Really loved the analysis and depth of thinking in this post. The point is that this is hard work and it needs to be done with a similar level of thinking and dedication that these star entrepreneurs have applied in building their businesses.
Tosin is probably already doing more than most entrepreneurs in his generation regarding education. Among other investments, he built the AutoCAD studio at OAU’s Mechanical Engineering department, which was a most welcome intervention. The broader challenge I see is how to do this at scale and at earlier parts of the pyramid as well, given that only a few people make it to university to begin with.
I also really liked the closing sentence: “The next frontier is not another app. It is the Nigerian mind.”
Yes, it's that early part of the pyramid that is seriously neglected and unfair. If you get a decent grounding there, even if you still dont go to university, the floor of Nigeria's human capital is still higher than it would have been.
Well said as always. Successful entrepreneurs in markets like ours acquire more of a responsibility to solve larger societal issues like a talent pipeline. I think many more are increasingly coming to that realisation. The successful ones among us will have to do more to fix the country; that's how it's always been, and that's how it will always continue to be.
Nigeria’s elite already understand that the state lacks the capacity to reliably provide education, security, or opportunity at scale — their own private choices proves it. Yet many still speak as though nation-building is solely the government’s responsibility.
What Feyi clearly points out in this article is that in weak states, elite obligations [should/must] expand. The burden of developing human capital shifts to those with wealth, influence, and operational expertise.
The most impactful philanthropists in history did more than donate money; they applied the systems thinking, discipline, and problem-solving skills from business to nation-building. That is where many Nigerian billionaires fall short. Too many have profited from extractive systems without building transferable institutional knowledge or innovation capacity.
Ironically, Nigeria’s newer generation of founders may be better positioned to help because they have actually solved difficult problems within Nigerian conditions.
So when business leaders complain about talent scarcity, the real question is not whether the problem exists — it does. The question is whether they are willing to help build the pipeline that produces the talent they need. In a country like Nigeria, wealth is not just privilege; it is responsibility.
A great piece of analysis with many expositions. But I think the CEO is lying in his speech and lying even more in his explanation. No where I. The world are senior talent produced from schools. Senior talent is produced from experience in firms and institutions. Which senior talent has Moniepoint produced and released to the industry? We mistake universities for trade schools which they are not. More than 20 years ago we were bleeding talent in CWG Plc. Our solution - we setup a training centre that was initially free and then paid. It's still going and has produced juniors who worked their way up to seniors both in CWG plc and elsewhere. If you can't find 500 senior people , create them.
This is a great article! I have always said Nigeria’s elite is a big part of the puzzle that goes unnoticed. I’ve just never had the words to properly articulate why. Every big business has the responsibility to “give back” and balance the scales.
Companies abroad do this by actively getting involved in tertiary education programs as well as offer robust graduate schemes.
Nigeria’s elite are more concerned with maintaining the gap than creating systems and structures that makes the country livable for all. The best countries in the world were not built by governments alone but by big and small businesses providing real solutions and services that made life a little easier for all.
Nigeria requires an all hands on deck approach to fixing these fundamental issues.
While it’s good to design a good educational systems, there is also the worry that the best will always leave…so the design for a system that drives a pipeline must also be coupled with one that ensures the output is used in place or else other countries will simply take advantage of the product
Sounds reasonable. But the elite also have the responsibility of making the country livable. In other countries, they do this through political pressure that leads to ideal electoral outcomes. They sponsor real candidates with real ideas, lobby the government to appoint technocrats to lead ministries, and continuously speak out about the government's shortcomings to ensure change (Dangote does this well enough when it concerns his business interests).
If they decide to enforce talent pipeline retention through contracts or legislation, they'll essentially be kicking the can down the road rather than addressing the issues that drive world-class talent to leave the country.
Not a big fan of the word ‘Elite’…gives a false sense of abstraction…like it’s some people’s responsibility and others can just stand aside and watch them fix things…
By some stroke of luck, we find ourselves in a position where we can build things within financial services…if Moniepoint competes international and stays local and builds a talent pipeline that will ensure its people earn international rates while working locally, then it’s a start…and others will do same..waiting on some ‘Elite’ to fix this won’t work
This portion: "The schools were not meant to remain private charitable schools.... In other words, Rosenwald wasn’t so much substituting for the state as dragging it into its responsibility." is apt and reminds me of the work being done by food4education at the top of the funnel. You'd probably know her (Wawira Njiru), even though she's Kenyan. Her work demonstrates that paragraph in your essay, in that her philanthropy is compulsorily supplemented by both the parents of school children and government authorities. Check out www.food4education.org.
