NiRA to Celebrate Nigeria @ 100 with 100,000 Free .ng Domain

Nigeria Internet Registration Association (NiRA), the registry that maintains database of names in the .ng domain, has mapped out plan to dole out not less than 100, 000 free domain names as part of plan to celebrate the nation centenary come 2014.

Mrs. Mary Uduma, president of the Registry, who made this known in Lagos at the Registrars forum/end of the year get-together, said that the initiative was borne out of desire to propagate the use of the local content domain name by Nigerians.

While assessing the adoption of .ng domain name in the country so far, the NiRA President said, “In 2009 we had less than 2,000 domain names but now we have about 50, 000 and for that reason we have some of the registrants have registered almost 10,000 domain names already”.

Fielding question on how registrants can participate and Nigerians can benefit from the free domain name during the centenary celebration, she said that will be one of the mandates of the working committee constituted.

According to her, the registrants and the committee are to work together to on the mode with respect to their hosting capacity.

Uduma said, “It is for the registrars to grab the opportunity; because we are going to give them free hosting which in-turn they will give to their registrants with free hosting with invariably open doors of loyalty between them and their registrants.

“In a nutshell the free domain name is for Nigerians who can come up with a registered .ng domain name” she enunciated.

The working committee chaired by Mr Gbolade Odusami, one of the prominent members of NiRA shall be independent, as the Registry said there will not be any form of interferences.

She added that, “the Ministry shall be waiting to receive their commendation by February; we can only support them with some logistic requirement but they will definitely be free to carry out their work.

Fallouts from the day forum indicated that the working group will brainstorm on how best in ensuring the domestication of local content name in all registered domain names.

The working committee is expected to give terms of reference and recommendations on NiRA’s premium policy which shall definitely be given a consideration.

NiRA has less than 50,000 registrants according to the industry data reel out by Uduma at the forum but not without hope of increasing it by 250% before the end of 2014 through intensive awareness.

“In our awareness program, an agreement has been reached to have all states and local governments with the .ng domain before the quarter of 2014. Considerations are serious being looked into the renewal fee of the N50,000 registrars which has been raised as an issues. In 2014 we are also going to engage the media more and the free domain fiesta is also a major channel which strongly has a great import for public internet of Nigeria and global internet communities,” she added.