The Nigerian tech story can't ever be complete without companies and founders who started the glory days -Tara Systems' founder Seni Williams and co-conspirator Louis Edozien of MetroNG. Tani Fafunwa/Resourcery is also in that Hall of Fame but GIC Eneli of GICEN started it all

If we want to talk about Godfathers and early tech investors, somewhere lost in there is Chief Arthur Nzeribe. It was always rumored that he was the financier of the first big tech company GICEN. I only confirmed it from something my co-founder unearthed in Nigerian law reports.

Aparently, Chief Arthur Nzeribe was the main man and his company was called "Lion Investment Company Ltd".... dangerously close to Lionheart :) Igbo people and lions! - http://judgements.lawnigeria.com/2018/12/07/3plr-nnamdi-eneli-v-lion-investment-co-ltd/?fbclid=IwAR32zq7F_FCDMrklOdcx3YBTP51QWB_L8sqAYCk9APTP7O39TJ0uEIfje90

This is why I believe there needs to be a "Nigerian Business History" Chair at Lagos Business School or even UNILAG. So many things that used to be public knowledge, we have forgotten and have now become secrets again. Tech investment in Nigeria started long before people think.

It is interesting that Igbo men were the first to see the tech opportunity and Otigba was NOT a fluke as people think. It just evolved as a parallel business that commoditized hardware and initially pirated software. Institutionalization came with GICEN, Tara, Resourcery etc

By today's valuation. The first multimillion-dollar investment in tech was a loan by Chief Francis Arthur Nzeribe to Chief Godwin Ifeanyi Eneli. The first multimillion-dollar equity investment was made by the IFC in Socketworks led by @ChifeDr (yet another Igbo man :)).

Simeon Agu of CSA (Neptune) is another person not to be forgotten. They built the first banking software that Zenith Bank used and what led to the ability of locally owned banks to grow rapidly. Many forget that ALL our banks and tech companies were once foreign owned.

When I see new "foreign saviours" taking credit for our tech or our local people crediting people from outside for the growth of the ecosystem, I laugh. This fight started long before some players now in Nigerian tech were born. We won it before and we will continue winning it.

OBJ's indigenization decree led to the first wave. OBJ's NCC led to the second wave. The third wave started with digital commerce companies. The fourth wave is already starting again with brain drain.

If there is still a Nigeria in twenty years, people probably will have forgetten all the stories in Nigerian tech today. Medium may already have become an archiving tool by then and new "saviours" will once again emerge. To me, Nigerian tech was probably started by the Ogbunigwe.