In 1992, John Obaro left banking and started a software company in Nigeria. There was no fintech industry waiting for him, no accelerators, no pitch competitions and certainly no flood of venture capital looking for the next African technology company. Software was still something many Nigerian businesses were more comfortable buying from abroad than building at home, yet Obaro decided to build anyway.

That decision would eventually lead to SystemSpecs, HumanManager and Remita, three names that have become part of Nigeria’s technology and payments story. But the more interesting part of his story is what came before those products became well known: a founder trying to solve ordinary Nigerian business problems with software at a time when doing so was far from fashionable.

More than three decades later, the company he started has grown into a group with businesses spanning payroll, payments and financial technology. Remita, in particular, has moved from a payment engine developed around payroll into one of the most recognisable payment brands in Nigeria. The story, however, starts much earlier.

The Banker Who Decided to Build
Obaro’s route into technology was not the usual startup story. He studied Mathematics and Computer Science at Ahmadu Bello University and later earned an MBA from the University of Lagos. Before starting SystemSpecs, he spent about a decade working in banking and technology, including time at International Merchant Bank, where he was part of a team that worked on one of Nigeria’s early online banking platforms.

That experience gave him something more useful than a business idea. It showed him what software could do inside a financial institution, while also exposing him to the limitations of relying on technology developed elsewhere. In January 1992, he left banking and established SystemSpecs.
The early company was small. Obaro initially worked with Systems Union as its West African partner, selling and supporting software before SystemSpecs began developing products of its own. Starting that way was practical because building everything from scratch would have required money the young company did not have.

Even raising working capital was a problem. Obaro has recounted that he needed about ₦1 million to get the business properly started and raised a large part of it by organising a training programme. It was a modest beginning for a company that would later become closely associated with some of Nigeria’s most important digital payment systems.

From Selling Software to Building It
The real turning point came when SystemSpecs began creating software for problems it understood first-hand.

One of those problems was payroll. Nigerian organisations had particular requirements around salaries, taxes, pensions, deductions and other employee payments. Imported software could handle some of these functions, but it did not necessarily reflect the way Nigerian organisations actually worked.

SystemSpecs began developing products including SpecPay, SpecMan and SpecPen. These products eventually came together in HumanManager, the company’s payroll and human resource management software. The approach was straightforward: understand how Nigerian organisations operated, then build software around those realities.

That approach also shaped the kind of people Obaro brought into the company. Rather than relying entirely on experienced software professionals, SystemSpecs recruited young graduates and trained them. Some of those early employees went on to become part of the company’s technical and management ranks.

It was a different kind of bet. Instead of waiting for the Nigerian technology market to mature, SystemSpecs was building its own capacity while solving problems for customers. That philosophy would matter even more when the company began working on payments.

The Payroll Problem That Became Remita
Remita did not begin as an attempt to create a household fintech brand. Its roots were in HumanManager.

As SystemSpecs worked on payroll, it encountered another problem: paying employees and handling related transactions across different banks was cumbersome. Organisations needed a way to move money, manage deductions and handle other payments without having to treat every bank as a separate process.

So SystemSpecs built a payment engine to support those needs. In 2005, that engine was developed into Remita as a standalone enterprise payments platform.

The idea was ahead of the terminology of its time. A company could connect to multiple banks rather than build separate payment arrangements with each one. Remita also developed capabilities for high-volume transactions and other forms of collections and disbursements.
Over time, more pieces were added. The platform supported split payments and developed tools for transaction authentication and digital mandates. It also provided businesses with a way to view and manage transactions across multiple bank accounts. What had started around payroll was becoming a much broader payments business.

Then came one of the biggest chapters in the company’s history. Remita became the technology platform behind Nigeria’s Treasury Single Account arrangements, bringing the system into a much larger public-sector environment. For many Nigerians, this was the point at which the Remita name became familiar.

The visibility was new. The underlying work was not. SystemSpecs had already spent years building software for Nigerian institutions before Remita became widely associated with government payments.

Building Without the Startup Playbook
There is another part of Obaro’s story that stands out when viewed against the Nigerian technology industry today.

SystemSpecs grew largely without the funding model that has become common among technology startups. There was no large early venture round behind the business and no international media campaign announcing its arrival. The company grew by building products for real business needs and gradually expanding what it could offer.

That approach has also shaped the structure of the business today. SystemSpecs Holdings Limited operates through four primary subsidiaries, each serving a different area of the market. Remita Payment Services Limited handles electronic payments, HumanManager Limited focuses on human capital management, SystemSpecs Technology Services Limited works on digital innovations, while Whatadeal operates as an integrated digital commerce platform.

The four businesses reflect how far the company has moved from the small software operation Obaro established in 1992. HumanManager grew from the company’s early work around payroll and employee management. Remita emerged from the payment requirements around that business and later became a much broader payments platform. The other businesses extend the group’s work into technology services and digital commerce.

This is an important part of the Obaro story because it shows that his bet was never limited to a single product. He was building a technology company that could keep responding to the changing needs of Nigerian businesses and consumers.

The Man Behind the Products
It is tempting to tell Obaro’s story entirely through the products associated with him. HumanManager and Remita provide an obvious timeline, but there is another thread running through his career: people.

SystemSpecs has consistently invested in training and developing young technology professionals. That began with the company’s early practice of recruiting graduates and teaching them the skills they needed, rather than waiting for a large pool of experienced software developers to appear.

The same interest in young people can be seen outside the company’s commercial businesses. For seven years, SystemSpecs has run its Children’s Day Essay Competition, giving Nigerian children between the ages of 9 and 17 a platform to think about how technology could address problems around them. By 2026, the competition had received more than 20,000 submissions from children across all six geopolitical zones.

The subjects have changed from year to year, but the basic idea has remained fairly consistent: ask young Nigerians to think about Nigerian problems and propose practical answers. That is an interesting footnote to Obaro’s own story. The man who started a software company when there was little local appetite for building software is now part of an organisation asking a new generation to think about what technology could do for the country.

His career has also attracted recognition over the years, including the 2025 ThisDay Titan of the Year award, which recognised his contribution to Nigeria’s technology and financial sectors. But awards tell only part of the story.

Obaro’s significance in Nigerian technology is easier to understand when his career is placed against the period in which it happened.

He started SystemSpecs in 1992, when the commercial internet was barely beginning to take shape. HumanManager emerged from the practical needs of Nigerian employers, while Remita grew out of the payment requirements surrounding payroll before becoming a much larger payments platform. Since then, SystemSpecs has expanded into human capital management, electronic payments, digital technology services and digital commerce through its four subsidiaries.

By the time fintech became one of Africa’s most talked-about technology sectors, Obaro had already spent years building technology businesses without calling what he was doing fintech.
That may be the most revealing part of his story. The products changed, and the company grew, but the original instinct remained: find a problem that Nigerian organisations or consumers actually have and build technology around it.

Today, Remita may be the most visible part of the SystemSpecs story, but it is only one chapter. The larger story is the company Obaro began building in 1992 and the businesses that have grown from it since. Before fintech became a buzzword, he was already building the company that would eventually have a place in the conversation.