Personal news: After six exciting months as a reporter at
@theinformation
, my time has ended.
I'm happy to share that in August, I'll be returning to business school to complete my MBA at
@Cornell
. I'm taking the rest of July to recharge for this next chapter of my life.🙏
MC Oluomo is a known thug. He cut his teeth on the streets of Oshodi as a violent enforcer, electioneer and tax collector extorting transporters and small businesses in the state.
If you publicly admit to being his friend, it's because you're in cahoots with a political thug.
Your enemies aren’t my enemies! You aren’t important enough for that. I spent ample time with the Chairman of Lagos State Parks and Garages, Alhaji Musiliu Akinsanya. Oba. MC Oluomo. People fear & hate who they don’t know, I simply move closer for a better perspective!
The way Nigerians consume stock fish you'll think it's a locally produced fish product. But it's actually imported from Norway.
Despite having its own coast line, Nigeria reportedly imports around $125 million worth of Norwegian seafood annually.
Fascinating stuff.
NURTW doesn't provide any valuable service to Lagos State. They don't build bus stops, ensure road safety or remit funds to the govt. Instead they extort drivers, fight, litter bus parks and contribute to reckless driving by chasing buses and bikers.
Why do they still exist?
Excluding Peter Obi's camp, I don't think any intelligent & non-political person needs to go all out for their presidential candidates on social media. There's no appealing argument you can make for them. The candidates themselves have shown they don't care about Nigerians.
Nigeria is not a capitalist society. An okada man buys a motorbike to transport people. He hustles morning and night moving people around Lagos, only for some dudes to stand at every junction and collect N500 from them for no reason.
This is worse than communism.
Between 2011 & 2013, an American developed Silk Road platform on the darkweb to sell heroin, cocaine & other illegal drugs. Payments were in Bitcoin & he sold $1B+ worth of drugs.
He was shutdown & arrested. But the US did not ban BTC activities. Companies stepped up KYC instead.
Over the last seven years, Nigerian politicians unlooked as Emefiele (alongside Buhari & his Ministers) ruined the domestic economy. But after one of Emefiele's poorly developed policies posed a threat to politicians' electoral corruption plans, they're now calling for his head.
Uber and Bolt surges are becoming ridiculous. The economics of ride hailing was never sustainable, but in Lagos, it's pure madness. Is there a (open-source) way to verify that indeed there was a surge as a price control mechanism? Or is this how the algorithm randomly goes crazy?
I'm finishing Q1 2021 on a high!💪
I'm proud to announce that I've been selected as a Venture Scout for Saison Capital, the VC arm of Credit Saison, a Tokyo-listed consumer finance company with $30B assets under management and one of the largest credit card issuers in Japan.
Still weird that in 2022, Nigerian bank customers can't spend more than $100 a month on international payments. It's even $20 for Ecobank customers.
To get a USD account at a bank, you need the signatures of two other people with domiciliary accounts.
Just weird sha.
I hate that Zenith Bank hasn't communicated directly with customers about the recent massive outage it has faced for days now. This is such an irresponsible behaviour. Customers are just supposed to act like nothing is happening?!
"At Paystack, we are entitled to three months of paid leave after working for three years, so I took the entire Q3 off to rest and finalise my relocation plans."
Mad opener!
The popularity of a tech founder/CEO also helps many of them escape scrutiny. Today, it's easy to call out a seemingly an unknown CEO with shitty practices. The only way to make more tech workers feel safe is if we keep the same energy for popular shitty bosses; your faves.
Personal news: I’m pleased to announce that I have been selected for Columbia University's Knight-Bagehot Fellowship in Economics and Business Journalism. I’ll be moving to New York in August and for the year, I’ll be taking classes (mostly) in the MBA program.
@folasanwo
Hmmm. I personally don't think he's been decent. He has been ineffective as a leader. Can't aid regulated businesses, can't tackle crime or rampant thuggery, can't support small businesses, and he isn't doing anything to help housing/rents either.
He's just there, a stooge.
A more reasonable govt would have asked itself: what regulatory and logistics bottlenecks are responsible for raising the cost of a product from ₦140,000 to ₦945,000 in Nigeria?
But then you realize that we actually don't have reasonable govr officials in Nigeria.
The Vice Chairman of the FCCPC, Tunji Bello revealed that a fruit blender called Ninja was displayed on the shelf of a supermarket in Texas United States at $89 (roughly N140,000), and the same product was displayed in a popular supermarket at Victoria Island in Lagos State for
It's too easy to attribute this to just corruption, but these items have relatively short shelf lives and politicians know. So is it incompetence or plain wickedness? Because I'm seriously confused.
The funniest thing about
#EndSARS
is it exposes the fact that nobody is actually ruling Nigeria. The chain of command is broken and the entire govt is loose.
