Tosin Eniolorunda, the Chief Executive Officer of Moniepoint, has sparked widespread debate after claiming at a public event that his company has been unable to fill hundreds of job vacancies because Nigerian applicants are not meeting global hiring standards.
What He Said
Eniolorunda made the remarks on May 1 at The Platform Nigeria in Lagos. He stated that Moniepoint currently has around 500 open vacancies and has been struggling to fill them with candidates of global standard since 2025, noting that most Nigerians applying for roles at the fintech firm do not meet the quality the company requires.
He also disclosed that Moniepoint made a strategic decision in 2024 to recruit only Nigerians, but that the company effectively abandoned that policy in 2025 after finding the available talent pool insufficient in both quantity and quality.
Eniolorunda pointed to weaknesses in Nigeria’s education system and shifting social values as contributing factors, and expressed concern over the growing influence of internet fraud and get-rich-quick culture on the career aspirations of young Nigerians. He also commented that the general intelligence quotient of the country was declining, a remark that drew particular criticism online.
The Backlash
The comments spread rapidly on social media, with reactions ranging from partial agreement to outright rejection. One X user argued that at least two engineers reportedly turned down by Moniepoint as unqualified are now working at Amazon and other Silicon Valley companies in senior roles, framing the problem as one of flawed hiring processes rather than talent scarcity.
Another critic challenged Moniepoint’s right to complain about talent gaps without first investing in building that talent, pointing out that global tech companies build talent pipelines through paid internships and structured training programmes, something Nigerian tech firms largely do not do.
A formal response also came from an industry group, which conducted a review of Moniepoint’s publicly listed openings and found significantly fewer roles than the 500 cited by the CEO. The group argued that Nigeria’s challenge lies not in a lack of talent but in gaps within the talent development pipeline, and called on Moniepoint to expand internal training, strengthen academic partnerships, and create clearer entry-level pathways.
The Clarification
Following the backlash, Eniolorunda issued a follow-up statement saying his comments were specifically directed at the shortage of highly skilled senior technical professionals still residing in Nigeria, not at Nigerians in general. He described Nigerians as some of the hardest-working and grittiest people in the world.
He attributed the senior talent shortage to brain drain through the Japa wave, weaknesses in the education system, and limited feeder industries that would ordinarily help young professionals gain the experience needed for senior roles. He also referenced similar concerns previously raised by former Finance Minister Kemi Adeosun and Aliko Dangote regarding the difficulty of finding experienced technical workers for large-scale projects.
Eniolorunda added that Moniepoint pays above-market salaries, retains some Nigerian talent abroad by matching international rates, and currently employs over 3,500 workers, more than 90 percent of whom are Nigerian.
A Debate That Goes Beyond One Company
The controversy surfaces a tension that is not unique to Moniepoint. Nigeria faces a well-documented brain drain problem, with skilled professionals in tech, finance, and engineering continuing to emigrate in significant numbers. At the same time, the country’s education system has consistently struggled to produce graduates with industry-ready skills.
What the online reaction makes clear is that employers bear some responsibility in this equation. A company competing at a global level but unwilling to invest in structured talent development pipelines cannot simply point to the labour market as the source of the problem. Eniolorunda’s own career (built partly through experience at Interswitch before he co-founded what became Moniepoint) is itself a product of that kind of institutional mentorship.
