The use of the .ng domain for online business transactions with other countries is said to be affecting business negatively, due to the high level of cyber crimes in the country.
Bunmi Akindele, a business woman, said, âConsidering the way those in Europe, United States, and Asia, among others, see Nigerians as a fraudulent people to do online business with, using the .ng domain for your business will certainly affect your business with organisations abroad.
âI cannot register my company name with the .ng domain because it will ruin my business as I cannot order for goods with that domainâs name because it exposes my identity. The country has been portrayed in a bad image because of the yahoo yahoo deals (Internet fraud) in Nigeria,â added Ms. Akindele.
IP address, not .ng
However, in a telephone interview with NEXT, Lanre Ayaji, the president of Nigerian Internet Group (NIG) explained that the .ng domain name is not the cause of failed online transactions, but the Internet Protocol (IP) addresses from Nigeria.
âI donât really think that is the major reason why people are not using it. I have been using the .ng domain for over 10 years now, and I have not had any serious problem with it. People abroad who are scared of doing business with Nigerians online are not using the domain name to discriminate; they usually use the IP address to discriminate. The discrimination is not done manually; it is done by the application system that is operated abroad, and it is on that system that they list the IP address which they donât want to accept.
âThe moment an IP address is identified to be that of a Nigerian, that person is barred from doing business online with that organisation. So, it is not the domain name that causes the problem. Anybody that has a perception that if he or she uses .ng, they will have problem doing business online may have to re-examine that view. I think that is just a mere perception, and not the reality,â said Mr. Ajayi.
Blame it on cybercrime
However, operators agree that the high incidence of cybercrime is a major issue that has also affected online transactions with Nigerians.
Mr. Ajayi said, âI will encourage people to take up the .ng domain as it may not affect their online transactions. But that is not to say that the incidence of cybercrimes have not affected online transactions from Nigeria.â
The absence of policy to tackle cyber crime is a major problem. Jimson Olufuye, the president of Information Technology Association of Nigeria (ITAN), called on the federal government and regulators to put in place appropriate legislations on cyber security to mitigate crimes. Mr. Olufuye urged government to key into the toolkit recently launched by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) to reduce cybercrime globally.
Benefits of .ng domain
Ugo Akiri, an official of the Nigeria Internet Registrations Association (NIRA), said the benefit of using the .ng domain are enormous, particularly with regard to cleaning up the countryâs image.
âThe .ng domain is a good instrument that will help to clean up Nigeriaâs image in terms of the negative use of the Internet these past years. This will also help us to generate enough resources to invest in the new generic top-level domain name (gTLDs) before foreigners overrun us by taking up viable Nigerian geographical names for their new gTLDs.
âAccess to information is very important, as the world is developing daily by new technologies and better ways of doing things. So, this would impact on our access to information generally, and on education specifically, as more Nigerian content will be available on the web,â she said.
Mr. Ajayi also added that if Nigerians can register their businesses with the .ng domain, it will help to improve the countryâs economy without the attendant capital flight.
âFor Nigerians, it saves foreign exchange. If you are not registered with .ng, you would be registering with another gTLD and would be paying dollar to the other country, but when you register with .ng, you are paying naira to the registrar and you are saving money for the country, instead for another country,â he said.
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