Local Governments to Miss .ng Deadline

The August 31 deadline given to local governments in the country to host their websites on .ng, the country’s top level domain has recorded just 20% compliance, suggesting that most local governments in the country will miss the deadline, Nigeria CommunicationsWeek can report.

As at August 5, only 155 local governments out of the 774 local governments in the country have migrated to the .ng which is Nigeria’s identity on the cyberspace.

Mrs. Mary Uduma, president, Nigeria Internet Registration Association (NiRA), suggested sensitization programme to help educate local governments that are yet to comply..

She reported with excitement that all the federal ministries;  departments; agencies; as well as state governments have complied with the directive.

Uduma however said that most of them are still operating their old website and are currently migrating content from the old websites to .ng.

“We are now is the transition stage, where some government agencies are operating two websites. The implication of this is that they are paying for the two websites which is not good for the country. We hope that they migrate fast,” she said.

It would be recalled that federal government gave state governments’ ministries and parastatals as well as local governments in the country till August this year to host their websites on the country’s top level domain name .ng,

To meet the deadline, National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) is collaborating with NiRA to ensure a smooth migration for the states and local governments.

Mrs. Uduma said that NiRA expect to have some 2,000 websites from governments’ ministries, departments and agencies with addition of 40,000 emails when the directives are fully complied with.

To encourage compliance, registrars with the approval of NiRA are planning promos aimed at creating awareness on .ng.

 “Registrars are planning promos such as Centenary promo among others where some websites will be registered free to increase the number of website on .ng. From these promos we are targeting about 150,000 in addition to existing 50,000 registrations and with others we could achieve our projection of 250,000 registrations at the end of the year,” she said. 

Nigeria CommunicationsWeek investigations revealed that, most businesses in the country shun .ng but rather prefer to register -ng.com or ng.com as against .ng.

Same is the case with emails where senior government officers are using yahoo, gmail among other email accounts against secured email account of their ministry account.

Opeoluwa Odusan, managing director, Africa.com and immediate past chief operating officer, Nira, attributed this to hidden costs such as cost of changing company’s letterhead paper, complementary cards, branded documents among others is responsible for corporates organisations such as banks from switching to .ng.

“When I was in NiRA as chief operating officer, I met with some banks on this issue they were complaining of huge cost outlayer involved in changing those items to reflect their new website which is in several millions of naira as a major factor. If you look at the few banks that have changed to .ng, when you log in on .ng it will redirect you to their .com website which does not make sense,” he added.