Month: November 2025

I have carried a very simple rule throughout my career, and it has served me without fail: I don’t employ anyone with a second class lower or anything below that line. A lot of people have strong feelings about this rule, although most people in leadership circles follow the same principle quietly and hope no one calls them out on it.

Whenever the topic comes up, the reactions usually come with accusations that people like me are looking down on others or deliberately shutting doors that should be open. I have heard those arguments, and I understand how emotional the subject can be, but I prefer to speak from the life I have lived rather than from the opinions people try to impose on me.

The best advice I ever got from my brother

I learned the importance of grades early, and no I did not arrive at it by reading motivational books or listening to career coaches. I arrived at it the way many Nigerians do. I had an older sibling who understood how the world worked long before I did. 

One day in university, my brother sat me down and told me without blinking that anything below a 2:1 would make my chances of securing a good job close to nonexistent. It did not sound encouraging. It sounded like a harsh verdict. He was not trying to scare me for entertainment. He had seen what was happening in the job market, and he wanted me to move through life with both eyes open.

Sure enough I heeded his advice and took his word as gospel, so I stayed on track untilI discovered one particular Igbo babe who occupied more mental space than my textbooks. That little detour cost me my 2:1, and before I could fully understand the danger I had walked into, my CGPA had started to sink. 

No one needed to repeat my brother’s warning because the fear entered my bones on its own. I had to drag myself back through three very difficult semesters in order to climb above that line again. It was not a heroic act at all, rather it was pure survival because I had seen what the alternative looked like.

By the time I found myself in Taraba State for NYSC, the warning had hardened into reality. Standard Trust Bank, which was not UBAGroup at the time, had a clear requirement and was only accepting graduates who had at least a 2:1. That tiny piece of information saved me from ending up as a village teacher somewhere in the middle of nowhere. A small difference in CGPA became the reason I was sitting in a bank instead of standing in front of a chalkboard in a dusty classroom, waiting for salary alerts that never arrived on time.

When I completed NYSC, the banks and Big4 firms had all aligned around the same threshold. If you did not have a 2:1, you simply were not considered. That was how I got into Access Bank Plc. Looking back, the fear my brother handed me was one of the most useful gifts anyone has ever given me. I’m still thinking of what I to get him for Christmas, because how do you repay someone for advice that shifts the entire direction of your life.

Grades influence the opportunities life makes available

I have been in the workplace long enough to know that grades don’t always predict brilliance. I have seen people with first class degrees who could not handle basic tasks, and I have worked under leaders with third class degrees who were capable of solving problems in ways textbooks cannot teach. But when you look beyond individual stories and study outcomes across many careers, patterns start to appear. People with 2:1 and above tend to perform better, learn faster, adapt more easily, and grow more consistently. The advantage might be small at the beginning, but it becomes meaningful over time because the world keeps rewarding the people who show they can maintain discipline and push through pressure.

I don’t rely on wishful thinking when it comes to hiring. I rely on patterns that have repeated themselves so often that ignoring them would be irresponsible. Whenever someone tells me to take chances on people with lower grades, I remember the number of times I have tried exactly that. The outcome usually left me wondering why I ignored the data in front of me. 

At some point you learn that running a company is not an emotional hobby. The hiring decisions you make determine whether the organisation moves forward or gets dragged into a cycle of avoidable setbacks. Lendsqr cannot afford those experiments, especially when we operate in a highly technical environment where execution must be precise.

That is why the rule exists. We’re not trying to claim any special status or feed an ego; this approach just keeps our talent pipeline stable and predictable in a way that nothing else has managed to do.

A second class lower is not the end of a career

Even though I have my standard, I am not one of those people who believes that a 2:2 or third class is the end of the world. I know too many people who used those grades as fuel rather than punishment. The issue has never truly been the grade; it comes down to whether the person chooses to stay stuck in disappointment or accept what has happened and begin putting in the kind of sustained effort that builds a new path.

Life has never rewarded people who rely on sympathy. Life responds to hunger, effort, discipline and the willingness to endure discomfort for long stretches of time. If your results are not great, you can still turn things around. That journey, however, requires sacrifices that feel almost surgical. I sometimes say it takes a kidney, but the point is simple. Big transformations demand a level of commitment that is uncomfortable but necessary.

Young people today have advantages that my own generation did not enjoy. You have the internet, unlimited tutorials, free textbooks, open communities, online mentors and an entire world of knowledge that someone like me could never access at your age. The path to a first class or a strong 2:1 is easier now because you do not need to wait for lecturers to decide whether they feel like teaching. If you want it, you can get it, as long as you are willing to put in the hours.

