Over 447 personalities were honoured in the national awards by the government, on Tuesday. Amongst these personalities were three tech entrepreneurs. They are: The founder and CEO of MainOne, Funke Opeke; The CEO of Flutterwave, Gbenga Agboola; and the Co-founder of Paystack, Ezra Olubi. The awards were presented by President Muhammadu Buhari, at the National Awards Event, at the International Conference Centre (ICC), Abuja.
Funke Opeke was awarded ‘Member of the Order of the Niger (MON)’. She is a Nigerian electrical engineer, and founder of Main Street Technologies. Funke is the CEO of a communications services company in Lagos state, MainOne Cable Company. MainOne is West Africa’s topmost communications services and network solutions provider. MainOne was gotten at $320 million value deal by America’s digital infrastructure company, Equinix, earlier this year.
Gbenga Agboola was awarded ‘Officer of the Order of the Niger (OON)’ recognition. He is the co-founder and CEO of Flutterwave. He was formerly a chief technology officer at Flutterwave, and became the CEO when the former CEO, Iyinoluwa Samuel Aboyeji, stepped down. Flutterwave became the fourth African start-up to acquire “unicorn” status at a $1 billion valuation. This was after it raised $170 million in a Series C round. He is also a security analyst, Microsoft system engineer, and a certified ethical hacker.
Ezra Olubi was awarded ‘Officer of the Order of the Niger (OON)’ recognition. Aside from being the co-founder and CTO at Paystack, he is also a software engineer, entrepreneur, mobile app developer, and a Nigerian information technology expert. Paystack is the leading payment company in Nigeria, and other countries in Africa. This was as a result of getting Stripe’s attention; a payment processing and software programming company. Stripe acquired Paystack for $200 million in 2020.
