I am excited about a number of things happening in NiRA, says Revd. Sunday Folayan

Revd. Sunday Folayan

NiRA President, Revd. Sunday Folayan recently declared that he is presently excited about a number of things happening in NIRA. According to him, one of such things that cause his excitement is the recent visit on Friday, 26^th August 2016, of The Acting Director General of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Dr. Vincent Olatunji to the NIRA Head Office in Lagos.  

Dr. Vincent Olatunji’s visit he said, coincided with the last day of  the AFRINIC/NIRA/ATCON/UI training on Internet Number Resources Management (INRM) & Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6). 

“I used the opportunity of the Ag. DG’s visit to draw his attention to NiRA’s Vision and Plans to advance the Domain Name Service ecosystem in Nigeria.” 

Also causing his excitement is the new plans for growth in NIRA Academy. “The Board of NIRA has made some appointments to deepen the activities of the NIRA Academy. Sikiru Shehu was appointed the Dean of the Academy. Mohammed Rudman will serve as Director of Studies, while the COO, Edith Udeagu was appointed Registrar of the Academy. They have already started their work. Apart from the AFRINIC INRM training, The NIRA Academy will mount a Track on Domain Name and Hosting at the forthcoming Nigeria Network Operators Group Training coming up in October 2016.”

“Secondly, NIRA’s plan to give back to the Nigerian Society, through the Ndukwe Kalu Foundation (NKF) that was setup in memory of our Pioneer President, to promote the DNS space in Nigeria. NKF will focus on Developing Entrepreneurs in the DNS space, as well as Child online protection, making the Internet safe for the Nigerian child.

 

“Thirdly, the need to get many more Nigerians to adopt and use the .ng platform for their presence on the Internet, the already established market of some gTLDs, together with the desire of Nigerians for foreign brands, the low level of awareness of the potentials and knowledge of the DNS industry have all combined to slow down the growth in .ng domain registrations.  We have tackled this with a reduction in price of the Second Level Domain which we believe would increase the number of registrations. Indeed .name.ng domains are as low as N500 now. It is easy to use, with any of the free webmail services like Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo.“

Still excited, Revd Sunday Folayan said that, “I must appreciate the DG for his kind words on our plans and activities. I thereafter accompanied him to the Training hall, to declare closed the AFRINIC/UI/ATCON/NIRA Training workshop in Internet Numbers Resource Management. I sincerely thank AFRINIC, the Association of Telecom Companies of Nigeria (ATCON) and University of Ibadan for partnering with us on training more Nigerian Network Engineers on INRM & IPv6."

Folayan added that, in the coming week, he shall be leading NIRA to visit a couple of high profile Internet Content generators in Nigeria, to further deepen the reach of the .ng brand.

He advised that “Nigerians should play a part in helping Nigeria exit this recession. Buying Nigerian products starts with a great Nigerian Domain name.” Nigerians, he said, should secure their name!”

Visit of Dr. Vincent Olatunji to the NIRA Head Office in Lagos.