If you choose to dismiss what I am saying, that is your choice. Some people prefer to defend mediocrity rather than confront it. The truth, however, remains the same. Life rewards people who stack advantages wherever they can find them.

The evidence is everywhere if you look closely

There are many examples across Nigeria and Africa that show how academic effort can rearrange an entire future. Zacch Adedeji is one of the clearest examples. He was raised in Iwo Ate in Oyo State in a household that had little access to privilege or networks. Nothing in his early environment suggested he would grow into a national figure. He began with a National Diploma in Accountancy and graduated with distinction. That achievement opened the first door. 

He proceeded to Obafemi Awolowo University and graduated with a first class in Management and Accounting. He continued with a Masters degree and later earned a PhD after many years of sustained intellectual effort. That path eventually carried him into national service where he became the head of the Federal Inland Revenue Service. The opportunities he received did not appear out of nowhere. They came because he treated education with seriousness and used it as leverage in rooms that reward excellence.

Another example is Taiwo Oyedele, who is widely regarded as Africa’s most distinguished authority in taxation. He began at Yaba College of Technology, studying for a Higher National Diploma. He graduated with exceptional results and used that foundation to build a career defined by consistency and deep technical commitment. His journey through the world of tax policy did not rely on luck. It relied on the kind of preparation that positions someone for national relevance. 

Today he leads the presidential tax and fiscal reform committee and continues to influence policy conversations across the continent. His background did not limit him because he approached his education with the seriousness of someone who understood what was at stake.

These examples show that academic performance matters because it creates an entry point into places where talent can be developed. It does not mean those without strong grades cannot succeed, but it does show that good grades can reduce the number of battles you need to fight.

What I want young people to take away from all this

If you are still in school, the simplest advice I can give you is to take your grades seriously. They will not determine your entire life, but they will determine the ease with which you enter into opportunities. A 2:1 or first class shows discipline and reliability. That is what employers see long before they meet you. It does not mean your entire identity should be shaped by grades. It simply means you should collect every advantage you can find because the world is already difficult on its own.

If you have graduated with grades that fall below that line, do not shrink. Accept what has happened and begin the slow process of building new leverage. Read widely. Learn aggressively. Build portfolios. Find mentors. Volunteer. Work twice as hard as the next person. You can reinvent yourself if you want it badly enough, and we have seen many people do it. No one rises simply because life is fair. People rise because they take responsibility for the story they want to tell in ten years.In the end, my hiring principle at Lendsqr is simple. I want people who understand the cost of excellence. I want people who have shown discipline during difficult seasons, who have demonstrated the ability to push themselves, who understand the real price of opportunity. If you carry those qualities, education becomes only the beginning of your story rather than the limit.

Somewhere between building a company, convincing adults to behave like adults, and trying to run an institution that doesn’t collapse on my head, I now find myself speaking to parents of interns before HR can send out their offers.

If you told me four years ago that I would spend my mornings explaining credit infrastructure to somebody’s mum who still shouts “off the light,” I would have laughed in your face. Yet here we are, and not only am I doing it, I am now the person defending it as innovation.

Even ChatGPT, that digital errand boy that claims it’s here to help, had the audacity to tell me that it wasn’t professional. I told it “gbe enu soun.” A man must draw the line somewhere.

But there’s a story behind all this, and before you assume I’ve lost the plot, come closer and let me run the full gist from the beginning.

One year, several disappearing acts, and an HR team that aged ten years

Over the last one year, I noticed a very strange pattern. It was mostly the girls, though not exclusively, and it always happened the same way. A bright, high-performing new hire would do well, collect praise, get on everyone’s good side, show promise, and then out of nowhere, vanish over a weekend. No warning. No conversation. Nothing.

A resignation letter would drop like a bad network, phones would go off like NEPA took light, and the entire HR team would turn to Sherlock trying to track them or the guarantor. And when someone finally surfaced, usually the parent, the explanations would start flying. The child was sick. The workload was too much. The job was stressing them. The sun was too hot. The moon was misaligned. Pick any excuse; I’ve heard them all.

But nothing prepared me for Jane Doe. Jane was the kind of intern you don’t forget. She came in the first time, did an incredible job, and left everyone impressed at how fast she picked things up. She wasn’t a pity hire. She earned every bit of the respect she got, and when she asked to come back for a second internship, we were genuinely happy to have her. She was one of those interns you imagine eventually hiring full-time with no hesitation.

