THISDAY Awards: Winners of Young Global Leaders of the Year

Jennifer Adighije

A seasoned engineer with nearly two decades of cognate experience spanning diverse functions across the private and public sectors, Jennifer Adighije, the current Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Niger Delta Power Holding Company (NDPHC), started her career at the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN).

She later moved to Globacom where she worked to create cutting-edge value-added services which propelled her to Helios Towers Nig., as head of the company’s project management office. She later joined the Central bank of Nigeria (CBN) at managerial level.

A social-entrepreneurship advocate, Jennifer is a  Patron of Digi-Tech empowerment foundation for youths, where she dedicates her time and resources to fostering digital inclusion by bridging access gaps for digitally vulnerable young people.

A member of the Nigerian Society of Engineers (NSE), the high-flying Adighije who was picked to head the NDPHC months ago, was Senior Special Assistant to the president before his latest appointment.

Olori Ivie Atuwatse III

The Queen of the Warri Kingdom,  Olori Atuwatse III,  is a lawyer, social entrepreneur and wife of Ogiame Atuwatse III, current ruler of the Kingdom of Warri, and the 21st Olu of Warri.

Olori Atuwatse III has been involved in several endeavours targeting women and children, including the Captain Idahosa Wells Okunbo Stem Innovation Centre, which she established in honour of her late father.

She has also initiated several intervention programmes for the poor and vulnerable in Delta State, visiting oil rich slums suffering the effects of environmental degradation.

An advocate for children’s rights, particularly the empowerment of female children, Olori Atuwatse III, has endowed hundreds of children with scholarships, promoted access to free healthcare, especially for the poor, as well as several welfare outreaches, focused on women, children and the elderly.

Neya Uzor-Kalu

Neya Uzor-Kalu is the Chairman and Publisher of The Sun Nigeria, a reputable Nigerian news outlet. She is also the founder and CEO of Basecoat Nigeria, a nail salon chain changing the face of the nail industry in Nigeria.

Neya has a degree in Law and an MSc. in Finance from the University of Buckingham, United Kingdom. She has over 14 years experience crafting and implementing business initiatives across industries.

She had previously worked in the banking sector as Human Resource Manager before her appointment as Chairman/Publisher of the Sun Nigeria. She leads the Board on strategic matters, establishing high corporate governance system, and oversees the company’s business.

In addition, Neya is the Vice-Chairman of Sun Heavens Hotels and Resorts. She has a strong interest in social issues and a desire to empower women, working closely with the OUK Foundation to contribute to the achieving key Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Shola Akinlade

Shola Akinlade is a young Nigerian software engineer and entrepreneur making inroads into the global payment market. He is the co-founder and CEO of Paystack, the company that he founded with Ezra Olubi.

Paystack is a Nigerian financial technology company that offers online and offline payment processing services to businesses in Nigeria and across African countries. The company was acquired by Irish-American financial services company, Stripe, for $200 million in 2020, but its headquarters is located in Lagos, Nigeria.

As a digital payment company, Paystack allows merchants to receive payments from customers across the globe, and it has partnered several banks in Nigeria to facilitate payments. 

Nnamdi Ekeh

Nnamdi Ekeh is a seasoned entrepreneur, economist, and the Chief Executive Officer of Konga Group, with multiple thriving business verticals across health, logistics, fintech, and travel industries.

Konga is an e-Commerce company that was acquired by Zinox Group in 2018 from previous majority investors, Naspers and AB Kinnevik. Two years after its acquisition, Ekeh transformed Konga Online into a leading composite e-Commerce giant in Africa.

Today, Konga has become Nigeria’s foremost composite e-commerce giant, with the introduction of several sales promos that offer discounts of 70 per cent.

He holds a B.A. in Economics and Politics from the University of Lancaster, an MBA from Oxford University, and has successfully completed senior management programmes at Harvard University and Lagos Business School.

Khalil Halilu

Since 2023 when 34-year-old Khalil Halilu was appointed the Executive Vice Chairman/Chief Executive Officer of the National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure (NASENI), he has remained committed to his new vision for the agency.

