.ng

.ng is the ccTLD for Nigeria. It is managed by the Nigeria Internet Registration Association (NiRA).

Delegation History

On 15 March 1995, the University of Southern California's Information Sciences Institute (which then performed the IANA functions) approved a request for establishment of the .ng ccTLD. Upon its establishment, the .ng ccTLD was delegated by Dr. Jon Postel (then in charge of the IANA function at the Information Sciences Institute) to Ms. Iyabo Odusote from Yaba College of Technology, Lagos, Nigeria as administrative contact; and Mr. Abraham Gebrehewit, from IAT, Pisa, Italy, as the technical contact.

In the Nigerian National Policy for Information Technology (IT) dated March 2001, the National Information Technical Development Agency (NITDA) was established. NITDA's goal was to foster the development and growth of IT in Nigeria and, among other responsibilities, become the "operating agency" for .ng. In a message dated 8 December 2003, the Nigerian Government, through the Federal Ministry of Science and Technology recognized NITDA as the appropriate delegee for the .ng ccTLD and expressed an interest to have NITDA formally recognized by ICANN as the delegee for the .ng ccTLD. In 2004, ICANN redelegated the .ng top-level domain to NITDA.

A new request for redelegation was received by IANA on 15 January 2009. The proposed redelegation appeals for the Nigeria Internet Registration Association (NiRA) to be designated as the Sponsoring Organisation for the .ng top-level domain. On 23 April 2009, the Board of ICANN passed a resolution approving the proposed redelegation.

Rules and Restrictions

The .ng domain is an Open Use ccTLD; registration at the top level is open to anyone, with some restrictions and rules on registration of certain second-level domains.

The following list of domains are not available for registration:

• Offensive Names: This list shall contain words as determined by NiRA Executive Board of Directors to be offensive first to the Nigerian community and then to the global community.
• Restricted Names: This shall be a list of domains that may give a wrong impression if used. This could pertain to military, government or other related words
• GeoNames: This list shall contain words as determined by NiRA Executive Board of Directors as geographical and placenames.

The following domain names are generally not for registration but can be obtained in certain circumstances:

• Existing Nigerian Trademarks: These are domains which contains words which violate any existing trademark registered in Nigeria unless the consent of the trademark owner has been obtained.
• Premium Names: These are domains with generic words only but command premium value. These domains would be made available to registrants though a competitive bidding and auction process.

Second-level Domains

The following are open second-level domains:

• .com.ng: for commercial entities and purposes;
• .name.ng: for personal names;
• .net.ng: for Internet Service / Telecoms Providers' infrastructure;
• .org.ng: for not-for-profit entities;
• .mobi.ng: for mobile devices meeting .mobi.ng TLD standards;
• .i.ng: serves a general purpose for individuals and organisations, private and public. The goal of this SLD is leveraging the potential for domain hacking English words ending in -ing.

The following are closed second-level domains:

• .edu.ng: for higher and further education and research institutions;
• .sch.ng: for other Academic institutions (this SLD is not only closed, but also at a regional level);
• .gov.ng: for national, regional, and local government bodies and agencies;
• .mil.ng: for military and related purposes.

Characters

• A domain name may only contain the following thirty-seven characters or a combination thereof:
  • the twenty-six unaccented Roman letters (a-z);
  • the ten western digits (0-9); and
  • hyphens.
• The first or last Characters of a domain name must not be a hyphen.
• The domain name must not consist of only numeric characters.
• As NiRA does not offer Internationalised Domain Names (IDN) for now , domain names that start with the characters "xn--" (i.e., "xn" followed by two dashes) may not be registered.
• A domain must not be one Character long or two characters long. For example, an application to register 1.com.ng or ab.com.ng would be rejected. Except offered by auction at the second or third level. For example, bubbl.i.ng can be permitted.

Country code top-level domain

Internet Assigned Numbers Authority

Top-Level Domain

Second Level Domain

Internationalized Domain Name