When Your Classmates Build Great Companies

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November 16, 2020

I am exceedingly proud of what my FUTO undergraduate classmates have achieved. I just shared on Layer3, a great technology company. Meet FlexiP Group, founded by my undergraduate classmate, Rex Mafiana. FlexiP Group is a leading Information Technology, Real Estate, Civil Engineering, Power and Oil and Gas provider. This emerging industrialized conglomerate has expanded big time in the upstream sector in the Nigerian oil and gas.

Before FlexiP Group, Rex was the West Africa District Manager of NetApp Inc., a Fortune 500 company. He built NetApp to its enviable position in West Africa. And before NetApp, Rex was the West African Sales Manager for IBM.

As a teacher in their midst, my job is to wish them more markets and territories as they fix market frictions and serve our beautiful continent. You also learn from them because they are at the forefront of the markets. A few weeks ago, Rex joined Tekedia Live ( we have many FlexiP Group team members in Tekedia Mini-MBA); he shared the pulse and the trajectory of the market.

To all the entrepreneurs, and professionals working in different roles in companies, in the beautiful Nigeria, I want to wish everyone a profitable great week. Let’s advance our nation and rise to the mountaintop.

Layer3 Achieves 1SO27001 And ISO27017 Certifications

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Ndubuisi Ekekwe

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November 16, 2020

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Good People, join me to congratulate my FUTO classmate and tech luminary, Oyaje Idoko, as his company, Layer3Cloud, attains two big certifications in the ISO world. Layer3, an industry leader in cloud, scalable and secure networks, has achieved the much-in-demand ISO/IEC 27001:2013 and ISO/IEC 27017:2015 certifications. With a datacenter in Nigeria, Layer3 is NITDA-approved on data sovereignty. The firm delivers industry-leading latency performance in Nigeria.

I cannot wait to get into Abuja to celebrate with him; he knows the best restaurant whenever I am in town. Go with Layer3, it has origin from the best technical university in Africa – the amazing FUTO. Lol.

Congrats Layer3 Team.

Press release

Layer3, an industry leader in cloud, scalable and secure networks, has achieved the much-in-demand ISO/IEC 27001:2013 and ISO/IEC 27017:2015 certifications.

ISO/IEC 27001:2013 is the most widely used information security standard, prepared and published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), the world’s largest developer of voluntary international standards. It is a globally recognized standard mandating numerous controls for the establishment, maintenance, and certification of an information security management system (ISMS). The standard ensures that organizations have established methodologies and framework to business and IT processes to help identify, manage, and reduce risks to the security of information.

Over the past 6 months, and through the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic, Layer3 has worked aggressively to meet the ISO 27001 standard and achieve certification, completing a thorough audit with an external ISO 27001 auditor who examined the company’s security controls against all the domains and controls of the ISO 27001 standard.

In addition, Layer3 has also achieved the ISO/IEC 27017:2015 certification. ISO/IEC 27017 is a security standard developed for cloud service providers and users to make a safer cloud-based environment and reduce the risk of security problems. It is part of the ISO/IEC 27000 family of standards, which provide best practice recommendations on information security management. Layer3 becomes one of the only companies in Africa to achieve this certification.

“Achieving the ISO 27001 and ISO/IEC 27017 certifications is a significant and super important accomplishment” said Chinua Katchy, Layer3’s Information Security Lead. “These certifications illustrate our pledge and commitment to provide highly secure services and securely protecting our customer data as part of delivering Africa’s most robust cloud platform, Layer3Cloud. It is also a significant accomplishment for us that demonstrates to our customers and partners our dedication to prioritize security management controls as well as indicating our verifiable approach to information security.”

Layer3’s CEO, Oyaje Idoko, added that, “The proof of certification is one step, but we can also say that delivering the best product quality, service availability, and business continuity– especially in this COVID-19 era, remain extremely important because our customers are always our priority.”

About Layer3

Layer3 is an innovative leader in cloud, network and data center solutions. Founded in 2005, Layer3’s vision is to lead in making businesses more successful using technology. Since then, the company has grown consistently through careful and purposeful management. Today, Layer3’s customers include some of the most demanding and respected customers across Africa.

The Questionable Generational Shift Versus Generational Integration in the Nigeria’s Quest for Greatness

By

Mutiu Iyanda

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November 16, 2020

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Like other countries in the developing world, Nigeria is yet to fully tap its growing demographics for meaningful socioeconomic and political development. In the north region, population is increasing at a higher percent. This is not quite different in the south, east and west regions. Many reports have indicated that human resource is the country’s biggest resource not oil. This has been premised on the fact that the country has a number of people with adequate skills, knowledge and certification in cities and towns who can solve problems thwarting the country’s economic and political growth.

Though, “there is a large group of people working to help the dependents such as 44% of the population currently under age 15”, but evidences have shown that their purchasing power is not sufficient to wither the economic storms. Youths who are supposed to help those above age 60 in towns and villages are relocating to urban areas, for jobs. According to current unemployment data, over 13 million youths are unemployed. Seyi Odetola, a Nigerian who based in the United Kingdom, is also of the view that Nigeria lacks political leaders with progressive and social reform mindset.

With the unemployment issue and the inability of political leaders to provide a sustainable environment for the youths, some youths who joined social and political activism after the 1999 general election believe that it is time for the youths to be part of governance. According to them, the baby boomer and generation X political leaders have failed to change the governance structure in favour of every citizen. In its piece on the recent political development in the country, the London School of Economics notes “Nigerian youths are yet to achieve representation in politics, despite growing evidence of youth activism and mobilisation for political inclusion.”

As the youths accused the baby boomer generation and generation X for poor leadership, political leaders believe that some of the youths are not ripe for the leadership positions. The youths have been described as being poor to run for political office by some politicians. The recent ENDSARS protests seem to renew the agitation for the youth inclusion in politics. Across the country, the protesters added some socioeconomic and political issues to their demands of ending police brutality, calling for generational shift. Instead of the shift, Abideen Olasupo, a youth advocate is of the view that the youths only need to call for realignment of the generational balance of power not generational shift.

“I think this is democracy, I don’t subscribe to the advice of chasing the whole generation and people out of the space, this is democracy, we are just trying to say, if young person contributes more than 60% to the Nigerian population, they should be given an opportunity to contribute to their own quota in a meaningful way. Look at the age bracket, the median age of Nigerian governor, it is more than 30 and at the national youth policies is saying the youths age stops as 29.”