So imagine our surprise when, less than a week into her reemployment, a short, vague email landed in my inbox. She was resigning with immediate effect. No clear reason. Something about “undisclosed health issues.” She didn’t tell her team lead. She didn’t inform HR. She didn’t say anything to her colleagues. She simply vanished.

We spent 24 hours trying to reach her. Nothing. Calls went nowhere, messages were ignored, and the entire thing felt like a ghost story. When we eventually got through, she had no coherent explanation. No clarity. Nothing that matched her initial eagerness or the brilliance she had shown in her first internship.

It was confusing, painful, and downright frustrating. And it wasn’t just her. She was simply the incident that snapped everything into focus.

At first I was furious. Actually, scratch that, I was livid. I kept asking myself how someone could come into a serious workplace, learn, get paid, grow, and then exit the building like a thief in broad daylight with no courtesy of a conversation. But when anger doesn’t solve the problem, wisdom must step forward. So, as usual, I went to lease some sense.

The ‘leave that job now’ parenting era is wreaking havoc

When we finally made it easier for people leaving to open up without fear of consequences (nobody dies on this job, so there’s no point holding anyone hostage), things became clearer. A pattern emerged across the stories, and it was almost too obvious once I saw it.

Parents, particularly those who grew up with traditional workplaces where people wore ties, carried files, and lived inside offices, were seeing their children work hard in a remote setting and deciding that it was slavery.

Many of these young hires still lived at home. So the parent was watching them glued to a laptop, joining meetings, taking feedback, working long hours, dealing with the normal chaos of tech, and they couldn’t process it. Their reaction was simple:

“This job is stressing my child. Leave immediately.” And when your parent gives that instruction in a home where you aren’t paying rent, feeding yourself, or contributing significantly, what power do you have to argue? Your father has spoken. Your mother has spoken. You pack your bag and run.

Even the children themselves weren’t saying the work was too much. They were complaining like normal adults do. Only psychopaths don’t complain about their jobs. But to the parents, the grumbling meant their child was suffering spiritual torment in a workplace run by sadists.

Remote work fooled us all

I knew deep down that if we weren’t a remote company, this whole parental intervention problem wouldn’t exist. If these kids were leaving the house every morning, catching crowded buses, dealing with Lagos traffic, getting shoved around by conductors, occasionally having money or items stolen, their parents wouldn’t see any of it. They would only meet a child who left home early and returned tired, and that would be the story they would take home. They wouldn’t see the work itself, the deadlines, the meetings, or the mental load, so they wouldn’t panic.

Instead, parents see their kids at home, glued to screens (an age-long beef still exists between parents and screens), typing away, attending back-to-back calls, and solving problems they don’t understand. When a young hire complains about a tough day, which any normal person would, they interpret it as suffering or exploitation. Because the kids live at home, the parents feel entitled to intervene. And most of the time, there’s nothing the child can do about it.

Remote work has turned parents into accidental supervisors in their children’s careers. They see everything, but they don’t have the context or experience to understand what’s actually happening. And without that context, even normal complaints or adjustments get blown out of proportion, which ends up creating a whole new HR headache we never signed up for.

The idea that sounded ridiculous until it made perfect sense

So one day, I asked myself a genuinely mad question: “What if I talk to the parents?”

What if I picked up my phone like the responsible adult that I am and explained the job to them man-to-man or man-to-woman? Tell them what the internship involves, the six-month structure, the pay progression, the job rotation system, the technical skills the children will pick up, the growth they can expect, and the general madness of early-career tech work.

If someone called me regarding my daughter, wanting to explain her opportunities and what the journey would look like, I would appreciate it. So why wouldn’t I extend the same courtesy to other parents?

That’s how this experiment started. It wasn’t a grand strategic initiative. It wasn’t something I wrote on a whiteboard and presented to the team. It was simply me deciding to try something different instead of sitting down complaining about a problem that kept repeating itself.

Talking to parents is now a full-blown pastime I didn’t know I needed

Let me confess: I don’t even know if this will work in the long run, but I’m enjoying the process more than I expected.

When I call these parents, the first thing I hear is pride. Genuine pride. They talk about how well their children did in school, how they graduated at the top of their class, how they have always been hardworking and responsible. 

We take mostly first-class candidates, so you can imagine the warmth of these conversations. Nobody raises a child to be mediocre, and hearing it from the parents reminded me that these young people are more than their weekend disappearances.

I also explain everything we do at Lendsqr. Not the usual corporate website talk, but real explanations of how digital lending works, how we serve lenders, the engineering that goes into the product, the skills their children will learn, and why the early stages of a tech career can feel heavy before it becomes rewarding.

