As part of efforts to increase the adoption of Nigeria’s domain name, .ng, the Nigeria Internet Registration Association (NiRA) has disclosed that it will be working with the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) and the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA).

The Vice President, NiRA, Toba Obaniyi, who disclosed this plan, informed that as at last year, usage of Nigeria’s domain name, the .ng grew to 180,000. A domain name is an identification string that defines a realm of administrative autonomy, authority or control within the Internet. The .ng is Nigeria’s identity on the Internet space.

Obaniyi at a forum organized by the Nigeria Information Technology Reporters Association (NITRA) with the theme: “Achieving 30 per cent growth in local cloud hosting by 2024,” said NiRA working with both CAC and NITDA has become highly imperative to increase adoption and use of .ng. According to him, .ng growth is slow compared to the population of the country, “a reason why there should be collaboration among stakeholders to scale the growth and also canvass usage by Nigerians. It will interest you to know that people still prefer other domain names like .com; .gov; .net, even Nigerians ahead of their own .ng.” In one of his interviews with The Guardian, former President, NiRA, Sunday Folayan, said .ng is the national identity of Nigeria in the cyber space. He said every domain name has a suffix, which uniquely defines what the domain name is all about. He said it is not necessary that the domain name be used exclusively in Nigeria. Folayan said prior to NiRA, domain names were not expiring, saying that once they are registered, “you are registered for life but now, and there are expiry dates on them. The domain names being used now are the active ones. “It ranges from one year to five years by our policy. The registrant decides the life of the domain. Of course, the cheapest is one year and the five years is the most expensive, still, there is a discount for multi/year registration.” On how government can be of help to scale adoption of the domain name, Folayan said legislation without enforcement is a waste of time. According to him government can scale adoption by ensuring patronage; consistency and through policies.Folayan explained that government should patronise by putting services online just like the transport companies in the Yuletide season and most of them were .ng. On consistency, he said government should be consistent by looking at all the ramifications and make it adoptable, while in the areas of policies, they should be tailored to the aspirations of the people to boost their adoption.

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