President of NiRA, Muhammed Rudman, made the announcement in Lagos, stating that the decision to lower the cost of .ng was made by NiRA’s board of directors after reviewing the growth trajectory of the domain name across the country over the last two years.
He stated that the board’s decision to lower the cost of .ng had been communicated to NIRA’s accredited registrars, who are in charge of domain name registration, renewal, and restoration. This is due to NiRA’s 3R (Registry, Registrar, and Registrant) model, which means that it does not sell domains to the general public; rather, all registrations go through its registrars.
The most recent NiRA statistics on .ng domain name registration, renewal, and restoration, published in February, revealed a drop in domain name registration and renewal, with figures falling from 184,341 in November 2021 to 178,097 in January 2022.
According to Rudman, to address the issue, NiRA decided to conduct a 40 per cent downward review of domain name prices on the .ng domains and a marginal reduction on .com.ng domains and others.
“We made it public after first announcing it at the registrars’ forum. The goal is to increase the number of domain names registered in the country by encouraging more people to register.
“Previously, Registrars were classified as Platinum, Gold, Silver, and Standard, with each category receiving domains at different prices, according to Rudman. However, NiRA recently removed such categorization in order to create a level playing field for all registrars and to remove all barriers for new registrars.
“We are hopeful that the price reduction and removal of Registrar categorisation will drive domain adoption and allow other organisations willing to become NiRA Registrar to do so with ease,” he said.
Rudman explained the drop in registration figures from November 2021 to January 2022 by stating that registration actually increased from 2019 to 2020, but that there was a drop in 2021 and 2022 due to the effect of COVID-19.
“In 2020, we saw an increase in the number of registrations for country code Top Level Domain Name (ccTLD), but in 2021, the number of registrations dropped due to the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic,” he says. “The issue is that all those who registered in 2020 were unable to use the domain name in that same year due to the pandemic, and as a result, they did not renew their registration in 2021, and new registration for ccTLDs was also suspended in 2021.”
According to Rudman, the drop in domain name registration in 2021 was not unique to the Nigerian market but was a global issue that affected other ccTLDs, possibly as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
