Past president of the Nigeria Internet Group (NIG) and Chief Executive Officer of PiNet Informatics, Mr. Lanre Ajayi, has been nominated into the Generic Names Supporting Organisation (GNSO) council of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

ICANN, with Headquarter in California United States, is responsible for managing the Internet Protocol address spaces and assignment of address blocks to regional Internet registries worldwide.

Ajayi’s nomination, alongside seven other distinguished personalities around the world, was announced recently by the chairman of the ICANN’s 2011 Nominating Committee (NomCom), Mr. Adam Peake, in the latest selection to fill leadership positions at ICANN.

An astute electronic engineer, Mr. Ajayi had his Bachelors and Masters degree in Electrical Engineering at the University of Lagos and has worked for the Nigerian Telecommunications Limited (NITEL) for 11 years before setting up PiNet Informatics, which became one of the first Internet Service Providers in Nigeria.

He has served as the Vice-President of the Internet Service Providers Association of Nigeria (ISPAN) and as the Vice-Chairman of African ISP Association (AfrISPA). Mr. Ajayi is a founding member of Africa Network Information Center (AfriNIC) and a founding member of Nigeria Internet Registration Association (NIRA), the Registry for the Nigeria Top Level Domain (.ng).

He is a council member of Information Technology Industry Association of Nigeria (ITAN) and also served on the council of the Nigeria Computer Society (NCS) as the chairman of Research and Statistics committee

ICANN maintains registries of Internet protocol identifiers and manages the top-level domain name space, which includes the operation of root name servers.

ICANN’s primary principles of operation is to preserve the operational stability of the Internet, promote competition, achieve broad representation of the global Internet community and develop policies appropriate to its mission through bottom-up, consensus-based processes.

It has a responsibility for full management of the Internet’s system of centrally coordinated identifiers through the multi-stakeholder model of consultation

GNSO is one of the three supporting organizations of ICANN to help in promoting the development of Internet policy and encourage diverse as well as international participation in the technical management of the Internet.