Technology
Stakeholders in Tech Sector Raise Alarm Over Fresh Move by FG
By Adedapo Adesanya
Innovation has been the buzzword on the lips of many stakeholders in Nigeria in the past few years, especially as revenue from oil, which accounts for a huge chunk of Nigeria’s wealth, is depleting due to prevailing conditions in the global oil market.
This has since created an opportunity for many Nigerians, who have quickly moved in to disrupt the space with several startups that are disrupting traditional methods and creating new markets with technology.
With technology, many Nigerian entrepreneurs are doing wonders. It has made investing, saving, crowdfunding, logistics and even accountability easier. It has also done one key thing – reduced the power of dependence on the government and its unfriendly policies.
However, it has not been an easy ride for these companies who have had to deal with the constant governments’ policies believed to be anti-growth like in the case of Lagos State placing a ban on bike hailing and moving to collect 10 per cent on ride-hailing companies like Uber, Bolt, and others in the state.
This has not been the only case so far. The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) appears to be the biggest villain at the moment.
In February, it hit the budding cryptocurrency market with a surprise as it ordered all Deposit Money Banks (DMBs), Other Financial Institutions (OFIs) and Non-Banks Financial Institutions (NBFIs) to with immediate effect shut down the accounts operated by entities that facilitate the trading of digital currencies.
Yesterday, all was looking well until late evening when a court ex parte order froze the bank accounts of six online investment platforms for 180 days over claims that they were using the foreign exchange sourced from the Nigerian market for purchasing foreign bonds/shares in contravention of a July 2015 CBN directive.
Affected by the court order are Rise Vest Technologies Limited, Bamboo Systems Technology Limited, Bamboo Systems Tech. Ltd OPNS, Chaka Technologies Limited, CTL/Business Expenses and Trove Technologies Limited.
Uproar followed the decision as many Nigerians have recounted the moves carried about regulators and government in hurting innovation especially as economic conditions continue to worsen with inflation, COVID-19, and conflict gripping the nation.
Yet, the government is not done as another policy in the pipeline as a leaked bill circulating on social media shows that the Nigerian Information and Technology Development Agency (NITDA) is proposing amendments to its regulatory Act, giving the agency more control over the technology ecosystem.
The general consensus is that regulation is a necessity, however, some regulations can stifle growth as evident in the latest move by the NITDA to review its outdated laws and make them more beneficial for startups.
The leaked bill is proposing that tech companies operating in Nigeria must get a license, pay pre-tax profit levies and sanction whoever (person or company) operates contrary to the new Act’s provisions.
It proposes a developmental bill funded by a levy of one per cent of the profit before tax of companies and enterprises with an annual turnover of N100,000,000 and above.
In Section 20 of the leaked bill, NITDA said it will issue licenses and authorizations for tech companies regardless of their size. The licenses are classified into three sections: product, service provider and platform provider.
The bill provided no additional information about what these licenses entail and how startups qualify to get them.
Stakeholders in tech sector have raised the alarm that further moves to regulate a space where the Nigerian government’s investment is minimal may drive these companies offshore leading to loss of tax revenue, jobs, and future investments while still serving Nigerians.
By Aduragbemi Omiyale
One of the players in the Nigerian gaming industry, Secure Electronic Technology (SET) Plc, has appointed Ms Leticia Otomewo as its acting secretary.
This followed the expiration of the company’s service contract with the former occupier of the seat, Ms Irene Attoe, on January 31, 2026.
A statement to the Nigerian Exchange (NGX) Limited on Thursday said Ms Otomewo would remain the organisation’s scribe in an acting capacity, pending the ratification and appointment of a substantive company secretary at the next board meeting.
She was described in the notice signed by the Managing Director of the firm, Mr Oyeyemi Olusoji, as “a results-driven executive with 22 years of experience in driving business growth, leading high-performing teams, and delivering innovative solutions.”
The acting secretary is also said to be “a collaborative leader with a passion for mentoring and developing talent.”
