Shehu, Rudman, Udeagu Lead NiRA Academy Drives

The Nigeria Internet Registration Association (NIRA) has made some appointments to deepen the activities of its Academy.

The Board approved Sikiru Shehu appointment as Dean of the Academy; Mohammed Rudman will serve as Director of Studies, while the COO, Edith Udeagu was appointed Registrar of the Academy.

Sunday Folayan, while welcome Acting NITDA DG’s entourage to NiRA House, recently, said that the appointments were part of plans to deepen the Academy’s programmes.

NiRA Academy was created by the Association, poised and ready to breed Nigerians that will take full advantage of the jobs and business opportunities, wealth creation and financial rewards .ng domain name has to offer.

“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.

“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, and well as Child online protection, making the Internet safe for the Nigerian child,” Folayan said.

He said NiRA is working assiduously on 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,” the President said.