FEC restricts MDAs to Nigerian domains for official communications, approves NPoNSLD

Federal Executive Council (FEC) has approved the National Policy on Nigeria’s Second Level Domain (NPoNSLD) that mandates public institutions, ministries, departments and agencies to migrate from using generic domains in their websites and official emails.

Minister of Communication and Digital Economy, Isa Pantami, who briefed State House correspondents after the meeting presided over by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo on Wednesday in Abuja, explained that with the approval of the policy, official communications must be done with Nigeria’s second-level domain name such as .gov.ng.

“For example, you discover today some government institutions will engage in official communications using private emails, yahoo.com, hotmail.com, gmail.com.

 “Someone may retire or complete his tenure or the tenure can be terminated and they will go with the same email and in that email, there will be official documents.

“So, this will not be tolerated by government anymore; any official communication must be using official email and that email must not be a generic one.

“Any official communication must be using official email and that email shall not be a generic one.  It must be .gov.ng.

“What is most important is .ng.  That .ng is our national identity.

“There are many categories of the second level domain; some are for military.  You will see something like mil.ng; mil is short form of military; .ng is for Nigeria.

“You can see .gov.ng. ; .gov is government .ng is for Nigeria.”

Explaining the categories of the second-level domain, Pantami said that the country’s top-level domain .ng must be there in Nigeria’s “Websites so that whoever gets access will know that this website is from Nigeria, while for email it must reflect the official name.”

According to Pantami, there are three major benefits to be derived from the policy.

“Number one is for our national security.  Websites are being created in other countries without our domain name and some claim to be from Nigeria.  This can go a long way in compromising our cyberspace, which cannot be ignored.

“Two is for national identity. Our national identity is key; any website from Nigeria, particularly government must have .ng.

 “From anywhere you will know that this is a Nigeria website, and it will go a long way in promoting and improving our global ranking when it comes to human development, when it comes to fighting poverty and many more.

“If website doesn’t have this, when it comes to assessment, many international organizations doing this assessment would not be able to get the correct websites of Nigerian institutions.

“And this will definitely affect our global ranking. It is because of this. Our national identity is important.

 “Number three, global recognition. It will give us a global recognition because in the assessment, they will count and discover how many institutions are from Nigeria what have they been doing, what is their performance, what they have implemented so far.”

The Minister also said that the policy would ensure transparency in government business and gain public confidence.