Ndukwe kalu, Nira president, is dead

The Nigerian IT and     Telecom industry , Wednesday, woke up with a tragic news of the death of Engr Ndukwe Kalu, President of the Nigeria Internet Registration  Association (NiRA).

Kalu was reported to have passed on Tuesday in his office in Lagos at about 6.00  pm after having some chats with his staff to put some things in order.

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”.
Every Nigerian Internet enthusiast would continue to remember the enterprising engineer’s leadership in NiRA for making May 13, 2009 the day of another landmark in the history of Nigeria.

It was the day the registration of the nation’s country code Top Level Domain (ccTLD) name .ng, with the current global coordinating internet agency, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) was  concluded.

It would be recalled that this feat came after over 13 years of the .ng registration with ICANN, an international not-to-profit corporation  championing standardisation of the internet community globally.