How to register a .edu.ng domain

Most domains work the moment you pay for them. .edu.ng does not, and finding that out a week before a student portal is meant to go live is a bad afternoon.

It is a restricted extension. NiRA, the body that runs the .ng namespace, keeps it for accredited tertiary institutions, and it registers every new one on hold until somebody there has seen proof that you are one. The name is yours from the minute you pay. It just does not answer yet.

So this is the whole thing written down: who qualifies, what NiRA asks for, a letter you can copy onto your letterhead, and what happens on our side once you upload it.

Who can register a .edu.ng domain

Degree-awarding and other tertiary institutions in Nigeria. Universities, polytechnics, colleges of education, and institutions of that kind.

What makes you eligible is accreditation by the body that regulates your kind of institution, not the word "education" appearing in your name:

• NUC, the National Universities Commission, for universities.

• NBTE, the National Board for Technical Education, for polytechnics and technical institutions.

• NCCE, the National Commission for Colleges of Education, for colleges of education.

What NiRA asks for

Three documents and three details. The documents are scans or photographs of paper you already hold. The details go into the letter.

1. Proof the institution exists. Your certificate of incorporation, the instrument or law that established the institution, or your recognition letter.

2. Proof of accreditation. The certificate or approval letter from NUC, NBTE, NCCE or whichever body regulates you.

3. A letter requesting the domain. On your institution’s letterhead, signed by someone who can sign for the institution: the registrar, the vice chancellor’s office, the rector, the provost, or the governing council.

Inside that letter, NiRA is looking for:

• An administrative contact. Name, designation, official email address and phone number.

• A technical contact. The same details for whoever actually runs your DNS.

• The nameservers the domain should use.

A letter you can copy

Put this on your letterhead, fill in the highlighted parts, sign it, and scan or photograph the signed copy. There is no postal address in it because you are not posting it: you upload it and we submit it on your behalf.

The wording is not sacred. What NiRA needs is the institution named, the accrediting body named, the domain stated, the contacts given and an authorised signature at the bottom. Say it in your own house style if you prefer.

Registering .edu.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.

1. Search for the name in the dashboard. A .edu.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.

2. Check out and pay in naira, the same as any other domain.

3. 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.

4. Open the domain and go to Requirements. Upload your incorporation document, your accreditation certificate and the signed letter. A PDF, a Word file or a clear photo all work, up to 15 MB each.

5. We check the documents are legible and complete, forward them to NiRA, and mark each one as it moves.

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.

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.

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 .edu.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.

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 applications come back

Almost every rejection we would expect to see is one of a small handful of things, and all of them are cheaper to fix before you send than after.

• The letter is not on letterhead, or it is not signed.

• The signatory is not someone who can sign for the institution. A departmental head is usually not enough.

• The accreditation document has expired, or covers a different campus.

• Contact email addresses are personal rather than institutional.

• The domain name in the letter does not match the domain that was bought.

• A photograph of the letter is too dark to read at full size.

That last one is more common than it sounds. If you are photographing rather than scanning, do it flat, in daylight, and open the file afterwards to check the small print is legible.

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.

• .sch.ng, for primary and secondary schools

• .gov.ng, for government at every level

• Changing nameservers, contacts or anything else after it is registered

Start the registration

Search for the name in the ZevCloud dashboard. You will see the .edu.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.