The Nigerian Internet Registration Association (NiRA) has entered into partnership with the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and the Internet Numbers Registry for Africa (AFRINIC) to ensure cyber safety in Nigeria.
HumanIPO reported earlier today Nigerian website domain registrars were ready to begin selling the .ng domains.
Ope Odusan, chief operating officer of NiRA, revealed this in an exclusive interview with HumanIPO. He said the goal of the partnership is to ensure that every registered .ng domain is traceable.
“We are currently working with the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and the Internet Numbers Registry for Africa (AFRINIC) to ensure that all domains registered under .ng can be traced,” he said.
He added that the NiRA has a “whois” server through which names of owners of domains could be easily found. This is meant to help apprehend cybercriminals.
Odusan said: “We have a whois server which can be queried in real time to display the names of the person that owns a domain and couple this with the IP address database.
“It is easy to find any of these criminals if they operate within Nigeria, but you will discover some of these crimes may be outside of Nigeria so we will continue to work other law enforcement agencies within and outside of Nigeria.”
He added that NiRA can also shut down any suspicious domain.
“Our policies are very clear. We reserve the right to shut down any domain, website or emails that do not conform to our policies,” he said.
In addition to the security measures, he said NiRA has a long-term goal of supporting ICT research in Nigeria with the funds it is able to realise from the sale of domains.
He said: “NiRA will use the proceeds from the sale of domain(s) to support the ICT communities and internet research in Nigeria.
“We hope to contribute to projects and ideas that will advance the use of the internet and domain name with websites in local languages and promote the creation of authentic Nigerian content on the internet.”