The incompetence that we've long spoken of is glaring.
Within the first nine months of 2020, fraudsters attempted 46,126 cyberattacks against banks and were successful with 41,979 attempts. That's a staggering 91% fraud success rate!😳😳
Nigeria Data Protection Bureau (NDPB) probes two banks over alleged data breaches. This is a notable development because Nigerian banks tend to shy away from publicly sharing information about cyber breaches; they sometimes deny them when they happen.
"The 2023 election is not about tribe... [or] religion— nobody in the north buys bread cheaper [even with Buhari]. The election should not be about "it is my turn", it is nobody's turn. It's not a chieftaincy title." — Peter Obi.
#NaijaWeCan
Burna Boy’s album African Giant has racked up over 117 million streams on Spotify alone! Burna has easily made ₦169m from Spotify alone.
In my article, I explain that his streaming success is down to one thing: shorter songs.
@IvanTheK
Lol. According to Twitter, "even an author looking at their own Tweet counts as a view." And if you look at a tweet on the web and then on your phone, "that would count as two views."
My latest: Inside the scandal at Flutterwave, Nigeria’s fintech champion, as former employees allege bullying, improper relationships and self-dealing that might have affected equity holdings of some investors and employees.
A tale of two African e-commerce companies: Jumia (12 countries) and Takealot (South Africa).
Items sold in 2020
Jumia: $736 million (Jan to Sept)
Takealot: $407 million (Apr - Sept).
Revenue:
Jumia: $119 million (Jan - Sept)
Takealot: $238 million (Apr - Sept)
Nigeria is facing a fake news epidemic and some "trusted" publications don't do enough to factcheck major stories before publishing. Deleting an already viral story is not enough, especially when you do it enough times that it harms your credibility.
@SEzekwesili
Is this how verbal autopsy works?
COVID-19 Team: What killed this person?
Victim's family: He died in his sleep after eating masaa.
COVID-19 team: Toor! The 40 year old died from masaa-related health complications. Shikena, no autopsy needes fa. Ran ke ya dade.
What pisses me off about Nigeria is that the year-old govt hasn't actually solved any problems. No police reforms, no transportation improvements, no food supply changes, no educational devts.
So what do they talk about at the federal level? Why do they always make things worse?
Yale University and Harvard University are investors in a $2.5 billion investment fund focused on crypto startups. I don't want to throw any sub sha, but Unilag, OAU and UI what are you doing with your endowment funds (if you have)?👀
Soma notable individuals who will receive Nigeria's 2022 National Award on Oct 11:
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, GCON
Amina Muhammed, GCON
Jim Ovia, CFR
Tony Elumelu, CFR
Abdul Samad Rabiu, CFR
Herbert Wigwe, CON
Chimamanda Adiche, OFR
Iyin Aboyeji, OON
Shola Akinlade, OON
Ezra Olubi, OON
My assumption going forward is any non-political person who's outspoken in support of these guys has something selfish to gain—which is "fair", tbh. But keep in mind that this particular contest is different. The more argue, the more annoying you look, the more you burn bridges.
Emefiele has been in DSS custody for nearly a week without charge, yet the government requires a court order before he can speak to his lawyers?
I'm not a big fan of Emefiele, but I expected that the new government would take constitutional rights more seriously. 🤔🫤
Court Orders DSS to Grant Counsel to Emefiele Access to Him
The high court of the Federal Capital Territory sitting in Abuja, has ordered Department of State Service to allow Counsel to the suspended Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria Godwin Emefiele access to him.
The
From an African's point of view: It is tiring to see African leaders guilt-trip the rich world on matters like climate change, yet do little to address climate issues in their home countries.
Nigeria suffered floods that killed 603 people but the president kept mum for days.
Personal news: December was my last month at
@TheMessenger
where I was on the breaking news team.
I'm happy to share that this week I joined
@TheInformation
as an Editorial Fellow. I'll be working from NYC and later in San Francisco. Send me tips: abubakar
@theinformation
.com. 🙏
Looks like there'll be more intense competition in the Nigerian telecom sector thanks to a new license: the Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNO). MVNOs are communication operators that run on the infrastructure of other telecom companies.
NCC just issued licenses to 25 firms.
Nigeria's Minister of Information & Culture wants online platforms to get a licence.
Minister of Finance is working on a tax on digital services with "significant economic presence in Nigeria."
NITDA wants all tech companies to get a licence and pay a separate EBITDA tax.
Okay.
Interesting: Flutterwave's Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Oneal Bhambani has resigned. Two other finance executives who joined Flutterwave with experience in corporate audits and treasury work from American Express's Kabbage also left the Nigerian company last month.
@Ambrosia_Ijebu
He's probably not an animal lover either, because in Nigeria, govt officials sometimes bring their pet snake to the office to swallow public funds.
