Nigeria’s Talent Problem Is Not About Talent: A Rejoinder to Moniepoint's Tosin Eniolorunda
Editor’s note: This opinion responds to comments by Tosin Eniolorunda, CEO of Moniepoint, who said Nigerian companies struggle to find “world-class talent” locally. In his rejoinder, Timi Olagunju, a public policy expert, argues that this framing is incomplete. At the centre of the debate is what Nigeria’s real “talent problem” actually is.
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There is an illusion in Nigeria. I call it ‘ingrained classism’, and it may be costing us both in money and money’s worth. Some argue that it may be a product of colonial programming, which I hope this piece identifies and reprograms.
Source: Twitter
When aspiration starts to distort reality
It manifests where a person climbs a little higher than yesterday, sits in a better office, earns a better income, and suddenly begins to make grandiose claims not grounded in reality but wears a semblance or shadow of it.
Before I get to Tosin Eniolorunda’s statement on the Platform, let me give you a recent example of classism. Recently, on a podcast, a lady was asked what the ideal Nigerian wedding should cost. She said N80 million to N100 million. Ideal? In a country where less than 1% have a net worth of N100 million. That is how classism works. It paints an ideal picture of something that is far from ideal.
The same spirit has crept into business, where people build for the 1% but claim to be startups for every Nigerian. The same has crept into the cost of real estate in Nigeria, where properties are overvalued. Now, it is creeping into Nigerian entrepreneurship, and we need to be aware before it does more damage than intended.
The Moniepoint hiring debate
Tosin Eniolorunda, CEO of Moniepoint, reportedly said that in 2024 the company decided to hire only from Nigeria, but by 2025 it ‘chopped the cane’. He said Moniepoint had 500 vacancies and was struggling to fill them, not merely in quantity, but in quality. He added that many applicants did not meet the global standard required to build world-class products, especially when Moniepoint competes beyond Nigeria.
Let me first commend what deserves commendation. The decision to hire locally is patriotic. It is better than the lazy elitism of assuming that everything good must be imported. A Nigerian company choosing Nigerians first is a serious statement.
But a good intention can still carry a wrong diagnosis.
Tosin argues that Nigeria has a talent-quality problem. He is not entirely wrong. Our education system is broken. Many graduates are not workplace-ready. Too many applicants carry certificates without competence. Social media has elevated noise over discipline. Get-rich-quick culture has damaged patience. Brain drain has taken away some of our best hands.
Where does responsibility for talent really sit?
But here is the counterargument: employers cannot speak as though they are innocent spectators in a labour market they helped create.
Who designed the job adverts asking entry-level candidates for three years of experience? Who refused to pay interns properly? Who treats young workers like disposable labour? Who converted ‘training’ into one motivational speech and two HR slides? Who wants global-standard workers but Nigerian-standard wages? Who complains about talent scarcity, but does little to build the talent pipeline?
The problem is not that Nigeria lacks talent. The problem is that Nigerian companies often lack talent development systems, and the Nigerian state lacks a talent development policy.
Many employers want finished products. They do not want raw material. They want senior talent, but not the burden of junior growth. They want competence, but not the cost of competence. They want a polished professional, but not the apprenticeship that produces one.
But that is not a strategy. That is extraction. Tosin himself is proof that talent is built, not found fully formed, especially in a clime like ours. He worked at Interswitch before founding TeamApt, now Moniepoint. That experience mattered. It gave him industry exposure, problem context, confidence and networks. Interswitch was part of the ladder that produced Tosin. So why should Moniepoint not become part of the ladder that produces the next Tosin?
My above argument is not sentimental or an emotional point. This is how global organisations work.
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Larry Fink, co-founder and CEO of BlackRock, admitted in his interview with David Rubenstein, in the book ’How To Invest’, that he knew nothing about trading securities after graduating. He got in, got a chance and learned on the job, until he became a guru trader of mortgage-backed securities and later helped create the structured global bond market we now talk about. There, he learned, grew, made mistakes and developed the competence that later shaped one of the world’s most important investment firms. Same Larry became the co-founder and Chairman of BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager and major technology provider.
Talent is built, not found
Our own, Adebayo Ogunlesi, is another example. Today, he is a global finance figure: founding partner and CEO of Global Infrastructure Partners, sold to BlackRock for over $12billion USD. He admitted in a class I had the privilege of attending at the Harvard Business School that after he finished at Harvard, he thought of going into law (even clerked), but someone convinced him to get into investing, so he does not end up ‘miserable’ like lawyers in New York law firms without work-life balance. He got the role based on talent, without any experience and learned in the role.
Even global organisations recruit for potential, train for mastery and then build institutions around the people they have developed. They do not merely stand at the gate and shout, “Where are the world-class people?”
To be clear, no serious person is asking Moniepoint to employ every Tom, Isaac and Abdullahi. No serious person is asking it to lower standards. Building in Nigeria is hard. Energy cost is high. Internet infrastructure is uneven. Regulation can be unpredictable. Capital is expensive. Inflation damages planning. Founders are fighting battles that their foreign competitors do not even understand.
But hardship does not excuse a shallow talent philosophy and structure.
If Moniepoint wants world-class talent, let it build a world-class talent machine: a Moniepoint Academy for engineering, product, risk, compliance, data and operations; paid apprenticeships tied to real business problems; two-year graduate fellowships with clear assessment; mid-career conversion programmes for workers from banking, telecoms and consulting; and transparent promotion ladders showing how a beginner becomes a manager.
Salary transparency must also enter this discussion. If Nigerian (and African) companies want global-standard workers, they should publish salary ranges as their global counterparts do. Not “competitive.” Not “attractive.” Not “industry standard.” Those phrases could often mean: come first, waste your time, and discover later that the numbers insult your competence.
The Ministry of Labour and Employment, under Muhammad Maigari Dingyadi, and the Senate and House Committees on Labour should consider requiring medium and large employers with a turnover of N1billion to publish salary ranges in job adverts. This will reduce wasted applications, improve trust, and force employers to confront whether they truly pay for the talent they claim to desire.
Again, let me reiterate that Nigeria does not lack talent. It lacks systems that discover talent early, train talent patiently, pay talent fairly and respect talent publicly. It is clear at this point that the future of Nigerian work will be built by employers who develop it.
Timi Olagunju is a Public Voices Fellow of The Op-ed Project/MacArthur Foundation on technology in the public interest. He is a lawyer and public policy expert working at the intersection of tech, governance and development. He is a 2021 Berkman Klein research-sprint alumnus; a Mason Fellow, Harvard University; an Internet Society Fellow; and has advised governments, multinationals and institutions. Follow him on X @timithelaw.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Legit.ng.
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