Engr Ndukwe Kalu, President of NIRA and CoCCA Member, Passes Unexpectedly
Engr Ndukwe Kalu, President of NIRA, the Nigerian Internet Registration Authority, died unexpectedly in Lagos last week. He was a member of CoCCA, the Council of Country Code Administrators, and was a strong supporter of CoCCA. “His humor, encouragement, suggestions and sage advice were welcomed by our organization, which had few contacts in the region,” said Garth Miller, Director of CoCCA, in an article on his passing.
Over the last 18 months he worked with CoCCA to bring the .NG registry to a stable and secure infrastructure. “We remember him for the zeal he has contributed to the activities of NIRA particularly the landmark achievement of full control of Nigeria’s domain name on May 13, 2009 leading to full local management of the registry ”, said Vice President of NIRA, Mrs. Mary Uduma. At the time, Engr Ndukwe Kalu said of the redelegation, “The attempt to obtain full control met with a lot of challenges because as a totally new entity the executive had to concentrate on putting in place the required structure and infrastructure that would sustain the .ng ccTLD.”
Local management of the .NG registry allowed NIRA to utilize the CoCCA registry platform, which is a fully automated EPP system. Enabling Anycast DNS ensured 100% uptime world wide, bringing the .NG registry up to par with other world-class registries. The .NG registry continues to thrive and is systematically opening up to international registrations. Under Ndukwe Kalu’s guidance NIRA set a goal to become one of the top 20 ccTLD registries by 2011 in order to “positively impact the Nigerian economy because with the development of the Nigerian cyberspace countless opportunities would be born for both the state and citizens.” More information about the redelegation efforts may be found at allAfrica.com.
Our thoughts and best wishes are with his family and colleagues.
Wow Elaine… stooping to a new low to cash in on someone’s death to promote your Registry Services. I was honestly disappointed reading this… amazing how quick you are to criticise me. Respectfully, maybe all you needed was the last sentence to get your point across.
@Adrian – I happen to know that promotion of CoCCA was not Elaine’s intention, which was to render homage to an Internet pioneer. I didn’t notice any criticism of you.
There entire second to last paragraph is just that – promotion of CoCCA. I thought it was in bad taste. Elaine’s criticisms which I referenced were not contained in the blog – I was referring to past occurrences.
@Adrian – in matters of bad taste, I must defer to you. I would ask, however, that you take your personal grudges to another venue.