This  is to fast-track the delivery of market-ready products that would bring down cost of living for Nigerians, improve the quality of life, promote efficiency, amplify national pride, and support the Renewed Hope Agenda of President Bola Tinubu. 

A few months ago, the agency under his leadership inaugurated the all-in-one Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) Engineering, Training and Conversion facility, which was developed as a joint venture between the NASENI and private sector partners, Portland and Dana Motors.

He is repositioning NASENI with the 3Cs: Creation, Collaboration and Commercialisation; increasing the agency’s valued investments to $3.25 billion; launching 35 market-ready products; unveiling the Accelerated Technology Transfer Framework; advancing Nigeria’s industrialisation efforts and developing the 2023-2027 Strategic Launchpad.

Abdullahi Bashir ‘Haske’

Haske is the founder of AA & R Investment Group, a Nigerian conglomerate with diversified interests in a variety of industries, including agriculture, energy, logistics, and information and communication technology.

As the Group Managing Director, he provides executive leadership and champions the strategic objectives of the group. He has a proven track record of successfully establishing thriving commercial ventures across industries. 

He started his entrepreneurial journey in 2005 trading in refined petroleum products and agro-commodities as well as providing general contracting services to public and private sector organisations. Haske’s flagship investment in the agricultural sector is H & W Rice Company Limited, a large scale integrated rice miller with annual production capacity of 48,000 tons of paddy and regarded as one of the largest rice mills in Northeast Nigeria.

His entrepreneurial vision and passion for inclusive development also birthed the establishment of Manomi Support Services Limited, a community based large scale agricultural primary production company with 15,000 hectares of agricultural land under management across various states in Nigeria.

The group’s agribusiness operations currently provide direct and indirect employment and socio-economic opportunities to over 2,000 Nigerians. He is also the founder of Mars Exploration and Production Limited, an indigenous exploration and production company as well as the Etihad Oilfield Services Limited.

Olugbenga Agboola

Olugbenga Agboola is an entrepreneur that has years of experience in building scalable financial technology firms. He is the Co-founder & CEO of Flutterwave, a payments technology company headquartered in San Francisco with operations and offices across Africa and Europe.

Flutterwave was launched with the goal to build digital payments infrastructure for Africa and enable businesses receive or make any payments across Africa and globally. Since it commenced operations, Flutterwave has emerged a leading player in the payment ecosystem.

It has been recipient of several prestigious awards including the “Best Technology Platform” as awarded by The Asian Banker, the “Top 100 Fintech Firms”, among others. Prior to co-founding Flutterwave, Agboola contributed to the development of fintech solutions at several tech companies and financial institutions such as PayPal, Standard Bank, among others.

Iyinoluwa Aboyeji

Iyinoluwa Aboyeji co-founded two successful start-ups in Africa before co-founding Flutterwave in 2017. With $15.7 million in funding, the payments company is empowering Pan-African merchants to execute business on global scale.

Aboyeji’s previous start-up, Andela, gained attention when the venture received $24 million in funding from Mark Zuckerberg. Born in Lagos on March 28, 1991, he attended Primary School at St Saviour’s Primary School Ebute-Metta, Lagos.

After earning his secondary school certificate from the Loyola Jesuit College in Abuja in 2007, he continued to the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, where he received his Bachelor of Arts in Legal Studies. Today, Flutterwave is a billion-dollar global payments platform connecting African businesses and individuals to the global economy.

Tems

Born Temilade Openiyi, Tems is one of the young female artists driving the global spotlight towards Nigeria’s music industry. In 2024 alone, she made headlines with a string of remarkable milestones.

Her debut studio album release ‘Born in the Wild’ shattered Spotify records, becoming the biggest streaming day for a female Nigerian artiste with 8.028 million streams. She has also led nominations in the 2025 Grammys for Nigerian artists, fetching three nods in the Best African Music Performance, Best Global Music Album and Best R&B Song categories.

For the latter, she holds the record as the only indigenous African musician to break into the R&B category at the Grammys. In March 2024, the 29-year-old artiste received the Breakthrough Award at the 2024 edition of the Billboard Women in Music, becoming the first African woman to attain this feat.

 Her song ‘Love Me Jeje,’ inspired by the 1997 song by Seyi Sodimu ranked number one on Rolling Stone’s 40 Best Afropop Songs of 2024.