There's no better way to relate what Food4Education does in Kenya/E/Africa, the potential economic benefits and the bearings to your recommendations for designing a school programme than this conversation between Wawira Njiru & Trevor Noah at the Skoll Foundation >> https://youtu.be/bkl0aIzUt4I?si=fq2TOwObrs5jqJ5q
Thanks once again for penning your thoughts on this!
Thank you. Also why I put in the numbers for Rosenwald scheme there - it wasnt his money that did everything. His genius was to mobilise everyone else using the skills he had developed in business
This might be the first time I will be disagreeing with an article on 1914 Reader, given the rigorous analysis and research that goes into each piece.
Perhaps my disagreement isn't about the article itself, but the illustration and examples used to buttress the point in the article.
Yes, there's a massive brain drain in Nigeria due to the japa syndrome and the heavy emigration of talent from Nigeria to other places for greener pastures. But I believe this point has been so overstretched that anyone could make a ludicrous claim like that of the Moniepoint CEO, who said that over 500 technical roles are left unoccupied in the firm because there are no Nigerians to fill them.
By the way, this is a fintech company that processes transactions on an infrastructure that even a one year tech person can use.
So what technical roles are there, given the massive tech gurus we have in Nigeria? I love the way someone put it: how much are you willing to pay these workers you want to hire?
There have been situations where Nigerian firms pay their foreign workers double or even triple what they pay Nigerian workers. And in most cases, the Nigerian workers do the heavy lifting while the foreign workers sit in their large air conditioned offices, sipping coffee and holding meetings. Just check any construction or civil engineering company in Lekki. So much for no pool of talent, lol.
Now back to the claim by the CEO. A quick check of the company's website shows that only 78 available roles are up for hiring as of this time. And nearly half of them are not open to Nigerians, which is another lie the CEO told. Interestingly, about 20% of them are not even technical roles in themselves, or one might say they are soft technical roles like product managers, communication specialists, and the likes. So there are no qualified product managers and HR professionals in Nigeria?
Again, the main point of this article about the lopsided education system in Nigeria stands. But it should not be predicated on sob stories from people with agendas who say they can't find talent in Nigeria because of japa.
Most Nigerian tech guys are actually being sought after in Europe, India, and America. Not because they learned it from school, but because of the investments they made in themselves after school. Another indictment on the Nigerian education system that the article has rightly pointed out.
In short, I pray we stop believing everything these CEOs and so called experts put out just because they want to push their own agenda and because it confirms our internal bias.
First, I think the argument about a “massive pool of tech talent” in Nigeria needs more grounding. We often make this claim loosely without clear data on the actual size, distribution, and capability levels of technical talent in the country.
Nigeria itself struggles with even basic demographic accuracy, so it is hard to speak confidently about the depth of specialised talent in narrow fields like engineering or product roles.
What usually gets cited as “evidence” of a large talent pool is a visible subset of Nigerians who have become globally competitive, mostly through significant self-learning and external training. That group is real, but it is not the true representative of the broader technical labour market.
Also, on the issue of Tosin’s comments,I do not think it is fair to dismiss it as a “sob story” or agenda-driven framing. This is not an isolated claim, multiple founders across different sectors have independently raised similar concerns about hiring constraints at the technical level. Even if one disputes the exact number, the broader signal of a supply mismatch in certain specialised roles is consistent across the ecosystem.
On compensation, the issue is also more nuanced than simply “pay more.” Many of these firms, including the one referenced, claim to pay above market averages for comparable roles. Yet there is still reported difficulty with filling roles, which suggests that salary alone may not resolve the underlying gap in experience, readiness, or specialisation. If they do not exist in the first place.
So I do not think the conclusion should be that CEOs are manufacturing narratives. It may be more accurate to say that we are observing a real mismatch between the perceived talent pool and the deployable talent pool in specific high-skill roles
We all can agree with the broader point that Nigeria’s education system remains a structural issue. FF’s piece has offered a brilliant approach to solving the problem.
The narrative is manufactured. He said it himself, go and check our website.
There are no 500 technical roles on moniepoint website.
It's a publicly accessible data.
Stop all this, please.
More than 20% of the roles listed are not even technical.
There's nothing extraordinary about payment infrastructure and software for you to be claiming that 500 roles are not occupied.
Even the number he's quoting as employed people is also a fallacy.
