How to register a .gov.ng domain in Nigeria

.gov.ng is closed to everyone outside government, and the application has to be signed by an officer senior enough to bind the agency. What NiRA requires, who signs, and how the hold is cleared.

.gov.ng is the most tightly held extension in the .ng namespace, and deliberately so. A citizen who sees a .gov.ng address should be able to trust it without thinking about it, which only works if nobody outside government can obtain one.

That trust is bought with process. NiRA registers every .gov.ng name on hold and releases it only once it has an authorisation letter from the agency, signed by an officer senior enough to bind it.

Who can register a .gov.ng domain

Government and nobody else. Federal ministries, departments and agencies, state governments and their agencies, local government councils, and specific government projects.

NiRA puts the obligation the other way round in its own guidelines:

All websites/portal of Government constituents at all levels (Federal, State and Local Governments) or specialized projects of Government that would last for 18 months or more are required to register on .GOV.NG and .MIL.NG zone.

That is from NiRA’s .gov.ng guidelines, and it is worth reading in full before you apply, particularly if you are standing up a project site rather than an agency one.

What NiRA asks for

Fewer documents than the education extensions, and a stricter rule about who signs.

An authorisation letter from the ministry or agency, on official letterhead, requesting the domain.
An administrative contact: name, designation, official email address and phone number.
A technical contact: the same details for whoever runs the systems.
The nameservers the domain should use.

Who has to sign

The letter has to be signed by an officer who can commit the agency. In practice that means:

A Permanent Secretary for a ministry.
An Executive Secretary for an MDA headed by one.
A Director-General for a federal agency.

For a state or local government body, the equivalent office: the officer who signs for the institution rather than for a unit inside it.

A letter you can copy

Put this on the agency’s letterhead, fill in the highlighted parts, and route it for signature by the appropriate officer. Upload the signed copy and we submit it for you.

Sample letter

[Agency letterhead] [Date] Ref: [internal reference] The Registry Manager Nigeria Internet Registration Association (NiRA) Dear Sir/Madam, APPLICATION FOR REGISTRATION OF [youragency].gov.ng [Full name of ministry, department or agency] hereby applies to register the domain name [youragency].gov.ng for its official website and online services. The Agency is a [ministry / department / agency / local government council] of the [Federal Government of Nigeria / Government of ... State], and this application is made under the authority of the undersigned. Administrative contact Name: [full name] Designation: [designation] Email: [name@agency.gov.ng] Phone: [+234 ...] Technical contact Name: [full name] Designation: [designation] Email: [name@agency.gov.ng] Phone: [+234 ...] Both officers named above are permanent staff of the Agency. Nameservers [ns1.example.com] [ns2.example.com] Your approval of this application is kindly requested. Yours faithfully, [Signature and official stamp] [Name of signatory] [Permanent Secretary / Executive Secretary / Director-General] [Full name of ministry, department or agency]

If your agency has a house format for external correspondence, use it. The substance NiRA needs is the agency named, the domain stated, both contacts given with designations, the nameservers listed, and a signature from an officer at the right level.

Registering .gov.ng on ZevCloud

Buying the name and clearing the paperwork are two separate things, and they happen in that order. You pay first, which reserves the name at the registry, and then you prove you are entitled to it.

Search for the name in the dashboard. A .gov.ng result carries a "Documents required" badge and a link to this guide, so the condition is on screen before you add it to the cart.
Check out and pay in naira, the same as any other domain.
We register the name with NiRA straight away. It comes back on hold, and the domain shows as Awaiting your document in your Domains list.
Open the domain and go to Requirements. Upload the signed authorisation letter. A PDF, a Word file or a clear photo all work, up to 15 MB each.
We check the documents are legible and complete, forward them to NiRA, and mark each one as it moves.

The Domains list, with one domain showing the status Awaiting your document — A held domain in the Domains list. It is registered and paid for; the status is about the paperwork, not the payment.

Nothing about the domain is lost while you wait. The name is registered and nobody else can take it. What is missing is resolution: DNS does not answer until the hold lifts.

What happens after you upload

Every restricted domain gets a thread on its Requirements page, and it is the only place you need to watch. When we forward your documents, that goes in the thread. If NiRA comes back with a question, we put their words in the thread rather than paraphrasing them. You reply in the same place and attach whatever is needed.

Both sides get an email when the other writes, so nobody has to sit refreshing a page. When NiRA clears the domain we activate it, you get an email saying so, and your DNS starts answering.

The Requirements page on a held domain, showing three uploaded documents and the conversation thread — Every document carries its own state, so "sent to the registry" and "needs another copy" are different things and you can see which is which. The rejected one says why, in the words of whoever rejected it.

When it clears, the page keeps everything rather than emptying itself. That turns out to matter later: the filed nameservers are the thing any future change is measured against, and a year from now nobody remembers what was in the letter.

The Requirements page on a domain the registry has cleared, showing accepted documents — The same page after the hold lifts. The file stays where you can read it.

Nameservers and DNS while the domain is held

This is the part that catches people out, so it is worth reading before you write the letter rather than after.

The nameservers on a .gov.ng domain come from the document you filed. NiRA records what you asked for, which means the nameserver form on the domain page is closed to you: editing it would put our record out of step with theirs, and on a held domain the change would not take at the registry anyway. Changing nameservers later means filing another letter, which you send through the same Requirements page and we apply for you.

That leaves two outcomes, and you pick which one you get when you write the letter.

The letter names our nameservers. DNS records are yours to manage from the moment the domain is created. You can build the whole zone out while the application is still with NiRA, so the site answers the second the hold lifts instead of starting from an empty zone that day.
The letter names someone else’s. DNS lives wherever those nameservers point, and records are managed there. Nothing on our side can write into a zone we are not authoritative for.

The Nameservers tab on a held domain, with the nameserver form closed and an explanation — The nameserver form is closed on a reserved extension, and the page says why rather than failing when you press save. The DNS Records tab beside it still works.

How long it takes

A complete application usually clears in about a week. An incomplete one takes as long as it takes you to notice what was missing, which is the real reason these run long.

We do not set that pace and we will not pretend to. NiRA reviews the documents on their own schedule, and busy periods run slower. What we can do is make sure nothing is waiting on us: documents go on to NiRA once we have looked at them, and anything that comes back lands in your thread the same day.

Why government applications stall

The letter is signed by a director or a head of unit rather than by the Permanent Secretary, Executive Secretary or Director-General.
There is no official stamp on a letter that plainly expects one.
Contact addresses are personal webmail. On a government application this is the single most likely thing to bounce it back.
The named contacts are on tenure rather than permanent staff.
The domain requested does not obviously belong to the agency in the letter, which invites a question NiRA has to ask before it can approve.

Internal routing for signature is usually the longest part of a .gov.ng application, and it is the part we have no view of. Starting that before you buy the domain is the single change that shortens the whole thing.

The other restricted .ng extensions

NiRA holds more than one extension behind paperwork, and the requirements are not interchangeable. If you landed here from a search and this is not your extension, these are the other two.

Start the registration

Search for the name in the ZevCloud dashboard. You will see the .gov.ng price in naira, the documents notice, and a link back to this page at checkout. If you want to read about how we handle domains in general first, the domains product page covers it.

If you are not sure your institution qualifies, send the question through the thread on any domain you already hold, or ask before you buy. Telling you that you are not eligible costs us a sale and saves you a refund, and we would rather do that than take money for a name that will sit on hold forever.

How to register a .gov.ng domain