“The company assures the investing public that all Company Secretariat responsibilities and regulatory obligations will continue to be discharged in full compliance with the Companies and Allied Matters Act, applicable regulations, and the Nigerian Exchange Limited Listing Rules,” the disclosure assured.
Meanwhile, the board thanked Ms Attoe “for professionalism and contributions to the Company during the period of her engagement and wishes her well in her future endeavours.”
By Adedapo Adesanya
The Russian government on Thursday confirmed it has blocked the WhatsApp messaging service, as it moves to further control information flow in the country.
It urged Russians to use a new state-backed platform called Max instead of the Meta-owned service.
WhatsApp issued a statement earlier saying Russia had attempted to “fully block” its messaging service in the country to force people toward Max, which it described as a “surveillance app.”
“Today the Russian government attempted to fully block WhatsApp in an effort to drive people to a state-owned surveillance app,” WhatsApp posted on social media platform X.
“Trying to isolate over 100 million users from private and secure communication is a backwards step and can only lead to less safety for people in Russia,” it said, adding: “We continue to do everything we can to keep users connected.”
Russia’s latest move against social media platforms and messaging services like WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram comes amid a wider attempt to drive users toward domestic and more easily controlled and monitored services, such as Max.
Russia’s telecoms watchdog, Roskomnadzor, has accused messaging apps Telegram and WhatsApp of failing to comply with Russian legislation requiring companies to store Russian users’ data inside the country, and of failing to introduce measures to stop their platforms from being used for allegedly criminal or terrorist purposes.
It has used this as a basis for slowing down or blocking their operations, with restrictions coming into force since last year.
For Telegram, it may be next, but so far the Russian government has been admittedly slowing down its operations “due to the fact that the company isn’t complying with the requirements of Russian legislation.”
The chat service, founded by Russian developers but headquartered in Dubai, has been a principal target for Roskomnadzor’s scrutiny and increasing restrictions, with users reporting sluggish performance on the app since January.
By Adedapo Adesanya
Nigerian startup, Decide, has emerged as the fourth most accurate Artificial Intelligence (AI) agent for spreadsheet tasks globally, according to results from SpreadsheetBench, a widely referenced benchmark for evaluating AI performance on real-world spreadsheet problems.
According to the founder, Mr Abiodun Adetona, the ranking places Decide alongside well-funded global AI startups, including Microsoft, OpenAI, and Anthropic.
Mr Adetona, an ex-Flutterwave developer, also revealed that Decide now has over 3,000 users, including some who are paying customers, a signal to the ability of the startup to scale in the near future.
SpreadsheetBench is a comprehensive evaluation framework designed to push Large Language Models (LLMs) to their limits in understanding and manipulating spreadsheet data. While many benchmarks focus on simple table QA, SpreadsheetBench treats a spreadsheet as a complex ecosystem involving spatial layouts, formulas, and multi-step reasoning. So far, only three agents rank higher than Decide, namely Nobie Agent, Shortcut.ai, and Qingqiu Agent.
Mr Adetona said SpreadsheetBench measures how well AI agents can handle practical spreadsheet tasks such as writing formulas, cleaning messy data, working across multiple sheets, and reasoning through complex Excel workflows. Decide recorded an 82.5% accuracy score, solving 330 out of 400 verified tasks.
“The result reflects sustained investment in applied research, product iteration, and learning from real-world spreadsheet workloads across a wide range of use cases,” Mr Adetona told Business Post.
For Mr Adetona, who built Decide out of frustration with how much time professionals spend manually cleaning data, debugging formulas, and moving between sheets, “This milestone highlights how focused engineering and domain-specific AI development can deliver frontier-level performance outside of large research organisations. By concentrating on practical business data problems and building systems grounded in real user environments, we believe smaller teams can contribute meaningfully to advancing applied AI.”
“For Decide, this is a foundation for continued progress in intelligent spreadsheet and analytics automation,” he added.
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