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The parable of the Christ on a lost silver COIN So much effort is put into recovering just a coin. And when
it is recovered, the owner fetes her friends and neighbours on account of it. Reason? Because it is precious metal. It is common knowledge that gold is much more precious than silver.
Over 2,000 years after the parable, the metal is just as precious
Gold ornaments are not just jewelries, they are assets. Some people who acquire them have been known to trade them (without depreciation in value as at time of purchase), in order to meet financial needs
Contrast this with the parable of the field of precious pearls which when a man discovered, he sold everything else for the sole reason that he wanted to raise the necessary capital to acquire that field.
In comparison, the gold coin is an infinitesimal fragment of the goldmine. It does feel good that someone amongst us has such a perception of .ng.
E-Mail: [email protected]
Recently, an official of the government of Bahrain said in an interview on CNN that the speculation that the country’s oil reserves will dry up within a space of time is a fad to discourage the citizens from a mono-cultural economy. (Not his exact words, but that’s the meaning of what he said).
Someone tried the same tricks on Nigerians sometime in the past, but was not backed up with the political will to stimulate the required change.
Gold and goldfields last a lifetime.In other words, the point of interests is the innate
boundless potentials of .ng ccTLD
The .ng registry is managed by Nigeria Internet Registration Association (NIRA).
NIRA is entrusted with the management of the .ng internet name space
We maintain a register of .ng domain namesWe run the technological infrastructure which
locates a computer on the internet that hosts a website or e-mail when you request, send or receive information from addresses that end with .ng
We recruit and certify Registrars who serve as middlemen between the .ng registry and the end users – the registrants.
E-Mail: [email protected]
We offer short trainings to some staff of provisionally accredited Registrars preparatory to full accreditation as certified NIRA registrars
We ensure consistency and fairness in the registration, transfer and renewal of domain names in the registry
We provide look-up services for people who would want to search for the availability of a domain name they intend to register (Whois). Such information is available at www.whois.com.ng
We offer Dispute Resolution Process to handle domain name disputes in .ng. This is based on mediation.
We pursue integrity, and discourage all forms of sharp practices such as registration of domain names in “bad faith”
E-Mail: [email protected]
GOAL: Our immediate goal is to build a globally reputable ccTLD that Nigerians and their Associates would gladly adopt as the TLD of choice As the national
INTERNATIONAL RELATIOONSHIPS:NIRA maintains cooperative relationships with other International Internet Communities such as ICANN, IANA, AfTLD, AfriNIC, etc.
Some of the members of the BoT and the BoD are represent the Nigerian government on GNSO of ICANN
E-Mail: [email protected]
STRUCTURE: NIRA has an about 115 members. This include Stakeholders Associations, Registrars, and individual members. Anyone interested in the internet could become a member.
NIRA is not a governing or a regulatory body. We manage the .ng registry which is a national resource in trust on behalf of the Nigerian Internet community.
It is a not-for-profit Association. There are no shareholders, and even when NIRA does become viable, it will not declare profits.
NIRA is one of few registries in Africa where membership is open to individuals
At a recent workshop for ccTLDS in Anglophone countries in Africa, the questions “Why is membership of NIRA open to individuals; and What are the benefits of membership ?” came up quite a few times.
BENEFITS of MEMBERSHIP: As a member of NIRA, you can exercise voting rights at AGMs
Participate in electing the BoT and the BoD Be part of the Policy Development Process (PDP). That is, make direct
input into policy formulation Serve in some committees Participate in online discussions to share views and ideas on the activities
of NIRA, et cetera.
