Who should administer the Internet? – Nigeria takes a stand on Internet Governance

The issue of who should administer the internet has remained a thorny one globally. The World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) concluded last year in Tunis was not able to take a definitive stand on this issue as expected. Thus, the many consultations and meetings on Internet Governance have continued.

Presently, much of the control of the Internet is in the hands ICANN, a U. S. based non-profit organization. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is responsible for managing and coordinating the Domain Name System (DNS) to ensure that every address is unique and that all users of the Internet can find all valid addresses. It does this by overseeing the distribution of unique IP addresses and domain names. It also ensures that each domain name maps to the correct IP address1. ICANN has not been doing a bad job but the fear expressed by some countries is that the U. S. could gain the control of ICANN and block traffic to any of her unfriendly nations or, in her estimation, any nation that harbors terrorists.

There is also the general sentiment that a single country should not control a mechanism used by almost every countries of the world. Various models have been suggested that no one country should host the entire DNS database but everybody should be in charge while no one will be in control.

Let’s now bring the matter to Nigeria. A lot of controversy surrounded the issue of who should administer the .ng, Nigeria’s top level domain. So many organizations, establishments and Institutions in Nigeria battled for the right to administer the domain. It took the intervention of the President to resolve the matter by setting up a neutral body with representatives from the different groups that were involved in the struggle for its control. If all that transpired locally then is of any interest to you, then you will understand why the same controversy exists on who should direct traffic on the Internet.

However, the process of resolving the issue is already in place. One of such is getting the views of the different countries and stakeholders on who should control the traffic on the Internet. And, every country that uses the internet, even if it is just to send emails, is a stakeholder.

It is against this backdrop that civil societies, interest groups and individuals in Nigeria will hold a meeting to discuss Nigeria’s stand on the issue. The meeting will hold as follows:

Date: Friday, June 23, 2006
Time: 09:00am prompt
Venue: Development Information Network (DevNet) Secretariat, 7 Adesoye Street, Mende, Maryland, Lagos [01 793 83 27]

The outcome of the meeting will be fed into the ongoing global discourse on the reform of Internet Governance. It is expected that a lot of things will take place on the subject of Internet Governance in the next few months and Nigeria should actively be involved in the process.


¹http://www.icann.org/faq/#WhatisICANN