How to Register a .ng Domain Name
If you want to host a website in Nigeria, you may decide to choose the .ng domain name registration since it is the official Internet Country Code Top Level Domain of Nigeria sponsored by the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) with the Nigeria Internet Registration Association (NiRA) as the Registry.
To register the .ng domain name, you must have actual physical presence in Nigeria (as an individual or as an entity) and you can make the registration through several registry services that offer the .ng registration. NiRA has announced that it expects to gain 2 million users over the next 18 months, fueled in part by a January 2008 memorandum of agreement between NiRA and NITDA.
What You Should Know When Registering a .ng Domain
- The registration contract is valid for two years and .ng domain registration is now done through a web form.
- Multiple domains are allowed for one entity.
- The domains must have at least two independent servers that provide the domain service for translating names to addresses for hosts in this domain.
- At least one of the secondary name servers should be on a different physical location than the primary.
- Registrations must be from organizations with permanent address in the country and such organizations should use domain name on the Internet on a regular basis.
- Most of the registry service providers ask for a registration fee, but free registration is also available at other sites. (An example of a web hosting company that offers free .ng domain registration is Web4Africa, but you have to subscribe to any of their web hosting packages to benefit from this offer.)
- Only those domain names which are requested through the website will be considered for availability.
- Make sure that the domain name you are suggesting does not violate the trademark or the service mark.
- Company registrations in Nigeria and accurate contact information are the two important requirements for .ng registration.
- Specify the registration type, name of the domain, the name of the entity, a brief description of the domain, the date, name of the administrative head of the organization, the name of the technical and zone contact, secondary server and Internet host.
The second level domains also available for use in Nigeria are:
com.ng - commercial entities and businesses
org.ng – non-commercial organizations
gov.ng – governmental organizations
edu.ng – degree awarding institutions
net.ng – ISP infrastructure
biz.ng
info.ng
How to Get a .ng Domain Name
You can download the registration form from the site here. You can also read more by clicking on this PDF document. You can also search WHOIS to find what websites are registered.
My Opinion
It seems that people are not so keen on the .ng domain name as it is with South Africa’s .za, United Kingdom’s .uk, France’s .fr, India’s .in, Australia’s .au and so on. Instead, we see more of Nigerian websites with the .com domain name (even this blog - StartupsNigeria is a .com domain name registration)
My questions are:
- Why are there fewer Nigerian websites with the .ng domain name brand?
- Is it that the procedures and conditions for registering a .ng domain are complicated?
- Does it have anything to do with the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or Google website indexing?
- Could it be the price of a .ng domain name as compared to a .com domain name?
- Or is it the quality of service of the .ng domain? (It was rumoured that at one time all the .ng sites went down due to a technical problem at NITDA)
What is your opinion?
There is an accreditation process that allows you to get the domains from accredited companies, that doesnt require all the pre-requisite u listed here. Our company was accredited, that is like 1 month ago, and we are still waiting for the authentication details from them. Yes NIRA is very slow at things.
Fewer sites are with nigerian tlds because of the issues of downtime. We had to yank our .com.ng domain name for instance, because there was a time, the tld server was down for a week.
Google indexes all tlds, infact google has a .com.ng tld itself.
Wow, 2 million users over the next 18 months. That’s a very bold statement.
Not saying that it’s not possible but it’s going to be tough.
Saying that, look at China, they have over 13 million domain names.
http://www.domainpulse.com/2008/11/15/china-rockets-past-13-million-domain-name-
registrations/
Of all the reasons above you mention, my 2cent would be marketing the domain extension.
China did a lot of marketing for their domain extension until it became a norm to own a .cn
But then again, that’s my 2 cents.
Like Kayode pointed out, the rules have changed and thus much of the information you posted above is out-dated. The registry, NIRA, is only very very slow with things and so the new rules are yet to get enforced.
@Clayton - Wow! That’s some great achievement for China. You’re right, Nigeria’s TLD needs to be well marketed in order to achieve that figure in 18 months. However, since the MOU was signed this January, little has been heard about what’s next…
@Kayode & David - Thanks for your visits and insights! It’s a good thing that NiRA has changed those old rules. If only we can be sure their servers won’t have unnecessary downtimes, Nigeria’s TLD would be much popular on the web.
There is a cool website to easily search for .ng domains: http://DomainTyper.com
You can set .ng on the right side clicking on the ‘add extension’ button, and it searches as you type. Very fast! Try it out.
I switched my website from epohcj.com to epohcj.com.ng for over 1year now and i go tell una it hasn’t been that bad…just a few occasions (about 2 times) when they had some downtime. The main wahala i had then was getting the name registered it took about 3months…..after then, i also had a little problem with the server setting, was always getting e-mail which tells me that my setting is wrong even though all the setting is correct and everything is working fine.
In general, i think it’s worth repping Naija…with .ng TLD.
2 million new registrations in the next 18 months is not going to happen. One of the reasons being the local presence restriction = you need to live there or have a registered company in Nigeria in order to get a .ng domain. China which was mentioned earlier with 13 million registrations is unrestricted = anyone around the world can register a domain in a matter of minutes. Nigeria is therefore restricting itself from growing its domain name base.
Another reason is the cost. As only Nigerian’s and Nigerian registered companies can register the domains the .ng pricing needs to be accommodated to fit the income of Nigerians. As the .ng domain is often several times more expensive than e.g. a .com = people will opt for a .com instead of .ng.
@Daren - It’s so fascinating the way it works. Now I can generate domain names easily for my future startups. Thanks for sharing;-)
@Chimezie - I’ve never registered a .ng and from what I’m hearing about it, I feel discouraged. NIRA had better make things better or else…
@Wahala - You’re right! How can NIRA market the TLD to the rest of the world, if people or businesses need a physical presence in Nigeria?
I’ve been registering .ng domains for close to three years now. So why has the .ng TLD been slow in it’s take off? A lot of factors:
1. The registration process is painfully slow like @Kayode has already hinted and it’s complex for the everyday Internet user. The process of registration should be made as simple as possible. There has been efforts recently to make this easier with proper documentation and tutorials and I think this is a step in the right direction.
2. In the past, I have suggested .ng domain names to clients and their fear has been how reliable it is. Although I wouldn’t say that there has been any issues relating to severe downtimes and other such problems, there is this misconception that there’s an inherent tendency for the system to fail. That’s changing now, we’re having even big corporations get .ng domain names. With time, I believe things will pick up and the .ng TLD will experience the patronage it deserves.