NiRA’s move to populate .ng adoption and expected impacts on the digital economy – TechEconomy.ng


The Nigeria Internet Registration Association (NiRA) recently brought down the price of registering .NG domain names.

This NiRA push came just after the Federal Executive Council (FEC) banned its employees from using generic domains for official communications. The purpose of this article is to examine how these efforts will deepen the nation’s digital economy agenda.

The Federal Executive Council (Nigeria) approved the National Policy on Second Level Domains of the Nigerian Government at its meeting on February 16, 2022 and thus prohibited its employees from using generic domains.

Teacher. Isa Pantami, Minister of Communications and Digital Economy

The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) followed up on the directive by recently inaugurating a 14-person enforcement committee to oversee the implementation of the policy across all ministries, departments and agencies. (MDA) at the state and federal levels.

However, the February 2022 statement is not the first from the FEC, leaving many amazed as to why, after six years, the Nigerian government is still advocating for compliance regarding the local .ng domain.

Should it be considered ignorance or pure sabotage that a diplomat, for example, issues a calling card that contains a “.com, “.co.uk‘, etc., email address? It may very well be that senior Nigerian civil servants are unaware of the use of government in their ministries. One wonders how long it will take to achieve 100% compliance with the new policy.

Frankly, it’s amazing that a country with 141,971,560 active internet users in the fourth quarter of 2021, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) report, has less than 200,000 .ng domains for both local and international owners. Yes, it’s a somewhat interesting irony especially when looking at the number of .co.za areas that South Africa has managed to bring to the world.

Many questions are being raised in different circles as to why Nigerians have simply refused to use .ng domains? Who is to blame? Do we believe that .ng is not good enough or we just don’t understand its importance to our national brand? We probably need some sort of government policy to make it somewhat mandatory for individuals and businesses as well?

If you try to convince some to switch to .ng, a large majority of people would give all sorts of reasons why they don’t use .ng and many of those reasons are just based on assumptions or hearsay and not facts.

Again, it is important to emphasize that the foundation of any appropriate and sustainable development, especially in the knowledge economy, is the adoption and application of policies. Imagine, if we had a policy that says every business registered in Nigeria must use .ng? We know it’s not an impossible feat, after all, the UK and a few other countries have such policies, whether covertly or openly.

Consequently, the recent initiatives of the FEC must be effectively implemented, in particular in support of the dynamics of the digital economy.

The journey towards economic diversification requires everyone’s commitment to the development of a robust digital economy and, in this case, requires the use of the Nigerian second-level domain by all official government-owned websites and emails. .

The private sector is not left out either. Many Nigerian business platforms are still struggling with the indulgence of .ng, unaware of the immense advantage it will offer to boost their business prospects both locally and internationally.

First, the Nigeria Internet Registration Association (NiRA) owns the registry of .ng Internet domain names and manages the database of registered names in Nigeria. It has shown its commitment to this cause through the recent reduction of more than 40% in the registration price of .ng domain names and the efforts of the media to inform the general public.

The benefits are many, but let’s consider a few. The .ng is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Nigeria. The Nigeria Domain Name System identifies websites related to Nigeria and is currently available for registration in the following variations, .com.ng, .ng, .org.ng, .net.ng and so on, with a few of them being restricted to Nigerian entities such as .gov.ng, .edu.ng, .sch.ng, etc.

For example, Nigerian companies registering .ng domain names have the immediate benefit of being ranked first on search engines when an online search is performed. Using it and maintaining good search engine optimization (SEO) for the website will, over time, lead to increased local traffic.

A strong online presence is essential. Your potential customer will likely search the web when looking for your product or service, and a website that’s relatively easy to find and navigate will greatly increase your chances of making a sale, which .ng provides.

Nigeria as a nation is blessed with this unique domain string known as .ng and we should be proud of this gift of nature. However, one should not stop to enjoy it but own at least one of the many variants.

Nigerian Internet Registration Association - NIRA
Muhammed Rudman, Chairman of the Nigerian Internet Registration Association – NIRA

Currency is rare

Many developers will tell you that they were happy to pay for their VPS but not anymore because of the ever increasing exchange rate and the same goes for .com domain names! Using the range of .ng domains will help save scarce currencies.

Reduced SEO/Speed/Latency

Why do you think Google prefers to serve you results using google.com.ng when you search for things in Nigeria and if you travel to say Ghana and use the same device it will go ahead and deliver results to you via google.com.gh?

What is even more interesting is that in the case of Nigeria, Google owns both com.ng and .ng, an example of a forward-looking company.

Local content development

With the increase in local content, more businesses will spring up. If you consider the report by the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN) that the number of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) across the country dropped by around two million between 2017 and 2021 , then you’ll appreciate the need to develop local content and step up the promotion of local brands online.

The 2021 MSME Survey revealed that there are 39 million MSMEs in Nigeria, which is a significant drop from the 41 million reported in the 2017 survey report.

Therefore, we must develop local content by supporting what is ours. Just imagine what will happen if only 1% of the reported 211 million Nigerians (according to MacroTrends stats) decide to own .ng, that will be over 2 million domain names that will eventually serve as the basis for businesses, businesses and to causes on the Internet.

Wouldn’t that further strengthen the Nigerian brand and make it worthy on the internet? This shows that everyone needs to be on deck to drive the adoption of using the .ng domain… Let’s support the NiRA push!

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