Buhari confers national honours on Flutterwave CEO, others

President Muhammadu Buhari, yesterday, conferred national honours on Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Flutterwave, Olugbenga Agboola and 446 others in Abuja.

The National Honours Award was established by the National Honours Act of No 6 in 1964. However, it took a retroactive effect from October 1, 1963.

The Act empowers the President to honour deserving citizens, who have contributed to the development of Nigeria in any field of endeavour.

Four hundred and forty-seven citizens and foreigners labelled as Nigerians and Friends of Nigeria received various honours ranging from Grand Commander of the Order of the Niger (GCON) to Federal Republic Medals.

Agboola was conferred with the national honour of Officer of the Order of the Niger (OON) in recognition of his contribution to fintech growth in Africa.

Together with Iyinoluwa Aboyeji and a team of tech, banking and African payments veterans, he founded the leading fintech company in 2016 to build an Africa-wide payments infrastructure to connect all payment types on the continent and erect a single payment platform for merchant or small business. This solution would later allow businesses to accept payments from anywhere.

Agboola led the firm through a Series B funding round, which injected $35 million into the company with investments from MasterCard, CRE Ventures, Fintech Collective, 4DX Ventures and Raba Capital in 2020.

Even when other businesses were groping in the dark, Flutterwave kept the light on by assisting businesses all over the place to receive payments and arrange deliveries. The company processed more than 80 million transactions, worth $7.5 billion, in 17 African countries in 2020.

The national recipient also has a mobile money project, which he started in 2011, to offer banking services to people such as opening bank accounts, accessing card services, money transfer services, bill payment, merchant services and cardless withdrawals on ATMs via mobile phones.

Early this year, the African fintech company raised $250 million in a Series D round that tripled the organisation’s valuation to over $3 billion in just 12 months.
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