It has become unexpectedly fulfilling, in a very odd way.

Will all this reduce attrition? Even I don’t know yet

I wish I could stand here and tell you confidently that this initiative is going to fix attrition once and for all. The truth is, I don’t know. We’re still collecting data, watching patterns, and seeing how it plays out over time. Some of these things can’t be rushed or predicted.

If it does work, I’ll be the first to come back and brag about my brilliance in figuring it out. Don’t take that as a promise though, I’ll probably exaggerate anyway. Innovation is rarely neat. Most of the time it’s just frustration meeting desperation, refusing to give up, and then hoping it sticks.

In the meantime, I’ll keep doing what I started. I’ll keep picking up the phone, talking to parents, listening to their concerns, reassuring them that their children are learning, growing, and not being worked like field labourers. I’ll explain what we do, what they gain, and why the early struggles are part of the process. And I’ll do it gladly, because these conversations are worth it, until the company grows so big that I can’t possibly make the calls myself.

When that day comes and I’m sure it will, we’ll figure out a new way. That’s what we do. We adapt, we experiment, and we keep moving forward.

If there are a few things that everybody agrees on, it’s that Africans need a helping hand. That also includes financial inclusion. Globally, we’ve seen DFIs and other government and non-governmental organizations pouring billions of dollars to help Africans. From the Gates Foundation to the Germans at KfW and DEG. Everybody’s trying to help build a world where being born African doesn’t mean you’re automatically shut out of finance.

In fact, the M-Pesa that we all love was actually created and funded by the British government. And that’s good. You’d think that with all this effort and money, everybody would agree on one thing: you don’t profit off the vulnerable, at least not in a direct and blatant way. But guess what? You’d be wrong. I didn’t realize just how bad Africans, especially the poor ones, were being taken advantage of until I started growing Lendsqr across the continent.

The moment it hit me

Of course, before Lendsqr went continental, I already had a fair share of exposure to different African markets. I’d seen the good, the bad, and the bureaucratic. Payments systems were mostly similar. The card networks were familiar, the central banks often looked to one another for regulatory cues, and we all complained about the same things — settlement delays, interchange fees, and poor infrastructure.

But as we began expanding Lendsqr into other countries, the numbers started telling me a story that was too outrageous to ignore.

Let’s start with Nigeria;  a country that, for all its chaos, somehow manages to have one of the most efficient and affordable digital payment ecosystems in Africa. Moving money in Nigeria costs next to nothing. Transfer ₦10,000, and your fee is usually capped at ₦10. Transfer ₦100,000, and it might rise to ₦25. Even for big business payments moving billions, it rarely crosses ₦50  and that’s barely $0.03.

Platforms like Paystack, Flutterwave, Monnify, and Quickteller all hover around 1.5%, and even that is capped at ₦2,000 (around $1.33). In fact, for micro-transactions, some banks and fintechs absorb the fees entirely. The Central Bank, for all its overreach, has at least tried to protect the little guy by mandating free ATM withdrawals for the poor, capping transfer fees, and pushing interoperability so you can send money without burning your pocket.

So naturally, I assumed this was the norm across Africa. How very wrong I was.

When 2.5% (uncapped) feels like a victory

The first shock came when one of our customers in East Africa called to share “good news.” They had just secured a disbursement deal capped at 2.5% per transaction. I remember them sounding so happy, as if they had just won a grant.

I was confused. I asked them to repeat it. Two point five percent? They confirmed it proudly. That means if you move $100,000 through a system like that, you lose $2,500 instantly to transaction fees. That’s money that creates no value. It doesn’t make systems faster or safer. It just disappears into someone’s pocket.

I could not believe it. I even joked that at this rate, they might as well throw a street party and call in King Sunny Ade to celebrate being robbed.

I remember spending days thinking, what kind of daylight robbery is this? But it didn’t stop there. I dug deeper and the numbers got uglier.

The more I looked, the worse it got

Across Africa, fintechs and payment providers are quietly making the poor pay some of the highest transaction costs in the world. The more I dug, the more absurd it became. I even got my team to scour the web: pricing pages, documentation, and payment terms across 54 African countries, just to be sure I wasn’t overreacting. Every single number we found was public information, sitting in plain sight. And we’ll be releasing all that data soon. For now, let me give you a few examples.

In Rwanda, KPay charges 5% for collecting money whether by card or mobile money. Five percent. That’s $25 in fees for every $500 transaction. In a country where average monthly income barely crosses $150, that’s criminal.