E-Mail: [email protected]
The .ng ccTLD has the following features:
A hierarchical domain structure as against the flat structure Regular domain name registration in .ng is consigned to the third and fourth levels. This makes the second level exclusive for NIRA’s own second level zones. Even on the third level, some generic words have been marked as Premium, and they attract a
premium price Second Level domains are classified into closed or open SLDs There are currently 9 SLDS, viz:
Domain SLD purpose Classification com.ng Commercial entities and purposes (Open) edu.ng Higher and further education and research institution (Closed) name.ng Personal names (Open) net.ng Internet Service / Telecoms Providers' infrastructure (Closed) org.ng Not-for-profit entities (Open) sch.ng Other Academic institutions (Closed and at regional level) gov.ng National, regional, and local government bodies and agencies (Closed) mil.ng Military and related purposes (Closed) mobi.ng For mobile devices meeting .mobi gTLD standards (Open)
E-Mail: [email protected]
Our Domain Name Policy provides that
Third Level Domains may only contain the following thirty-seven characters ("Characters") or a combination
thereof: the twenty-six unaccented Roman letters (i.e. a-z inclusive); the ten western digits (i.e. 0-9 inclusive); and hyphens. The first or last Characters of a 3LD may not be a hyphen. NIRA does not offer Internationalised Domain Names for now and so domain
names that start with the characters "xn--" (i.e. "xn" followed by two dashes) may not be registered. A Third Level Domain may not be one Character long. For example, an application
to register i.com.ng or a.com.ng would be rejected. Except offered by auction at the second or third
level. For the SLDs com.ng, name.ng, org.ng, and net.ng, mobi.ng, a Third Level
Domain may not consist of only two letters. For example, an application to register ie.com.ng, -a.com.ng or
e-.com.ng, would be rejected. Again as above an exception is allowed when offered by auction. Also
NIRA would not offer for auction any two letter acronym which is a validly registered trade mark
E-Mail: [email protected]
The hierarchical structure and the restrictions to characters and figures afford certain advantages:
The possibility of introducing new second level domains to serve specific trades or interest groups. This could be either open or closed. Already, discussions are on-going with the police towards the introduction of a .police.ng
The potential of exploiting the diverse languages in Nigeria to introduce the IDNs by the introduction of non-Roman characters such as e, i, o, u, c, gb, kp, et cetera.
.eu has implemented this successfully
E-Mail: [email protected]
NIRA is also mindful of the unique opportunity its ccTLD name presents.
With a TLD as .ng, Nigeria’s country code assumes a global significance for many words by coupling of the TLD with any of the vowels of the English language.
The introduction of such unique new 2nd Level domains as “a.ng”, “e.ng”, “i.ng”, “o.ng”, “u.ng”, would lead to combinations that would form action verbs that are ONLY possible with the .ng ccTLD, and NOT on any other ccTLD or gTLD.
So, we could have domains like danc.i.ng (dancing), bank.i.ng (banking), s.a.ng (sang), bel.o.ng (belong), s.u.ng (sung), f.e.ng (feng), w.i.ng (wing), cl.i.ng (cling), wr.o.ng (wrong), s.o.ng (song), l.o.ng (long), y.o.ng (yong), b.a.ng (bang), f.a.ng (fang), p.a.ng (pang), p.i.ng (ping), polic.i.ng (Policing), et cetera.
NIRA intends to exploit these potentials to continue to make .ng a global
registry irrespective of the entry of new gTLDs.
The advantages are enormous for NIRA; and even much more for the community it serves.
E-Mail: [email protected]
The derivable benefits are before us. Take a look at the telecommunications industry. Even the advocates of a liberalised telecoms in Nigeria in the 1990s could have imagined that it would have wrought the transformation it has achieved, so far.
Will generate employment It has the potential of changing the way we do
business Could increase foreign trade Major income earner Will conserve the foreign exchange that would have
been spent on registering, hosting a domain out side, and even the cost of bandwidth for the content.
More Nigerian content on the web
E-Mail: [email protected]
The impact it would have on our access to information generally, and on education, specifically.
A good instrument to clean up Nigeria’s image
We should generate enough resources to invest in the new gTLDs before foreigners overrun us by taking up viable Nigerian geographical names for their new gTLDs.
The benefits are, indeed, enormous.
E-Mail: [email protected]
Dr. Chris Uwaje in his book, E-Knowledge: Time is Running Out, speaks about a new kind of colonialism: “Some shortsighted nations will wake-up at midnight one day, in the early decades of this century – and suddenly realize that they have been digitally colonized”
The story of apartheid South Africa could not have been forgotten. We know that the history of apartheid is linked to the diamond deposit in that land
We cannot let this happen to us on the domain name space, bearing in mind that the internet is new real estate.
E-Mail: [email protected]
