Almost three years after Nigeria's .ng Country's Code Top Level Domain Name (ccTLD) officially became available, the level of uptake has been below the target set by the Nigerian Internet Regulatory Association (NiRA).

Late last year, Mary Uduma, President of NiRA projected the total number of registered domain names in the country would soon hit 60,000. However, a cross section of web developers who spoke to ITWeb Africa on the fate of the .ng domain names said the comparatively higher cost of the .ng domain names is one of the main reasons behind the slow uptake.

"It costs NGN15,000 to get one, while you can get .com domain names for as low as NGN2,000 from some hosting companies - even here in Nigeria... while some even cost NGN1,500. As a web developer I would like to eliminate all unnecessary additional costs especially when I'm dealing with a client who has a lean budget," Dayo Ogunwale said.

According to him, the higher cost makes the domain names unattractive to startups, corporate organisations and individuals.

"If telecom companies are not yet using it, that should tell you that something is wrong with the domain names," he said.

The superior quality of foreign hosting companies to local ones offering the .ng domain names is another reason why the ccTLD is unattractive.

Chris Alagboso, chief operating officer of HealthNewsNG.com, a Nigeria-focused health media company, said they had challenges with the capacity of one of Nigeria's major hosting companies to deal with heavy traffic.

"I am not surprised that many website owners are still using foreign hosting companies. Their inability to convincingly cope with heavy demands makes the domain names unattractive," he said.

According to him, if the domain names are being offered by popular foreign hosting companies such as GoDaddy, they could be attractive to targeted users.

Furthermore, several government outfits are not yet embracing .ng or .gov.ng domain names suggesting that the domain names don't have authoritative directive from the Nigerian government.