet Identity card,
According to him, adopting a uniform domain name would avoid discrepancies and go a long way in improving the quality of the country’s code level domain genuine.
“The process of getting approval to acquire or migrate your website to .gov.ng or mil.ng is free, and easy to get approval from NITDA within 2 working hours.
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“We are trying to encourage institutions to move from the generic domain to the .gov.ng domain.
“As of April 29, we have 138,060 institutions using our country’s identity domain; 2,274 are using .gov.ng while 278 are using .mil.ng,” Mr Pantami said.
According to the director-general, it is more authentic to use the .gov.ng domain because using generic 3rd level domain name can be used by anybody and for fraudulent purposes.
The director-general said that the agency was working with the Nigeria Internet Registration Association, NIRA, to ensure the easy transition and registrations.
Mr Pantami emphasised that the agency had to review its policy because Information Communication Technology, ICT, was not static.
“Technology is advancing, if you are static, then you will expire, which is why we always update our regulatory instruments,” he said.
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Also speaking at the event, the National President of NIRA, Muhammed Rudman, said using .gov.ng domain created platforms for business awareness, ensured security and enhance the image.
Mr Rudman added that the use of government domain would ensure that data were hosted within government servers for protection.
According to him, using generic domains can expose data supposed to be domiciled within the country to irrelevant sources.
“It is important we promote our domain name because when we host data in other domain names belonging to other countries, their server flourishes, while ours is diminishing economically,” he said.