Interesting: Based on Nigeria's federal govt revenues of ₦5.05 trillion at the end of 2021, the CBN should not have lent more than ₦252 billion to the govt in 2022.
Yet, by the end of 2022, it had advanced a total of ₦23.2 trillion to the govt. 😳😳😳
Power companies complain about low revenues because customers do not always pay their bills. But they've been complacent to issuing prepaid metres that would at least give them a steady revenue in the long run. 🤷♂️
This week, a month after my graduation, I returned to work. I joined the new media company,
@TheMessenger
, as a Science and Tech Reporter. I'll be working out of the New York office which has an amazing view of the World Trade Center.
I'm partly in awe over the cultural significance. Imagine arguing that stock fish or pomo is "local/indigenous" to Nigeria/or some parts of the country, only to realize that it's really not.
I guess demand outgrew local production, and imports got relatively cost-effective.
The government keeps asking young people to go into agriculture. But it's unwilling to prioritise investments in the infrastructure to make that industry successful. 🤷♂️
The reason why Nigeria's national identity system is inefficient is because of exclusionary policies like this one. Why should anybody pay ₦15,000 (half the country’s minimum wage) and write an application just to correct a simple error?
It makes no sense.
It's surprising that The Times UK would publish something so misleading. The govt banned the use of foreign/non-Nigerian models and actors regardless of their race. The policy isn't widely loved, but it certainly isn't a racially-charged one as depicted in this tweet and article.
The Nigerian government is banning the use of foreign models in advertising in order to limit white models and white actors from appearing in adverts for the Nigerian market.
In West Africa, BBC Hausa has reportedly lost a third of its newsroom as staffers quit to join the newly established Africa section of Turkish Radio and Television (TRT). This screenshot from the article below highlights a familiar sentiment among African journalists.
Going cashless is good, but only when the digital payment and acceptance services are ubiquitous and reliable. Imagine this: your bank app fails and you can't withdraw more than ₦20,000 without going to the bank. How does this make sense?
So according to the CBN's latest policy, individuals can't withdraw more than ₦100k/week without a 5% penalty.
But worse, your bank gets to decide whether or not your request to withdraw ₦100k+ is legitimate.
It is your money, but you need your bank's permission to access it.
@eldivyn
@asemota
Nigeria is probably the only West African country with no major roads along the coastline. I feel like this reduced our exposure to the beautiful ocean and beach development. For example, Ondo State has unrestricted access to the Atlantic but there are no roads.
Personal news: This is my last week at
@StearsBusiness
. I've had a fantastic run over the last eight months.
Now, I'm excited to share that I'm starting a new chapter as Africa reporter for
@restofworld
. 💪
Months after raising $3 million, Nigerian fintech PayDay is in talks to find a buyer. Meanwhile, employees are concerned that CEO Favour Ori earned $15,000 per month while cutting workers' salaries and converting their pay to naira.
@preshgaza
@ELSiEiSY
One would have thought Burna Boy's MSG performance was the perfect tutorial. But apparently, more Nigerian artists need to take performance lessons.
@seunonigbinde
@kenerep
Yup. They continue to make it seem like the recession was "inevitable," meanwhile, Buhari didn't even make an attempt to rescue the economy during his first two years in office. His incompetence and laxity emboldened Emefiele who has since been a net-negative to the economy.
This may come as a surprise, but Ecobank has the largest digital payments revenue compared to other Nigerian banks.
In local currency terms, Ecobank reported ₦186 billion in digital payments revenue last year — larger than the combined revenue of UBA, Access Bank & Zenith Bank.
A few months ago, I was asked to join the Advisory Board of
@TechCabal
's data and research division to support its strategy.
Now, using NIBSS data, the team is projecting that Nigerian digital payments could surge to ~₦580 trillion by the end of 2023.
@Chxta
While you're calling the parents irresponsible, the kids in class are singing:
🎶 "what my father cannot do,
he has done for me,
what my mother cannot do,
he has done for me. 🎶
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
For better context, that's £120k/year in UK vs £47.2k/year in Nigeria net salaries.
There's nothing to compare. There's only one correct logical answer.
Multichoice has acquired a 20% stake in BetKing for $81 million. That gives the gaming company a valuation of over $400 million.
@gossyomega
(and Okocha?😃) is eating good this year. Btw, online gaming >>>>>>
@paulg
Elon Musk's capability is unquestionable regardless of what people think of him. But I think once a company's processes and erratic decisions are so public, people will have weird opinions about the leadership. For example, he rarely tweets about Tesla and SpaceX in this manner.
As the domestic tech media gets stronger and more people begin to respect and trust the media, they'll freely share tips with the media and helpful info. One startup announced a funding round, but it's reported lead investor is confused on WhatsApp saying "when did we invest?"
