Nigeria Records 140,000 Domain Name Registration

Nosa Alekhuogie

Nigeria Internet Registration Association (NiRA), the body responsible for the registration of the country’s .ng domain name has said it has registered over 140,000 domain names in Nigeria so far.

NiRA President, Mr. Sunday Folayan, who made the disclosure at the maiden edition of the 2018 Bloggers’ Summit held at the NiRA in Lagos recently, said NIRA also has 65 accredited registrars which were allowed to appoint re-sellers to increase the reach of their businesses and operations.

The summit was aimed at bringing the blogging community and stakeholders in Nigeria together to learn, network, and collaborate on the further growth of the online community.

The president said the bloggers’ summit was conceived as a vehicle for increasing the avenue for networking among bloggers, creating an environment to promote responsible blogging in this era of ‘fake news’ and ‘hate speech’, encouraging and rewarding stellar performances within the blogging community, stimulating the industry by ensuring that Bloggers develop and publish content relevant to the society.

“The summit will also enhance job creation and opportunities for Nigerians because of the associated businesses like content hosting and website design and maintenance and the development of other capacities and skill sets required to keep blogs on-line, and the need to ensure that blogging commands respect from the larger society, because of its disruptive nature in communication and information dissemination,” Afolayan said

According to him, NiRA is a self-regulating private-sector led public-private-partnership between the government and the people of Nigeria, for the management of Nigeria’s country code Top Level Domain (ccTLD) on the internet.
“NIRA’s membership and by extension, how it is governed, is open to everyone, irrespective of affiliation and affluence.

Because we are all stakeholders and citizens of the country, and therefore entitled to the resources of the nation,” he added
“NiRA’s mandate derives from a memorandum of understanding between it and the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), delegating the management of the ccTLD to NIRA. It is therefore the responsibility of NIRA to run the registry, setting policies for its operations and maintaining the database of names registered under the .ng country code Top Level Domain. We do not take this responsibility lightly,” he further said.