Startups in Nigeria: The fight for dear life.

Following the circular released by the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) in Nigeria on operations of Fintech companies, particularly those providing platforms for Nigerians to trade on the US stock market, If Facebook and Twitter were startups in Nigeria, they wouldn’t survive their first year.

In a recent discussion about health tech startups, I pointed out that one major threat to startups in Nigeria is the overzealousness of regulators with limited knowledge of how things work.

Although the health tech space looks like a safe haven for now, this might be due to the urgent need to proffer solutions to address the numerous challenges affecting our health system and the information asymmetry in healthcare, but this won’t last forever.

It all started with bike hailing startups in Lagos when the state government took a unilateral decision to ban their operations. Now SEC is going after the fintech startups at a time when we are basking in the ecstasy of the multimillion-dollar acquisition of Paystack by Stripe, a US-based company, and most recently, Flutterwave closing a series C round deal of $170 million, putting it as a company with over $1 billion valuation.

There is no doubt that regulators all over the world are playing catchup with tech innovations. But smart regulators know that one shouldn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. The law they say is made for man, not man for the law.

There is a new normal that has come to stay- tech is about to disrupt everything we hold dear, and those who get on board early enough will benefit from the gains. Nigeria can’t continue to play catch up with the world. Even if we can’t take the lead, at least let’s play alongside.

Nigeria is a special case; we have the potential, tech-savvy youths who are already taking the tech world by storm; we can create our silicon valley or Bangalore. But this won’t happen with all these commando-like approaches to regulation. Yes, we have regulations and laws, and more so, the stated regulation by SEC was enacted in 2007, is there a need to review it? Do they reflect today’s reality?

We are in an era of dialogue and consultation with stakeholders. A government can’t continue to champion the cause for the ease of doing business and at the same time continue to make unilateral decisions and regulations on private businesses without bringing them on board.