Moniepoint hires mostly POS agents and those who help market the services. Most of them are paid based on contracts. Others earn their money from third party. Yet they claim to employ thousands of people.
Same way banks claim they have thousand of workforce, but 99% of them are easily disposable contract staff.
The man didn't know his statement would gather the attention and heat it did. So he decided to slip in an hyperbole.
The tech ecosystem isn't that brain drain yet. In fact, the opposite is true. It's burgeoning.
Well said. Successful entrepreneurs in environments like ours eventually carry a responsibility beyond building profitable businesses; they also have a role in solving broader societal problems like talent development and institutional growth.
One thing I’ve noticed is that many of our entrepreneurs and business owners study successful founders around the world, learn how they built wealth and scaled companies, but often overlook another important part of their stories: their deliberate investment in people, systems, and national development. Many of those global business leaders didn’t just wait for government structures to improve; they actively invested in capacity building, education, innovation, and the communities around them to create the standards and environment they wanted to operate in.
I think more entrepreneurs here should realize that long-term business success is tied to the development of the society around them. The successful ones among us will have to do more to help fix the country, build talent pipelines, and strengthen institutions. That has always been part of sustainable enterprise everywhere in the world.
Very valid points. As for the elites, donating a building is easy when you're worth billions. Redesigning a pipeline that does not add to your P&L is not. And that's exactly the level of effort this problem demands. The elites keep reaching for the comfortable interventions that get their name on a plaque while the structural rot sits untouched. If you've actually solved hard problems inside Nigerian conditions, that expertise is the real asset. The question is whether they are willing to deploy it somewhere it doesn't directly benefit your P&L. The bar can't keep being "I built a school block" or "I funded an empowerment program for entrepreneurs." Those are important, but they're essentially PR exercises disguised as obligation.
"So when a Nigerian entrepreneur says he cannot find 500 people to hire, my response is not “How dare you?” It is: “Congratulations. You have discovered the country you live in.” And having discovered it, the question becomes what you intend to do about it."
Really loved the analysis and depth of thinking in this post. The point is that this is hard work and it needs to be done with a similar level of thinking and dedication that these star entrepreneurs have applied in building their businesses.
Tosin is probably already doing more than most entrepreneurs in his generation regarding education. Among other investments, he built the AutoCAD studio at OAU’s Mechanical Engineering department, which was a most welcome intervention. The broader challenge I see is how to do this at scale and at earlier parts of the pyramid as well, given that only a few people make it to university to begin with.
I also really liked the closing sentence: “The next frontier is not another app. It is the Nigerian mind.”
Yes, it's that early part of the pyramid that is seriously neglected and unfair. If you get a decent grounding there, even if you still dont go to university, the floor of Nigeria's human capital is still higher than it would have been.
Well said as always. Successful entrepreneurs in markets like ours acquire more of a responsibility to solve larger societal issues like a talent pipeline. I think many more are increasingly coming to that realisation. The successful ones among us will have to do more to fix the country; that's how it's always been, and that's how it will always continue to be.
Absolutely
Nigeria’s elite already understand that the state lacks the capacity to reliably provide education, security, or opportunity at scale — their own private choices proves it. Yet many still speak as though nation-building is solely the government’s responsibility.
What Feyi clearly points out in this article is that in weak states, elite obligations [should/must] expand. The burden of developing human capital shifts to those with wealth, influence, and operational expertise.
The most impactful philanthropists in history did more than donate money; they applied the systems thinking, discipline, and problem-solving skills from business to nation-building. That is where many Nigerian billionaires fall short. Too many have profited from extractive systems without building transferable institutional knowledge or innovation capacity.
Ironically, Nigeria’s newer generation of founders may be better positioned to help because they have actually solved difficult problems within Nigerian conditions.
So when business leaders complain about talent scarcity, the real question is not whether the problem exists — it does. The question is whether they are willing to help build the pipeline that produces the talent they need. In a country like Nigeria, wealth is not just privilege; it is responsibility.
A great piece of analysis with many expositions. But I think the CEO is lying in his speech and lying even more in his explanation. No where I. The world are senior talent produced from schools. Senior talent is produced from experience in firms and institutions. Which senior talent has Moniepoint produced and released to the industry? We mistake universities for trade schools which they are not. More than 20 years ago we were bleeding talent in CWG Plc. Our solution - we setup a training centre that was initially free and then paid. It's still going and has produced juniors who worked their way up to seniors both in CWG plc and elsewhere. If you can't find 500 senior people , create them.
