New Telegraph

Nigeria’s domain name records 28,976 new registrations

Registration for Nigeria’s country code Top Level Domain (ccTLD), .ng, increased by 28,976 in 2020, New Telegraph has learnt. The new registrations recorded last year brought the number of registered .ng to 176,721 as of December 2020.

 

This showed an improved growth compared with 2019 when the database grew by 16,645.

 

According to data released by the Nigeria Internet Registration Association (NiRA), subscriptions for the domain name, which stood at 147,745 in December 2019, rose to 150,111 in January 2020 as 2,366 new registrations were recorded in the month. In February, 2,800 new registrations were recorded, bringing the total to 152,911, while 754 registrations were recorded in March.

 

In April 2020, a record of 1,777 new registrations brought the country’s .ng database to 155,442, while the figure increased by 1,630 in May to 157,072.

 

June and July saw the figure rose to 160,276, and 164,542 respectively. In August, 3, 256 registrations were recorded, bringing the total to 167,798, while 3,331 were added in September. By October, the .ng database rose to 172,712 as 1,583 new registrations were recorded.

 

The data for November and December showed that 2,359 and 1,650 new registrations were recorded respectively. The country’s internet asset, which is being managed by NiRA, had witnessed steady growth over the last three years, even though many Nigerian websites are still registered with the foreign domain names.

 

This had prompted NiRA to set a target of one million active web addresses on the .ng domain name in five years, starting from 2019. However, the pace of growth has slowed down over the last year, thus casting a shadow of doubt over the one million target of NiRA. Currently, Nigeria has one of the lowest registrations for the country code Top Level Domain (ccTLD) in the world.

 

Nigerians’ preference for foreign domain names, especially, the United State’s .com, has been the bane of the .ng, thus denying the country huge revenue from the national resource.

 

To encourage more Nigerians to sign up for the .ng, NiRA, had in July announced discounts on new registrations for three months. The .ng promotion commenced on the 24th of August 2020 and ended on the 21st of November 2020.

 

Announcing the offer, NiRA stated: “In January 2017, NiRA publicly declared a mechanism to be used for reducing prices of .ng domain names based on the number of actual .ng domain registrations at the second level, so as to stimulate the uptake of the .ng domain name string and demystify the perception that .ng domain names are expensive.

 

“This mechanism which is known as the “NiRA Price Charter” has been beneficial in reducing the price of .ng domain names for over three years now. However, in the light of the challenges being faced by many businesses in the COVID-19 era, NiRA desired to support businesses that require to take their products and services online.”

 

“NiRA therefore offers, as a palliative in these tough times and in an effort to promote Nigerian businesses online, to make these businesses more competitive and available, an opportunity for all to register non-premium second level .ng domain names at a largely discounted price, for a limited period of three(3) months,” it added.

 

According to the President of NiRA, Mr. Muhammed Rudman, the promo period witnessed increase in the registration of .ng as more businesses took advantage of the offer.

 

“It gladdens our hearts that Nigeria has witnessed an increase in the .ng domain name registrations this year with many Nigerian businesses moving online and seeing how the general public is embracing the use of .ng domains more for their websites,” Rudman said.

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