John Obaro, founder and CEO of SystemSpecs, is recognised as one of the geniuses disrupting Nigeria’s fintech space.
Through the development of Remita- an all-around e-payment solution, Paylink, Human Manager and other oncoming innovations yet unveiled, there is no doubt that he is successfully showcasing the limitless possibility of indigenous talents.
Revealing SystemSpec’s mission in an interview conducted earlier this year, he said:
“We are in prime position to take on the world, inspired by our history of firsts across the globe in terms of some of our innovations.
We shall be deliberate in projecting our innovations and intellectual assets to the world to show what great technology solutions come out of Nigeria.”
While discussing how Nigeria can prevent the growing problem of brain drain, he mentioned the “Canada threat”.
To him, the concept describes the appeal foreign countries, particularly Canada, holds for aspiring Nigerian youths.
“With regards to brain drain, we must recognise what I call the “Canada threat’’ and strategically combat it.
A lot of our young ones find the lure of foreign countries irresistible and organisations across the country are incapable of halting the emigration as some of the reasons adduced are justifiable.”, said Obaro.
He suggests that Nigeria needs to recognise this migration of her brilliant young people and develop a strategy to address this troubling occurence.
“We might be unable to completely stop the outward movement of talent, but we can make it less attractive by creating an enabling environment for them to thrive.”, he advised.
Acknowledging the fact that a good number of Nigerian youths ideally prefer to work in Nigeria due to the weather and active social network communities and support systems, he further discussed factors that make it challenging for them to thrive.
“Owing to the unending insecurity challenges, weak judiciary and economic downturn, working in the country continues to become extremely unattractive for these bright talents who are in high demand elsewhere.
The quality of education on offer nationwide must also be significantly improved. A great number of our graduates from higher institutions are not immediately employable and we must buck the trend.”
From his point of view, Nigeria’s policy should only resort to exporting skilled labour when there is a market over saturation and not out of necessity.
“That way, we can convert the need of the West into a good business opportunity for us as a country.”, he encouraged.
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