Nigeria’s national domain dotng has struggled to gain attraction this is despite the many benefits it holds for the digital economy. Out of the 145,871,496 active internet users recorded in March 2022 by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), there are less than 200,000 .ng domains.
In recent times, the Nigeria Internet Registration Association (NiRA) has gone on charm offensive to attract many more users to the platform. The Nigeria Internet Registration Association (NiRA) has the registry for .ng Internet Domain Names and maintains the database of names registered in Nigeria.
One of the measures the association took include reducing the price of .ng domain name registration. The reduction follows a decision by the Federal Executive Council (FEC) ordering its workers to use .ng for official communications.
The Federal Executive Council (Nigeria) approved the National Policy on the Nigerian Government Second-Level Domains during its meeting on the 16th of February, 2022 and thus barred its workers from the use of generic domains.
The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) followed up with the directive by recently inaugurating a 14-man enforcement committee to monitor the policy implementation across all ministries, departments, and agencies (MDAs) both at the State and Federal levels.
Experts say the government needs to effectively enforce compliance for the plans to achieve any meaningful result and to drive the digital economy initiatives of the government. According to the, the journey towards economic diversification requires everybody’s commitment to the development of a robust digital economy and in this case demands the use of the Nigerian Second Level Domain by all government-owned websites and official emails.
They also canvass broadening the partnership between the public and private sectors. This is because many Nigerian business platforms are not yet onboarded to the .ng platform and many of them are not aware of the immense benefit and how it will boost their business outlook both local and international.
The .ng is the internet country code Top-Level-Domain (ccTLD) for Nigeria. Nigeria’s domain name system identifies Nigeria-related websites and is currently available for registration in the following variants, .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 and so on.
For instance, Nigerian businesses registering .ng domain names have the immediate benefit of being ranked first on search engines when an online search is conducted. Using it and maintaining a good search engine optimisation (SEO) for the website will, over time, lead to an increase in local traffic.
A strong online presence is essential. Prospective customers will likely conduct a web search when looking for a product or service, and a website that is relatively easy to find and navigate will greatly increase the chances of making a sale, which .ng provides.
NiRA also makes the point that developers benefit from paying for the domain names in the local currency rather than foreign exchange given the scarcity that is facing many businesses today. Using the .ng range of domains will contribute to saving the scarce FX.
However, the February 2022 declaration is not the first by the FEC, leaving many people astonished as to why, after six years, the Nigerian government is still advocating for compliance regarding the local .ng domain.
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Should it be regarded as ignorance or sheer sabotage that a diplomat, for example, would issue a calling card that contains a ‘.com, ‘.co.uk’, etc., email address? It may very well be that Nigeria’s top public officials are not aware of the use of gov.ng in their ministries. One is left wondering how long it will be, to obtain 100% compliance with the new policy.
Frankly, it is 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 to both local and international owners. Yes, it is a somewhat interesting irony especially when you look at the number of .co.za domains that South Africa has been able to push out to the world.
A lot of questions are raised in different quarters as to why Nigerians have simply refused to use .ng domains? Who is to blame? Is it that we believe .ng is not good enough or we just do not understand its importance to our national brand? We, probably do need some sort of government policy to make it somewhat compulsory for individuals and businesses as well?
If you try to convince some to switch to .ng a vast majority of people would give all sorts of reasons why they do not use .ng and many of these reasons are simply based on assumptions or hearsay and not facts.
Again, it is important to stress that the foundation of any proper and sustainable development especially in the knowledge economy is the enactment and enforcement of policies. Imagine, if we had a policy that states that every registered company in Nigeria must use .ng? We know this is not an impossible feat, after all the UK and a few other countries are enforcing such policies whether covertly or overtly.