A great piece of analysis. It gets beyond the ra-ra our side, great start-ups to provide analysis of the fundamentals...
This is a great article! I have always said Nigeria’s elite is a big part of the puzzle that goes unnoticed. I’ve just never had the words to properly articulate why. Every big business has the responsibility to “give back” and balance the scales.
Companies abroad do this by actively getting involved in tertiary education programs as well as offer robust graduate schemes.
Nigeria’s elite are more concerned with maintaining the gap than creating systems and structures that makes the country livable for all. The best countries in the world were not built by governments alone but by big and small businesses providing real solutions and services that made life a little easier for all.
Nigeria requires an all hands on deck approach to fixing these fundamental issues.
Great piece.
While it’s good to design a good educational systems, there is also the worry that the best will always leave…so the design for a system that drives a pipeline must also be coupled with one that ensures the output is used in place or else other countries will simply take advantage of the product
Sounds reasonable. But the elite also have the responsibility of making the country livable. In other countries, they do this through political pressure that leads to ideal electoral outcomes. They sponsor real candidates with real ideas, lobby the government to appoint technocrats to lead ministries, and continuously speak out about the government's shortcomings to ensure change (Dangote does this well enough when it concerns his business interests).
If they decide to enforce talent pipeline retention through contracts or legislation, they'll essentially be kicking the can down the road rather than addressing the issues that drive world-class talent to leave the country.
Not a big fan of the word ‘Elite’…gives a false sense of abstraction…like it’s some people’s responsibility and others can just stand aside and watch them fix things…
By some stroke of luck, we find ourselves in a position where we can build things within financial services…if Moniepoint competes international and stays local and builds a talent pipeline that will ensure its people earn international rates while working locally, then it’s a start…and others will do same..waiting on some ‘Elite’ to fix this won’t work
With great power comes great responsibility. Everyone has responsibilities, but most lack the actual capacity to do what the 'elite' can.
So yes, a lot still falls to them.
Excellent essay!
This portion: "The schools were not meant to remain private charitable schools.... In other words, Rosenwald wasn’t so much substituting for the state as dragging it into its responsibility." is apt and reminds me of the work being done by food4education at the top of the funnel. You'd probably know her (Wawira Njiru), even though she's Kenyan. Her work demonstrates that paragraph in your essay, in that her philanthropy is compulsorily supplemented by both the parents of school children and government authorities. Check out www.food4education.org.
There's no better way to relate what Food4Education does in Kenya/E/Africa, the potential economic benefits and the bearings to your recommendations for designing a school programme than this conversation between Wawira Njiru & Trevor Noah at the Skoll Foundation >> https://youtu.be/bkl0aIzUt4I?si=fq2TOwObrs5jqJ5q
Thanks once again for penning your thoughts on this!
Thank you. Also why I put in the numbers for Rosenwald scheme there - it wasnt his money that did everything. His genius was to mobilise everyone else using the skills he had developed in business
This might be the first time I will be disagreeing with an article on 1914 Reader, given the rigorous analysis and research that goes into each piece.
Perhaps my disagreement isn't about the article itself, but the illustration and examples used to buttress the point in the article.
Yes, there's a massive brain drain in Nigeria due to the japa syndrome and the heavy emigration of talent from Nigeria to other places for greener pastures. But I believe this point has been so overstretched that anyone could make a ludicrous claim like that of the Moniepoint CEO, who said that over 500 technical roles are left unoccupied in the firm because there are no Nigerians to fill them.
By the way, this is a fintech company that processes transactions on an infrastructure that even a one year tech person can use.
So what technical roles are there, given the massive tech gurus we have in Nigeria? I love the way someone put it: how much are you willing to pay these workers you want to hire?
There have been situations where Nigerian firms pay their foreign workers double or even triple what they pay Nigerian workers. And in most cases, the Nigerian workers do the heavy lifting while the foreign workers sit in their large air conditioned offices, sipping coffee and holding meetings. Just check any construction or civil engineering company in Lekki. So much for no pool of talent, lol.
Now back to the claim by the CEO. A quick check of the company's website shows that only 78 available roles are up for hiring as of this time. And nearly half of them are not open to Nigerians, which is another lie the CEO told. Interestingly, about 20% of them are not even technical roles in themselves, or one might say they are soft technical roles like product managers, communication specialists, and the likes. So there are no qualified product managers and HR professionals in Nigeria?
