Why NiRA’s Release of Over 1800 ‘Premium’ .NG Domains For Sale At N15,000 Per Domain Isn’t Enough

After introducing an auction process that put generic domains at a premium price, the Nigerian Internet Registration Association (NiRA), the country’s official TLD registrar, has decided to make 1,851 so-called ‘premium’ domain names available for sale publicly at the regular price of N15,000 only.

That leaves another 1,883 so-called ‘premium’ domain names under NiRA’s lock and key.

Recall that back in 2013, the domain registrar had reserved “a special category of domain names determined to be of premium value”, which “will be available via auction only”, according to its policy. These so-called ‘premium’ domain names were nothing but a bunch of generic words such as acid, bite, caro and a host of other non-premium names which the registry was hoping to sell at a premium price.

It is unclear exactly why the registry has decided to release these domains names now for sale, although it vaguely wrote on its website that it is “in fulfillment of our promise to prune down the number of premium domain names.”

Over the years, NiRA has been criticised by industry experts for its attitude towards the change of its policies which appears to happen more often — on a whim — so it is not surprising that its so-called premium domain names are now considered to be not-so-premium domain names.

Again, there’s the issue of the cost of the .NG domains, which industry experts believe to be arbitrarily sold at a premium cost of N15,000 (currently about $75 USD) which when compared to the cost of other country’s top level domain such as Germany’s .DE at less than $10 USD (about N2,000 per domain) seems like NiRA isn’t serious about making the .NG domains as readily available and as popular as it should be in the global domains market.

Granted, the .NG has for a long time been viewed as one of the most valuable extensions in the domains market, especially for the fact that it creates virtually any verb-related web domain on the surface of the Internet. Hence, NiRA thinks that selling virtually any generic word with .NG at a premium price would make the domain extension well-sought after and widely popular.

Well, it hasn’t lived up to any of these expectations at all.

According to the 2015 stats from the registry made available on its website, a total of 1,542 .NG domains were registered in January, while a total of 1,512 were registered in February, which indicates that just over 3,000 .NG domain names have been registered or sold this year as at February 2015.

If you compare that paltry figure to the number of domains that GoDaddy Auctions sold in January and February of 2015, a total of 37,302 and 36, 166 respectively (in the figure above), you will see that NiRA is definitely not doing something right with its management of the .NG domain.

Thus, if NiRA is really serious about making the .NG widely popular, it needs to be careful not to allow it become its Achilles heel, thereby losing its credibility and relevance in the global domains market.

It can start getting serious today by making the so-called over 3,000 premium .NG domains readily available and affordable to all for less than N2,000 per domain.

Of course, it should reserve the right to make brand names premium and sell them for a million dollars if it so desires.