The federal government has ordered all Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) in the country to migrate to the pan Nigerian domain name in their official websites and emailing addresses. Government ministries that disobey the order would be slammed with appropriate sanctions, government said.
Speaking at a one-day workshop with MDAs in Abuja, Minister of Communications, Mrs. Omobola Johnson, said the “utilization of the .gov.ng domain name by all MDAs is a critical step in the implementation of our e-governance strategy.” The workshop was organized by the Nigerian Internet Registration Association (NIRA).
She said a mass migration to the .ng domain by the MDAs and other Nigerians, “will ensure the implementation of the first step in our e-governance strategy aimed at connecting government within itself and with the citizens of Nigeria on a safe common platform that will increase local traffic and thus reduce the overall cost of governance.”
The .ng domain name is a national resource and a unique identifier for every Nigeria on the World Wide Web, while .gov.ng is exclusively preserved to be used by all government MDAs.
The minister who was represented by the deputy director in charge of e-governance at the ministry, Mrs. Monilola Udoh, said official email addresses ending in gov.ng are much more secure than those addresses obtained from the freely available internet mail services.
NIRA runs the technological infrastructure which locates a computer on the internet that hosts a website or e-mail when you request, send or receive information to or from addresses that end with “.ng”.
Earlier in his remarks, Director General of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) Prof. Cleopas Angaye said the time to adopt a uniform flag in the cyber space by Nigerians was now, as ‘a larger proportion of the current global economy is online based.
He said it was important to ensure Nigeria participates in the cyber space by increasing “our local content and advancing the patronage of made in Nigeria ICT products.”
According to him, the Nigerian internet users have grown from two million in 2005 to over 44 million, which puts the country as one of the fastest growing internet user in sub-Saharan Africa.
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