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Columnist: Segun Oruame

This mess called .ng

The raging controversy over the redelegation of the .ng ccTLD bites with dreadful implications for our national polity. It also throws up questions which all stakeholders must find time to answer. If only to help us to understand why we must all sheath our daggers, end the outcast nature of our presence on the world wide web, and even more importantly, why we must in harmony move forward to mutually address the persistent challenges of closing the digital divide. The .ng is just one of these challenges.

And what exactly are these questions? They are numerous but a few would suffice. Is it in the best interest of all stakeholders to war-war over this thorny problem than to jaw-jaw? Is it crucial that we redelegate the .ng ccTLD? Is it really important that we create a .ngNIC to administer the role of managing this national resource? Does the Nigerian Internet Group (NIG) truly represent the interest of the Nigerian Internet community? Has the NIG done enough to bring all stakeholders under its fold? Is not this war symptomatic of ego or personality clash? Is it practically impossible to reconcile all feuding stakeholders at home before washing our dirty linen abroad?

More questions: Does government really understand the issues at stake to take the right actions on the matter of redelegation? Has it (government) taken proper steps to duly recognise all stakeholders and consult with all of them in pursuing the goal for redelegation? Who has the final say on the matter of redelegation: government, Internet users or the point of contacts? Are there ulterior motives other than those expressed publicly by the feuding parties that make an amicable settlement impossible? Inherently, in these questions lie a way out of the present logjam if all of us can honestly answer the questions.

In the history of media wars, no combatant has come off unscathed and even those that appeared to have won their media battle soon came to realise that it was but a pyrrhic victory. Again, only those who really understand the issues as they are must attempt to honestly respond to these questions not those who merely have pretension to having a grasp of the real issue. And there are many of them crowding out those with the knowledge of the .ng imbroglio.

At a time like this, those who do not know how to be sobered or how to engage in deep thoughts over very serious issues of national interest may have their nap and let serious questions be asked by non-clowns. Alexander Pope is not particularly a poet that would strike modern day enthusiasts of poetry but the 16th century English poet inferred this opening statement in one of his ever witty debates with other poets of his time. Pope has a subtlety in his engagement of issues that would help all antagonists to address the raging controversy with level-headedness, statemanliness and sincerity. We need these traits and not a show of obstinacy and gangsterism among all warring parties, who are by the way, professionals with very intimidating academic CVs.

Methinks this is the time to settle, once and for all, the lingering crisis over who takes over the local administrator of the .ng ccTLD. It is a thing of national embarrassment that despite all those often, well 'mouthed' and crafted statements that we are a nation of great potentials, we have remained one big country with no cyber identity. It does not augur well for our national psyche that professionals who lead the local Internet community have developed very acidic mutual distrust among themselves and would do anything to rubbish their own competency in managing a national resource that must be kept in trust within the Internet community.

It is a thing of shame that government itself seems to have become perceived as part of the problem by a section of the warring parties and not an umpire whose word carries respect. But it is also true that government in spite of its imperfections remains the only institution that demands awe from every citizen and at the same time serves as the final judge in matters of domestic concern or such domestic matters as are having international implications. That is why the Buhari/Idiagbon military junta could still go ahead in 1984 to kill drug couriers even when the current of international opinion was strongly against it.

But the questions really in this crisis are: has government acted in the best interest, and did the Nigeria Computer Society (NCS) took the right step in writing a letter of protest to ICANN demanding that request for redelegation by the Federal Government be rejected (until, in its own best judgment, harmony has been achieved within the Internet community)? The NCC’s position cannot be totally discarded even as we must also strongly assert that the NIG has a cogent point in its argument. Every party seems to be right but who is wrong? That is a poser for all stakeholders to address.

It is also shameful that this bitter war appears to be something that could easily have been resolved if all parties played down the ego aspect, sat down to talk and worked out a meeting point. Unfortunately, because there have always been discordant notes over the matter, we have never been able to have full control over our national resource. For this reason, all benefits accruable from exercising this direct control remain unrealised. This is tragic. What this infers is simple. Just as Marxist theorists see social conflicts from the point of view of dialectical materialism, the present war exemplifies dialectics of digital clouts. Who stays at the centre as an administrator of the .ng controls the mindset and the economic capacity of the Internet community. Methinks, in this war-war something akin to controlling the centre and being able to set the tune for who plays in cyberspace with the Nigerian tag is responsible for the irreconcilable difference among the leading stakeholders. 

But a lingering crisis has deeper implications than we seem to appreciate. While the leaders of the Internet community engage themselves over who calls the shot in the digital arena, the resulting hiatus is only encouraging what I suspect is a digital inertia i.e. the state of digital nothingness. No nation can afford to stay too long outside of mainstream knowledge economy. Those who know this should please tell the clowns to shut up and the wise speak for a true armistice to emerge.

We must move forward in the digital race. This is more important than NCS, NIG, NITDA and the Ministry of Communications. Only the interest of the people matters and it     is above all other interests whether fashioned by professional groups, NGOs, government agencies or ministries. Why! They are only a fraction of the whole and not the whole. The whole is the interest of everyone including that of my grand mother back in the village. Enough of this digital inertia.

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