Due to massive usage of local domain names, Nigeria has slashed the cost of its DotNG Internet domain registration fee from N200,000 ($1,259) to N15,000 ($94), which translates to approximately 93 percent price decrease.

Speaking to reporter in Lagos, Chief Operating Officer, Nigeria Internet Registration Association of Nigeria (NiRA),  Ope Odusan, said, “The Board of NIRA has made some changes in the system that opens up the second level .ng domain for general registration at a price of N15, 000.”

Odusan says, NiRA is targeting 100,000 name uptakes by the second quarter of 2013.

Website owners in Nigeria have until now mostly use foreign internet domain names like .com, .org, .net, and .co.uk etc, resulting in a capital flight of about 3.76 billion Naira ($23.8 million)  in the last five years.

In 2012, only 26,000 domain names were registered despite Nigeria’s booming population of over 160 million.

Odusan asserts that Nigeria, on the average, looses N600 million ($4 million) to the use of foreign domain names yearly.

“When you estimate the “.net, .org, .com, and combine all the domain names registered by foreign registrars is over 3000, multiply by 1000 renewal fee yearly, cost Nigeria’s economy an annual capital flight of over N300 million,” he said.

“People don’t understand that .ng is Nigeria’s internet identifier on the internet. It is important that people have .ng instead of .com, org and .net web suffixes.

He added that the usage of the DotNG signature on the Internet by individuals, businesses and government would do more for Nigeria rather than using foreign domain names.

The DotNG ccTLD is a platform for the Nigerian Internet ecosystem to boost online commerce and eGovernment services. It will also enable access to valuable information and knowledge which is able to boost academics through effective research resource and participation in distance learning programmes, Odusan said.