In Benin Republic, PayPlus also charges 5% on card collections. Flutterwave, which charges around 2% in Nigeria, charges 4.8% in countries like Malawi and Rwanda, and the same 4.8% in South Africa. PesaPal charges 3.5% in Rwanda.

Now compare that with Stripe or Square in the US or UK, both of which charge 2.9%, and that’s in countries with far better infrastructure, faster reconciliation, and clearer consumer protection. Even PayPal, notorious for its greed, caps its domestic fees around 2 to 4%.

So why should a small business in Kigali or Cotonou pay almost double what a startup in California pays just to move money from one account to another?

The same Africa, different rules

It gets even crazier  when you realize that these fintechs are often the same companies operating across multiple African countries. Flutterwave, Paystack, PawaPay, and others have the same brand, same technology stack, same continent, yet wildly different fees.

For instance, Flutterwave in Nigeria charges 2% capped at ₦1,500 ($10). The same company in Rwanda charges 3.5%, and in Malawi it goes up to 4.8%. KPay in Rwanda sits comfortably at 5%. Meanwhile, Wave, which operates in Senegal and Burkina Faso, charges just 1%, which may or may not be proof that fair pricing is absolutely possible on this continent.

In some cases, moving $100,000 through certain fintechs in West Africa could cost $3,000 in fees, while the same transaction through Stripe in the US would barely touch $1,000. And remember, most of these African countries are poorer, less industrialized, and more dependent on small-scale entrepreneurs, traders, and hustlers trying to survive.

When you factor in how many of these payments happen daily; school fees, remittances, salaries, small business transactions, you start to see the scale of the bleed. We’re talking billions of dollars lost every year to “financial inclusion” intermediaries that promise to help the poor, but instead charge them for breathing.

We can’t keep blaming “the West”

What makes this even more painful is that we’ve built a culture of blaming the West for our exploitation while turning a blind eye to the predators among us. It’s fashionable to say “colonialism” or “IMF” whenever Africans are suffering, but at some point, we have to admit that a lot of the exploitation today is homegrown. 

It’s Africans charging Africans outrageous rates to send money within Africa. It’s African fintechs, armed with DFI grants meant to “empower inclusion,” who’ve decided the best way to grow is to tax the poor until they collapse.

I’ve seen fintechs brag about “connecting Africa” while charging 3 to 6% on every mobile money transaction. That’s not inclusion. That’s extortion smartly coiffed and dressed up as innovation.

And don’t get me wrong, I know infrastructure costs a whole lot of money. Integrations, agent networks, regulatory licenses, none of it is free. But there’s a difference between sustainable pricing and sheer greed. The reality is, we’ve normalized gouging because the victims don’t have a voice.

The hypocrisy of “financial inclusion”

The biggest irony is that fintech was supposed to fix this. We came to make finance fairer, cheaper, and faster. Yet, here we are, with local fintechs charging fees that would get Western CEOs crucified in the press.

In the US, if Stripe decided to raise its fees from 2.9% to 5%, it would make headlines on TechCrunch, analysts would shred them in opinion pieces, and regulators would swarm. Customers would revolt immediately. But in Africa, we quietly call it “market dynamics” and move on, as though poverty itself justifies exploitation.

When you see fintechs like KPay in Rwanda taking 5% per transaction, you start to realize this may likely be exploitation disguised as “financial inclusion”. At that rate, the poor can’t save, can’t scale, can’t breathe. 

Take a moment to think about this; If you were to move $100,000 through a 5% network, you would lose $5,000. Do it ten times a month, and that is $50,000 gone just for moving money that already belongs to you. Imagine a small business trying to pay its staff or suppliers under such conditions.

And the worst part? These same fintechs often use the language of inclusion and empowerment to raise money from global investors and DFIs. They pitch themselves as saviors of Africa’s unbanked population while quietly charging the unbanked three to four times what a London café owner pays on Square.

Where do we go from here?

Moving money around Africa shouldn’t cost an arm, a leg, and your firstborn. If M-Pesa can process transactions for 0.5% in Kenya and Wave can charge 1% in Senegal, then the excuse of “infrastructure cost” doesn’t hold water.

It is time for fintech founders and investors to take a hard look at their pricing models and ask if this is the Africa they claim to be building for. Regulators must begin to link licensing approvals to transparent, fair pricing.

If we are truly building for Africa, then let’s prove it by pricing fairly. Let’s stop pretending that charging 5% fees in a continent still struggling with poverty is acceptable. We’ve got to stop pretending this is okay. African fintechs can’t keep shouting “financial inclusion” while fucking robbing the poor blind.