The death of Kalu Ndukwe & how it affected the .NG Domain Registry

The .NG domain name registry has been problematic for about two weeks now. New domains could not be registered via the Internet and some old ones stopped working. I had been sniffing around to find the root cause. It turned out that my suspicion on the problem was right – the problem is linked to the recent death of Kalu Ndukwe, president of Nigeria Internet Registration Association (NIRA). According to Vanguard newspaper:

A family source said that Engr Kalu who steered NiRA to a historical peak recently by giving his country a domain registration name in the cyber  space, that is .ng, did not show any sign of ailment.

However, it was gathered that the death may have been caused by cardiac arrest. Engr Kalu was found head bowed on his office table. “we wondered why the  office window was not shut when the rain started,” said one of his staff “So, we moved closer and saw him being wet by rain, we felt that was unusual and quickly rushed in only to discover he had gone,” he added.

He was immediately rushed to a hospital where he was confirmed “brought in  dead”.

I got information from a source this morning that the other members of the registry had not been able to figure out how to run the .ng domain registry thus the severe problems for the past two weeks. The excuse during his lifetime was that he couldn’t find competent people to handle the critical assignments he was tackling on behalf of NIRA.

Sad as this this, I am wondering why critical credentials necessary to run the domain registry of a country the size of Nigeria is left in the hands of a lone individual. Thank goodness the new fellow handling things is getting a hold of the situation gradually but at what cost?

I noticed that they have reset the nameservers of several .ng domains to the registry’s default pdns1.nic.net.ng and pdns2.nic.net.ng thus causing a downtime for all the domain names affected. This has caused enormous nightmares for .ng registrars and bad blood with their respective clients.

Is it not fair to assume that taking on too much work on the part of late Kalu Ndukwe resulted in his untimely death? He reported has a lot of zeal and passion for the job and now I am wondering what happens to the registry following his death. Would the others at that registry have the same zeal to continue where he left off? I hope the critical credentials necessary for running the registry is not left in the hands of a sole individual this time around.

Saddening.