In the early hours of Monday, April 4, Clara Wanjiku, an ex-employee of Nigerian payment company Flutterwave, published a Medium post calling out the company’s CEO, Olugbenga Agboola, for “5 years of constant harassment”.
In the post, Wanjiku claims that after quitting her job as Head of Implementation at Flutterwave (Rest of Africa) in 2018, she wasn’t paid her “dues”, and sued Flutterwave over this allegation.
Following her move to sue, in her post, Clara claimed that she received calls from a number of Flutterwave staff, asking to talk and resolve the issue out of court.
Eventually, Flutterwave paid her “dues”.
But there’s more
According to Wanjiku, she was also accused by the company of being behind a Twitter account that accused some male members of Flutterwave’s management of sexual harassment.
When she tried to get another job at a Nigerian bank, after leaving Flutterwave, she claims Agboola “sabotaged” the opportunity by saying she was a bad worker.
Wanjiku sued Flutterwave for damages resulting from the company neglecting to remove her as the contact person on their M-Pesa account. The police had hounded Wanjiku and her family after the account recorded a fraudulent transaction.
While Wanjiku sought $900,000 in damages for the alleged negligence, the court awarded her $2,500, a settlement she didn’t agree to.
These accusations come at a time when African startups with unhealthy work cultures have been put on notice.
