By Emmanuel Nduka
The Nigerian Government has ordered Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs) to stop the usage of generic internet domains for official communication.
The new directive is sequel to the approval of the ‘National Policy on the Government, Second Level Domain’.
Nigeria’s Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Isa Patami, issued the order during Wednesday’s Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting in Abuja.
He said the new development will require the MDAs and federal public institutions to migrate from generic domain in their websites and their emails to the government’s second-level domain under government top-level domain.
“This policy has been approved, and it focuses more on mandating federal public institutions, ministries, departments, agencies (MDAs) and all institutions as long as they are for government; they should migrate from using generic domains in their websites and their emails to our second-level domain under government top-level domain.
“For example, you will discover today, some government institutions will engage in official communications using private email: yahoo.com hotmail.com gmail.com. And it is an official communication and someone may retire or will complete his tenure or the tenure can be terminated, and he will go with the same email. And in that email, there are many official documents,” he said.
While explaining that the official domain must be dot government dot ng, Pantami noted the move will project the national identity, promote national security, boost Nigeria’s global ranking, fight poverty, encourage transparency and boost public confidence.
“So, this will not be tolerated by the government anymore. Any official communications must be using an official email and that email should not be a generic one, it must be ‘.gov.ng.’ What is most important is ‘.ng’ that is our national identity.
“There are many categories of the second-level domain, some are for military, you will see like mil.ng mil is a short form of military ng for Nigeria. You can see .gov.ng — Gov for government and ng for Nigeria.
“So, there are categories of the second-level domain, while our country top-level domain.ng must be there in our websites so that whoever gets access will know that this website is from Nigeria, while for email, it must reflect the official name,” Pantami added.