Ayra Starr

2024 was the year Nigeria’s afrobeats star Oyinkansola Sarah Aderibigbe, better known as Ayra Starr, cemented her status as a force in the music industry. Signed to Mavin Records, the 22-year-old released her sophomore album, titled ‘The Year I Turned 21’ which featured international collaborations like Coco Jones, Giveon, Anitta and Coldplay. Starr also supported Coldplay on their Music of the Spheres World Tour in Australia and New Zealand.

The album received rave reviews and entered the Billboard 200 at No. 195, making Starr the first Nigerian female artist to achieve this milestone. In another historic achievement, she became the first Nigerian female artist to surpass 20 million monthly listeners on Spotify, driven by the viral success of ‘Santa,’ a collaboration with Jamaican producer Rvssian and Puerto Rican singer Rauw Alejandro.

Tunde Onakoya

Thirty-year-old Tunde Onakoya, is a Nigerian chess player and coach, who holds the Guinness World Records for the longest marathon chess game.

On April 20, 2024, Onakoya broke the world chess marathon record in New York, United States. He played for over 60 consecutive hours.

The chess marathon was held in Times Square, New York City, United States. He began with the goal of surpassing the previous world record of 56 hours, 9 minutes, and 37 seconds, set by Norwegian players Hallvard Haug Flatebø and Sjur Ferkingstad in 2018.

Onakoya’s initial target was to play for 58 hours, but he pushed the boundaries even further, extending the marathon to a full 60 hours.

As the founder and convener of Chess in Slums Africa, he has organised a number of interventions for children across slums in Lagos State including Majidun (Ikorodu), Makoko and  Oshodi.

Ibrahim Bello Mohammed

Ibrahim Bello Mohammed, popularly known as IBM, is the Member House of Representatives member from Birnin-Kebbi, Kalgo and Bunza Federal Constituency in Kebbi State.

He is a 28 year-old son of a former Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) national chairman,  Dr. Bello Haliru and younger brother to the late lawyer, Abba Bello Mohammed.

Mohammed has been deploying his youthful prowess to lead the charge for immense growth and development for his constituency.

Tiffany Amber by Folake Akindele

Folake Akindele Coker, the founder of Tiffany Amber, hails from a prestigious Lagos, Nigerian family, being the daughter of Chief Bode Akindele, a notable industrialist and philanthropist. Raised in a multicultural environment, she had the opportunity to study in elite institutions across Europe, including Switzerland and the United Kingdom, where she earned a postgraduate degree in petroleum law.

Despite her formal training in law, she pursued her passion for fashion and returned to Nigeria to launch Tiffany Amber in 1998. The brand quickly gained recognition for its luxurious and innovative designs, becoming a symbol of modern African fashion.

In addition to her education and legal background, Folake drew creative inspiration from her exposure to diverse cultures during her formative years. She credits her early travels across Africa, Europe, and the Middle East as shaping her distinct design aesthetic.

By blending African heritage with contemporary fashion trends, she carved out a unique space for Tiffany Amber in the global fashion industry.

Over the years, she has expanded the brand’s influence beyond Nigeria, participating in major international fashion shows and collaborating with global fashion icons. Her pioneering work has earned her awards such as the Africa Fashion International (AFI) Designer of the Year.

Asuquo Ekpeyong

Senator Asuquo Ekpenyong, the Chairman, Senate Committee on the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) was born on August 25, 1985.

The Investment Banker, and Financial Analyst, is the former Cross River State Commissioner of Finance and is currently the youngest Senator representing Cross River South Senatorial District in the National Assembly. He was also Commissioner for transport and Marine Services, from October 2018 to May 2019.

He worked as a financial analyst in Lagos and then moved to Cross River where he worked for two years as a lecturer in the Banking and Finance Department of the University of Calabar.

He established Iquasu Ventures Limited, a haulage and logistics company, in 2010 and later took over as Managing Director of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) licensed Chamley Bureau de Change Limited.

Asuquo was later appointed Executive Director for Finance at Pearland Energy, an indigenous Oil and Gas company, and a member of the board of directors at Ekondo Microfinance Bank Limited.