Lagos: 7:45 a.m. The traffic on Awolowo Road was a mess — not that anyone expected otherwise. Yellow buses honked like they were paid for it, and hawkers darted between bumpers, peddling plantain chips, phone chargers, and prayer books.
Inside a dim little phone accessories shop in Computer Village, Chike counted yesterday’s takings. Not bad. Better than the days when he had to refuse customers because they didn’t have cash.
Back then, he trusted two things — his padlock and his temper. Now, he trusted Flutterwave.
It started six months ago when a young woman in a suit came in for a power bank. She tapped a few buttons on her phone, and a notification hit his account before she even zipped her handbag. No haggling over “transfer no dey show.” No endless trips to the bank.
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Enter Mama Titi
Fifty kilometers away, in the dusty bustle of Ibadan’s Bodija Market, Mama Titi adjusted her headscarf and watched her tomatoes bake in the morning sun. She’d never owned a bank account — too many forms, too many questions. But her son, a restless university dropout with more ideas than sense, had set her up on Paystack.
Now customers could pay for vegetables with their phones. Sometimes they’d buy more than they planned, just because they didn’t have to count change. For Mama Titi, this wasn’t “fintech.” It was survival.
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The Predator
Not everyone was clapping for this new digital age.
Somewhere in a cramped apartment in Surulere, Kalu — ex-bank IT staff turned cyber hustler — scanned his laptop screens. The numbers told him what he wanted to know: billions moving every week across payment platforms.
He’d read the news. In 2023, Nigeria lost over $500 million to cybercrime. Men like him made sure that figure stayed high. It was never personal; just business.
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The Firewall
But Lagos had its watchmen.
In a sleek office in Victoria Island, Ada, head of threat intelligence at Cybervergent, stared at her dashboard. Kalu’s patterns weren’t new — phishing scripts, fake merchant links, cloned payment pages. The AI flagged his signature like a bloodhound catching a scent.
Her job was to kill the attack before it reached Chike or Mama Titi. Because in fintech, trust was currency — lose it, and even billion-dollar unicorns could bleed out.
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The Intersection
One Saturday afternoon, their stories crossed.
Kalu launched a new scam, targeting small merchants. Chike got the bait link in his inbox, promising “free transaction upgrades.”
He almost clicked. Almost.
A warning alert from Cybervergent popped up instead, flashing across his dashboard. He deleted the email and went back to work. Somewhere, Ada leaned back in her chair and smiled.
Mama Titi never knew a cybercriminal had circled her stall. She only knew the young banker who paid for tomatoes that day did it with his phone — and she got the money instantly.
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The Game
Flutterwave. Paystack. AI. Blockchain. To the untrained eye, it’s tech jargon. But in the streets, in the markets, in the corners where deals are made, it’s more than that. It’s rent paid. School fees settled. Dreams funded.
In the new Nigeria, money doesn’t clink in your pocket. It hums quietly through the air, faster than a rumor, quieter than a thief.
And the players who understand that?
They don’t just survive.
They win.
Written by Linus Anagboso
Tech Columnist | Strategic Digital Communicator
