By Florence Onuegbu
Lagos – The Nigeria Internet Registration Association (NIRA) on Monday said it would apply sanctions on DomainKing.ng, a .ng registrar, for breach of obligatory requirements.
The Chief Operating Officer, NIRA, Mrs Edith Udeagu said in a statement in Lagos, that the .ng Country Code Top Level Domain (ccTLD) registrar had refused to render required services to registrants.
Udeagu said that since Feb. 8, the Indian based .ng ccTLD accredited registrar, DomainKing.ng, had not responded to escalated support queries from its clients forwarded to it by the .ng registry.
She said that NIRA had attempted severally since then to contact the registrar via email, telephone, its online support system, social media platforms and postal services.
“Jan. 24, 2017, was the last time this registrar responded to the registry via email.
”Failing to respond to the .ng registry is a breach of the registrar agreement DomainKing.ng signed with NIRA.
”Also DomainKing.ng’s failure to respond to its registrants is in breach of the obligation a registrar owes its registrants.
”Some of the complaints via emails and phone calls from the clients of DomainKing.ng bordered on payments made via the DomainKing.ng website/platform, without service being rendered by DomainKing.ng.
”Whilst considering the plight of existing DomainKing.ng clients, the .ng registry had taken a protective measure to ensure that the DomainKing.ng platform is temporarily not available for more Nigerians to make further payments.
”Further sanctions will be applied against DomainKing.ng by May 2, should the company not reactive, attend or respond to queries and complaints raised by the registrants,” she said.
The COO said that NIRA had sought legal advice and continued to consult its solicitors as events unfolded on the matter.
She said that bearing in mind that NIRA was not a hosting company, efforts were on to attend to the various complaints on domain name management services rendered by Domainking.ng.
