Nigeria Internet Registration Association (NIRA), managers of Nigeria’s .ng Internet domain name, is calling for  nominations for its 2017 .ng Awards scheduled to hold later this year.

Revered Sunday Folayan President of NIRA  who disclosed this Tuesday at a press briefing in Lagos says  the award seeks to recognise and acknowledge those who are contributing to the growth of the domain name registration and the promotion of the  Domain Name System (DNS ) industry in Nigeria.

According to him, nomination for the .ng awards will commence  January 31 and closes at midnight of February 14, 2017. After this phase, voting for the nominees will start February 20 and close by midnight on Monday April 3, 2017.

“The Awards aim to showcase Nigerian businesses, individuals, charity, public and private sector organisations which help to make the Internet a more secure, open, accessible and rewarding experience for all”, the NIRA President told journalists at the press briefing held at its corporate headquarters in Lagos.

“The Awards aim to showcase Nigerian businesses, individuals, charity, public and private sector organisations which help to make the Internet a more secure, open, accessible and rewarding experience for all”, the NIRA President told journalists at the press briefing held at its corporate headquarters in Lagos.

Listing the criteria for nomination, Folayan says the company, organisation or individual must have registered and is active online with .ng domain name(s).

Also, the nominee must have an online presence which must be outstanding while the domain name must have been registered for over six months. The website associated with the domain name must also be active on the Internet, NIRA says.

According to him, ”all the nominations/entries will be reviewed by a jury for eligibility and qualification to produce the final shortlist of nominees which will be released for the general public for voting via the website.”

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In a further clarification the  NIRA president says  “the awards committee may reclassify or re-categorize entries and may remove entries that do not conform to the entry requirements.”

NIRA also says that “entries that differ substantially from the award criteria will be disqualified without prior notice to the entrants.”

The url for nomination is http://www.nira.org.ng/voting

Folayan also announced that NIRA has signed Memorandum of Understanding( MoU) with some key players in DNS in Africa hoped to have a positive impact on the domain name business across Africa.

The MoU entails that registrars either under the NIRA and KeNIC registries are free to provide registrar services with NIRA and KeNIC and registrars won’t be required to undergo the accreditation process under the respective registry to provide registrar services, the Nigerian Internet name manager says.

”On Tuesday 24th January 2017 at Villa Rosa Kempinski, Nairobi, Kenya, a Memorandum of Understanding was signed between the Nigeria Internet Registration Association (NIRA) and the Kenya Network Information Centre (KeNIC), the managers of .ke ccTLD”

“The MoU specifies the mutual rights and obligations of the parties to foster a working Registry relationship to enable accredited Registrars under both Registries to provide Registrar services and associated services for prospective applicants/registrant”, he says.

The MoU entails that registrars either under the NIRA and KeNIC registries are free to provide registrar services with NIRA and KeNIC and registrars won’t be required to undergo the accreditation process under the respective registry to provide registrar services, the Nigerian Internet name manager says.

NIRA also says the cooperation will give its accredited registrars “the opportunity to register domain names directly in the Kenyan Registry and pay with local currency.”

What this means is that Nigerians will now be able to register (locally) domains such as amasi.ke, fola.ke, aji.ke, nwazuri.ke, asha.ke, tinu.ke, ki.ke, chijio.ke, ron.ke, rola.ke, ugo.ke, adeni.ke, olani.ke etc which are all within the Kenyan domain name space.

In another separate deal, Folayan told journalist that African Network Information Center(AFRINIC) Limited, one of the world’s five regional internet registries and NIRA Academy, signed a MoU to develop and certify skills in Internet Number Resources Management and Internet protocol version 6 (IPv6), the most recent version of Internet Protocol (IP).

“The memorandum of Understanding creates an accessibility to International IPv6 certification for Nigeria System and Networking Engineers, and provides the opportunity for Nigeria to increase the number of internationally recognized and skilled IPv6 engineers, following the pattern established by AFRINIC.”

”The trainings would be conducted at the NIRA academy, using AFRINIC course wares and certified trainers for the certification programs”, he adds.

The signing ceremonies of both MoUs happened at the tail end of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) Government Advisory Committee (GAC) Africa Workshop in Nairobi, Kenya.

The event was witnessed by key players within the African and Global Internet Community, including the president/CEO of ICANN, Goran Marby, Internet Pioneer, Prof. Nii Quaynor, representing the African Internet Community, Immediate past president of NIRA, Mrs. Mary Uduma, NIRA BoT member, Emmanuel Edet and other top officials.