Favor Ori, the CEO of WeJapa, the Nigerian tech outsourcing startup has stepped down.
What happened there?
On a dramatic weekend in August, Favor Ori was called out on Twitter. He was accused of underpaying developers, berating people who worked for him after disagreements and overstating his achievements.
In one instance, the company was accused of organising a hackathon and failing to meet its promise to the winner of the hackathon.
Like every Twitter call out, it was well and truly messy.
Investigating WeJapa
Although it launched in January 2020, WeJapa quickly received equity funding from a number of investors. One of those investors was
Microtraction, the Nigerian investment firm.
These investors, led by Microtraction took a proactive stance, calling for an investigation three days after the initial accusations.
Once the investigation was announced, Favor Ori took a leave of absence from the company, but not before publishing this apology.
What we now know
Having announced the investigation in August, there were no updates about it until recently. It felt a lot like we were going to get a Tizeti 2.0 here.
Yet, with what we now know, this was handled better. WeJapa hired the law firm, Calmhill Partners to mitigate the dispute on behalf of the company’s investors/stakeholders.
In an executive summary, Calmhill Partners found that Favor Ori was “high-handed in his dealings with some of the talents interviewed.
“We are of the view that most of the issues would have been better managed if there had been proper communication between Favor and the talents.”
A change of roles
“We trust that the findings above provide WeJapa with the relevant information to enable it take the requisite decisions”
One requisite decision by the company’s investors is Favor Ori stepping down from his position as CEO. The company says Favor will assume the role of CTO and “during this time, he
will focus on improving his interpersonal and people management skills.”
