The National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) has clarified that its previously known website, www.nhis.gov.ng, run by the defunct National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), is currently being decommissioned three months after a new one was launched.

NHIA made the announcement after FIJ reported that the NHIS website (www.nhis.gov.ng) had been unsafe for visitors for four months.

Responding to the story, Emmanuel Ononokpono, the head of media and public relations of the NHIA, said the website referred to in the report was undergoing decommissioning as part of the transition to the enhanced NHIA digital platform.

Ononokpono disclosed that the NHIA’s current website (https://www.nhia.gov.ng) was launched three months ago.

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“We wish to clarify that the NHIA’s official and fully operational website is https://www.nhia.gov.ng. The website referenced in the report belongs to the defunct National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), NHIA’s predecessor,” read his statement.

“That site is currently being decommissioned as part of the transition to the enhanced NHIA digital platform. The NHIA’s current website, launched three months ago, is a significant upgrade designed to support our ongoing data migration efforts and provide an improved user experience for stakeholders.”

The NHIA was established following the signing of the National Health Insurance Act into law on May 19, 2022, as a replacement for the National Health Insurance Scheme Act of 1999.

Although the standards and guidelines for government websites set down by the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) do not provide a time frame for the decommissioning of websites, all relevant information on such websites should be archived properly. This the NHIA did not do, leaving the impression that www.nhis.gov.ng was still active.

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Section 11.3.2 of the NITDA guidelines states: “When decommissioning websites, consideration should be given to archiving the content appropriately.”

Also, according to the document containing the guidelines, effective communication with the citizenry is one of the fiduciary responsibilities of all levels of government in Nigeria.

Checks by FIJ showed no publicly available information indicating that the NHIA had previously announced the decommissioning of the NHIS website.

This article on the guidance for US government websites and social media states that the decommissioning process often includes removing a site from the web, shutting down the servers that host the website, disabling domain name system (DNS) records that point to the website and redirecting to a more accurate website.