David Apaflo: Integrity-Driven CEO Building a Multinational Professional Services Firm with Tech and Talent 

In Nigeria’s professional services sector, scale has traditionally belonged to multinational firms. David Apaflo is building a case for something different: that a locally founded practice can not only compete at that level but export its expertise globally.

As Chief Executive of Shelze Professional Services, now in its 15th year, Apaflo is pushing into business process outsourcing — positioning Nigeria as a potential hub for accounting and finance services in international markets. It is a deliberate strategy, grounded in structural shifts in infrastructure and regulation, and it comes from someone who has spent over a decade proving that a Nigerian firm can deliver at the standard the market has historically reserved for global networks.

The Outsourcing Thesis

For decades, global outsourcing in accounting and finance has flowed predictably to India and the Philippines. Nigeria has had the talent — a large English-speaking population, deep familiarity with International Financial Reporting Standards, a growing cadre of globally certified professionals — but not the infrastructure or institutional trust. Apaflo’s bet is that both constraints are now shifting.

The vehicle is the Itana Digital Free Trade Zone, Africa’s first fully digital special economic zone, located in Alaro City along the Lekki Free Zone corridor in Lagos. Itana offers corporate income tax exemptions, multi-currency banking, duty-free imports, and 24/7 power infrastructure under the Nigeria Export Processing Zones Authority framework. Previous attempts to position Nigeria as an outsourcing hub have been constrained by infrastructure gaps and regulatory fragmentation. Itana is designed to address both — offering a controlled environment for globally integrated service delivery.

Shelze’s BPO model is not a traditional outsourcing play. It is built around technology-augmented professional services delivery: pairing qualified Nigerian accountants with AI-powered workflows to deliver audit-ready management accounts, multi-jurisdiction tax compliance, and IFRS reporting packages aligned with expectations across Europe and North America — at a price point and speed that neither a pure AI tool nor a traditional offshore BPO operation can match.

“The future of outsourcing is not cheap labour,” Apaflo says. “It is skilled professionals, amplified by technology, delivering judgment-intensive work that software alone cannot replicate.”

The transition is not without cost. Building export-ready systems requires upfront investment in technology, training, and process discipline — often before revenue materialises.

Whether Nigeria can fully overcome long-standing concerns around infrastructure reliability and cross-border trust remains an open question. But initiatives like Itana are beginning to test that assumption — and Apaflo intends Shelze to be among the first to prove the model. Industry observers note that Nigeria’s entry into global professional services outsourcing will depend heavily on consistency of delivery and regulatory clarity.

The Firm

Shelze was incorporated in December 2011, initially a part-time operation while Apaflo worked in investment banking and wealth management — first at Vetiva Capital Management, then at CardinalStone Partners. By 2013, the client base had grown to a scale that demanded full-time attention, and he made the transition.

The firm now works across fintech, media, energy, and financial services, with clients including global digital platforms and regulated financial institutions such as TikTok, Fincra, and Risevest, alongside public-sector mandates for the Federal Inland Revenue Service, the National Identity Management Commission, and the Financial Reporting Council of Nigeria.

Public Sector and Institutional Impact

Much of Shelze’s work sits at the intersection of government revenue and institutional reform — an area that has become increasingly central to Nigeria’s fiscal sustainability. The firm has played a direct role in national and sub-national government revenue generation, with engagements the firm says have helped unlock more than one hundred million dollars in tax revenue across federal, state, and local governments.

At the Financial Reporting Council of Nigeria, Shelze serves as Revenue Assurance and Growth Consultant, redesigning the Council’s revenue model and building the compliance infrastructure to support what has become one of the most significant revenue transformations at any Nigerian regulatory agency in recent years.

As Transaction Adviser to the Midstream and Downstream Gas Infrastructure Fund, Shelze’s work on capital allocation and deal structuring supports Nigeria’s Decade of Gas agenda. At the Lagos International Trade Fair Complex Management Board, the firm helped the new Executive Director articulate her strategic vision and followed through with implementation — a process that contributed to the return of the Nigeria International Trade Fair after years of hiatus, expanding market access for thousands of traders. Shelze also serves as anchor trainer for the Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation, delivering data analytics training to staff, including bank examiners.

These are not advisory engagements in the conventional sense. They are institutional interventions — the kind of work that requires not only technical capability but the trust of public-sector principals and the patience to see implementation through.

The Person

Apaflo’s trajectory through the accounting profession has been unusually accelerated. Born in 1989, he completed his ICAN qualifying examinations at nineteen, graduated with a First-Class degree in Accounting from the University of Lagos in 2011, earned an MBA from the Lagos Business School at Pan-Atlantic University, and became a Fellow of ICAN by twenty-eight. He holds additional Fellowships from the Chartered Institute of Taxation of Nigeria and the Institute of Management Consultants, and serves as Deputy Vice Chairman of the CITN Lagos and District Society.

His intellectual contributions include the Profit Color Index, an analytical framework published on SSRN that classifies corporate profitability using a colour-coded system to help business owners, investors, and analysts assess the quality and sustainability of earnings. It reflects an instinct that runs through Shelze’s work: translating complex financial concepts into practical, accessible tools.

He has spoken at TEDx University of Lagos and at various fora on leadership and motivation. He is an alumnus of King’s College, Lagos, where at the Class of 2005’s twentieth anniversary reunion, he advocated for co-opetition — cooperation and competition working together — as a model for collective success.

Service and Philosophy

Apaflo often frames his leadership philosophy in simple terms: “God is the source; every other person is a resource” — a perspective he says reinforces accountability and stewardship, and one that shapes how he approaches both business and philanthropy.

For close to a decade, he has volunteered as a facilitator at the FATE Foundation, one of Nigeria’s leading entrepreneurship development organisations, mentoring aspiring entrepreneurs through workshops and structured programmes. He has served on multiple committees of both ICAN and CITN over the years and is credited with championing reforms to ICAN’s firm naming policy — a change that had previously disadvantaged smaller professional services firms.

Through the Greenstreet Foundation, which he established, Apaflo channels resources into education and youth development. The Foundation’s flagship ICAN Spur Programme provides full tuition, examination fees, monthly stipends, and professional mentorship to financially disadvantaged students pursuing the chartered accountancy qualification. Other programmes include a Teacher Support initiative that deploys qualified teachers to underserved schools, a Church-School Syndicate model that repurposes church facilities as school venues during weekdays, scholarship programmes, curriculum development work, and a Wells of Water initiative providing clean water to underserved communities.

He credits the mentorship of Yemi Sanni, Dele Ogunlowo, Abiodun Sanusi, Ola Olabinjo, and his father, Nelson Apaflo, as foundational influences — alongside the constant belief of his mother, which he describes as one of the most sustaining forces in his life. “I have been blessed to learn from people who saw my potential before I fully understood it myself,” he reflects. “That is why giving back through mentorship and education is not optional for me — it is an obligation.”

What Comes Next

The roadmap is specific: a scalable operations centre within the Itana zone, technology platforms for cross-border service delivery, and a pipeline of trained finance and accounting professionals ready to serve international clients.

If successful, the model could expand Nigeria’s role in global professional services well beyond its current footprint. If not, it will join a long list of ambitions that struggled to scale beyond the domestic market. For Apaflo, the distinction is less theoretical than operational — it is the work now underway.