Over the last few months, Chipper Cash's two biggest investors, FTX and Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), collapsed. Its valuation also got cut by $750M to $1.25B. It has now conducted three rounds of layoffs that have affected its VPs, COO and Kenya manager. 🥲
When you read MultiChoice's annual report, you get a good understanding of the African consumer market.
For example, using MultiChoice's subscriber base as a proxy, one could estimate that the total addressable market for subscription-based D2C edtech services in Nigeria is ~5M.
In February 2022, Bloomberg reported that Nigeria-focused Tingo Group was "seeking" to raise $500M and list on the NYSE. Today, short-seller, Hindenburg Research, claims "the company is an exceptionally obvious scam with completely fabricated financials."
Hmmm...🤔 Started Farmcrowdy pivoted, then divested and left somebody else holding an empty bag with debt at Crowdyvest.
Went on to start Treepz as a bus-hailing service, raised funding and got into TechStars, but now discontinuing that model in favour of car rental marketplace?
Universal Music Group (UMG) has acquired a majority stake in Don Jazzy-owned Nigerian music company Mavin Records. The label is home to several successful African musicians, including the globally acclaimed Rema and Ayra Starr.
France's Bolloré family made its fortune in logistics and transport in Africa. But over the last 20 years, they've pursued corporate takeovers, which typically starts with minority stakes (<7%) while claiming they won't disrupt the company.
DStv/Multichoice is their new target.
@mwiyas
Because when you visit the market (not megastores), the product doesn't have any special packaging and looks bland, similar to other homemade and direct-from-farm products, like garri, etc.
It makes you wonder how much of the things we assume are "local/indigenous" really aren't.
14+ years of trying to implement the same silly idea. They've failed each time. Under a new Minister of Interior, an individual with a controversial track record, it's clear that the NIMC will push ahead with the same idea.
Contracts will go out, but no work will be done.
NITDA wants to control the Nigerian tech ecosystem:
"Any person or body corporate who operates an information technology or digital economy service, product, or platform contrary to the provisions of this Act, commits an offence.
This article by Taiwo-Hassan Adebayo is good stuff, excellently executed too, with all the bases covered. But Nigerians won't read it because it's not sensational. That's the biggest problem with news media/journalism in Nigeria today. And then the mob.🤷
Interesting. Access Bank is the majority shareholder in eTranzact, a top 🇳🇬payments company. A few months ago, the bank increased its stake to 37.5%, up from ~24% in 2021. Curious.🤔
eTranzact made revenue of ₦22.5 billion last year, almost as much as GTCO's e-banking income.
Exclusive: Tiger Global-backed fintech, Float set out to support small businesses in Africa. But the startup has dug itself into a ₦5 billion debt after trying to exploit Nigeria's FX crisis. First, it got scammed, then FX volatility widened its losses.
MTN Nigeria’s half-year 2022 revenue nears ₦1 trillion boosted by data services.
Voice revenue growth remains flat at ₦417 billion, but data revenue jumped from ₦229 billion last year to ₦348 billion between January and June 2022.
Personal news: October was my last month
@TechCabal
, and it was glorious. But now, I'm starting a new chapter as a Financial Journalist
@StearsBusiness
.
To kick things off, here's my first article. It's on the challenges of cross-border payments in 🇳🇬. 💪
The more popular a tech founder is, the harder it becomes for folks to speak up about many of their evil practices. Ebun is not "famous", yet his threat to past employees scared them from speaking up. Imagine if were a popular founder?
This is why many people are scared to talk.
In a surprising twist, MultiChoice's Showmax with 1.8 million subscribers has overtaken Netflix (1.6 million) to become the biggest video streaming platform in Sub-Saharan Africa, according to data by Omdia Research.
I watched
@OoTheNigerian
's speech where he said Paystack's CEO, Shola, is the ideal founder: Imagine that as a Nigerian VC, your first investment was in Paystack. Great product solving a real problem, good leadership, great culture, ESOPs, not overvalued, and an M&A exit.
Question: What will you do to stop the brain drain in the tech sector?
Peter Obi: You can't stop people who have better offers elsewhere... but that's a good thing because they can become potential investors in the local tech sectors. (paraphrased).
#NaijaWeCan
My latest: In Nigeria, Bolt is facing govt scrutiny following "enormous" safety complaints by users. Riders have reported several cases of robbery and assault, while drivers are alarmed over carjackings that have killed over 6 drivers since the last year.
I find it weird that we frequently see articles about "Russia's influence in Africa," but few write about France's 100 years and ongoing devastating influence on the continent.
Why doesn't anybody talk about France?
In March 2020, Adedotun quit his ₦35k/month job at a bank and became a full-time payments agent. Following the outbreak of Covid-19, his business has grown. He now owns five agent banking shops that rake in ₦500k+ in monthly revenue.
My latest article: