Nigeria slashes second level .ng registration cost by 97%

Domains used to cost $3,165 per year.

According to an article on This Day Live, Nigeria Internet Registration Association (NIRA), the registry for .ng domain names, has reduced the price of registering a second level .ng domain name by 97% to NGN 15,000.

That’s equivalent to about $95 USD.

Previously, the group had been charging NGN 500,000, or $3,165 per year, for a second level .ng registration.

But it actually used to cost a lot more than that. When NIRA started offering second level domains, it offered to sell a five year registration outright for NGN 7.5M, or $47,450. It offered reduced pricing of NGN 3.0M for domains that matched trademarks.

Some companies took NIRA up on the offer. Google registered four domains while Microsoft picked up Bi.ng.

But the This Day article says that only 32 second level .ng domains were registered, and only two of those were registered by companies in Nigeria.

The Chief Operating Officer of NIRA, Mr. Ope Odusan, who gave the information, told THISDAY that NIRA later discovered that most Nigerians preferred the .ng top-level domain name directly, instead of the .com.ng domain name. He added that they however complained that the N500, 000 per year, which amounted to N6 million in five years, was exorbitant for them.

Gee, really?

Third level .ng domains, such as name.com.ng, are available for around $15 per year.

I’ve reached out to a .ng domain registrar to learn more about this and confirm the details of the article. I’ll update the story when I hear back.