Again, the main point of this article about the lopsided education system in Nigeria stands. But it should not be predicated on sob stories from people with agendas who say they can't find talent in Nigeria because of japa.
Most Nigerian tech guys are actually being sought after in Europe, India, and America. Not because they learned it from school, but because of the investments they made in themselves after school. Another indictment on the Nigerian education system that the article has rightly pointed out.
In short, I pray we stop believing everything these CEOs and so called experts put out just because they want to push their own agenda and because it confirms our internal bias.
First, I think the argument about a “massive pool of tech talent” in Nigeria needs more grounding. We often make this claim loosely without clear data on the actual size, distribution, and capability levels of technical talent in the country.
Nigeria itself struggles with even basic demographic accuracy, so it is hard to speak confidently about the depth of specialised talent in narrow fields like engineering or product roles.
What usually gets cited as “evidence” of a large talent pool is a visible subset of Nigerians who have become globally competitive, mostly through significant self-learning and external training. That group is real, but it is not the true representative of the broader technical labour market.
Also, on the issue of Tosin’s comments,I do not think it is fair to dismiss it as a “sob story” or agenda-driven framing. This is not an isolated claim, multiple founders across different sectors have independently raised similar concerns about hiring constraints at the technical level. Even if one disputes the exact number, the broader signal of a supply mismatch in certain specialised roles is consistent across the ecosystem.
On compensation, the issue is also more nuanced than simply “pay more.” Many of these firms, including the one referenced, claim to pay above market averages for comparable roles. Yet there is still reported difficulty with filling roles, which suggests that salary alone may not resolve the underlying gap in experience, readiness, or specialisation. If they do not exist in the first place.
So I do not think the conclusion should be that CEOs are manufacturing narratives. It may be more accurate to say that we are observing a real mismatch between the perceived talent pool and the deployable talent pool in specific high-skill roles
We all can agree with the broader point that Nigeria’s education system remains a structural issue. FF’s piece has offered a brilliant approach to solving the problem.
The narrative is manufactured. He said it himself, go and check our website.
There are no 500 technical roles on moniepoint website.
It's a publicly accessible data.
Stop all this, please.
More than 20% of the roles listed are not even technical.
There's nothing extraordinary about payment infrastructure and software for you to be claiming that 500 roles are not occupied.
Even the number he's quoting as employed people is also a fallacy.
Moniepoint hires mostly POS agents and those who help market the services. Most of them are paid based on contracts. Others earn their money from third party. Yet they claim to employ thousands of people.
Same way banks claim they have thousand of workforce, but 99% of them are easily disposable contract staff.
The man didn't know his statement would gather the attention and heat it did. So he decided to slip in an hyperbole.
The tech ecosystem isn't that brain drain yet. In fact, the opposite is true. It's burgeoning.
Well said. Successful entrepreneurs in environments like ours eventually carry a responsibility beyond building profitable businesses; they also have a role in solving broader societal problems like talent development and institutional growth.
One thing I’ve noticed is that many of our entrepreneurs and business owners study successful founders around the world, learn how they built wealth and scaled companies, but often overlook another important part of their stories: their deliberate investment in people, systems, and national development. Many of those global business leaders didn’t just wait for government structures to improve; they actively invested in capacity building, education, innovation, and the communities around them to create the standards and environment they wanted to operate in.
I think more entrepreneurs here should realize that long-term business success is tied to the development of the society around them. The successful ones among us will have to do more to help fix the country, build talent pipelines, and strengthen institutions. That has always been part of sustainable enterprise everywhere in the world.
my issue with his comment is that if he was talking about senior talents, what does that have to do with yahoo boy and hook up culture
This was a great and well though out peace of analysis. Waiting on the government is a fools errand.
Very valid points. As for the elites, donating a building is easy when you're worth billions. Redesigning a pipeline that does not add to your P&L is not. And that's exactly the level of effort this problem demands. The elites keep reaching for the comfortable interventions that get their name on a plaque while the structural rot sits untouched. If you've actually solved hard problems inside Nigerian conditions, that expertise is the real asset. The question is whether they are willing to deploy it somewhere it doesn't directly benefit your P&L. The bar can't keep being "I built a school block" or "I funded an empowerment program for entrepreneurs." Those are important, but they're essentially PR exercises disguised as obligation.
Great work.
Great post
"So when a Nigerian entrepreneur says he cannot find 500 people to hire, my response is not “How dare you?” It is: “Congratulations. You have discovered the country you live in.” And having discovered it, the question becomes what you intend to do about it."