Top Nigerian tech entrepreneurs, including Funke Opeke, the founder and CEO of MainOne, were among the 447 people honored by the federal government on Tuesday. Gbenga Agboola, CEO of Flutterwave, and Ezra Olubi, co-founder of Paystack, were also honoured.
While Opeke was named a Member of the Order of the Niger (MON), Agboola and Olubi were named Officers of the Order of the Niger (OON).
President Muhammadu Buhari presented the awards to the recipients at an event held at the International Conference Centre in Abuja.
FUNKE OPEKE
Funke Opeke is a Nigerian electrical engineer, founder of Main Street Technologies and chief executive officer of Main One Cable Company, a communications services company based in Lagos State. Her company, called MainOne, is West Africa’s leading communications services and network solutions provider.
Funke Opeke started MainOne in 2008 when she noticed the poor internet connectivity in Nigeria. The company built West Africa’s first privately owned, open access 7,000-kilometer undersea high-capacity cable submarine stretching from Portugal to West Africa with landings along the route in Accra (Ghana), Dakar (Senegal) in 2019, Abidjan (Côte d’Ivoire) in 2019 and Lagos (Nigeria).
Early this year, MainOne was acquired by America’s digital infrastructure company, Equinix, in a deal valued at $320 million.
OLUGBENGA AGBOOLA
Olugbenga Agboola is the co-founder and CEO of Flutterwave, an organization committed to changing the landscape of payments on the African continent. Last year, Flutterwave became the fourth African startup to reach “unicorn” status as it reached a valuation of over $1bn after raising $170m in a Series C round.
Before becoming the CEO, he was a chief technology officer at Flutterwave. Olugbenga Agboola became the CEO when Iyinoluwa Samuel Aboyeji, the former CEO stepped down.
Aside from being a fintech engineer and an entrepreneur, he is also a certified ethical hacker, security analyst, and Microsoft system engineer. Olugbenga Agboola also assisted in the growth of a few fintech companies and financial services like PayPal and Standard Bank.
EZRA OLUBI
Ezra Olubi is a Nigerian information technology expert, software engineer, mobile app developer, and entrepreneur. He is the co-founder and CTO at Paystack.
Paystack is an African fintech company that allows vendors, banks, companies, businesses, and their customers to send and receive online payments. This can be done through debit and credit cards, money transfers, and mobile money apps. Paystack lets businesses secure payments, both locally and internationally.
Paystack was successful, and it became the leading payment system in Nigeria. It attracted the attention of Stripe, a payment processing and software programming company. Stripe acquired Paystack in 2020 for USD 200 million. After that, Paystack expanded its operation to other countries in Africa.
