The poor adoption of Nigeria’s domain name, .ng, and the purchase of foreign domain names such as .com, .org, .net, and .co.uk etc, by Nigeria’s website owners, has resulted in a capital flight of about 3.76 billion naira ($23.8 million) in the last five years.

As Punch reported, the “figure is expected to more than double in the next five years if the trend is not checked given the increasing level of Internet awareness and usage in the country.”

The local media publication said the Chief Operating Officer, Nigeria Internet Registration Association (NiRA) Mr. Ope Odunsa, confirmed the figure, adding that over 752.66 million naira ($4.77 million) is paid annually by Nigerians to service the over 600,000 registered foreign domain names in the country.

It costs about 5,000 naira ($31.6) to purchase a domain name.

Odunsa expressed dissatisfaction with the development and asked locals, government agencies and corporate bodies to “be proud of,” the country’s domain name.

Reports have also revealed most government officials have their electronic mail designated at foreign domains like Yahoo!, Google, etc.

“The Minister of Communications Technology, Mrs. Omobola Johnson, had recently confirmed that out of the 54,000 indigenous email accounts created for government officials in the federal ministries, departments and agencies, only four per cent were in use,” Punch reported.

In a country of over 160 million peoples, only 26,000 domain names were registered with NiRA at the end of last year.