By Arogbonlo Israel
Nigeria is blessed with not just natural resources but also boasts of great talents; especially those who have been making their marks globally.
Among these great personalities are three Nigerians recently appointed by Twitter’s founder and former Chief Executive Officer, Jack Dorsey, to serve as board members of the Bitcoin Trust Fund.
The appointees are: Abubakar Nur Khalil from Nigeria, Obi Nwosu from Nigeria and Ojoma Ochai also from Nigeria.
Quest Times also gathered that a lady from South Africa, Carla Kirk-Cohen, was appointed as one of the board members of the Bitcoin Trust Fund.
Dorsey described them as “inspirational”, noting that it would now be their collective responsibility to map out the operating principles that will define how the Bitcoin Trust Fund will be administered.
“Announcing the Bitcoin Trust Board: Carla Kirk-Cohen, Abubakar Nur Khalil, Obi Nwosu and Ojoma Ochai! I’m so grateful for you all and so inspired… they’ll now work towards defining the operating principles as they think about how to best distribute the 500 bitcoin towards development efforts,” Dorsey wrote.
In a bid to profile these three Nigerians, Quest Times looked up their resumes to see what makes them special, as you can see below;
Abubakar Khalil Nur
Abubakar has a first-class Bachelors of Science in Economics with high honours, and was the best graduating student in the Economics department at the Eastern Mediterranean University, after achieving a GPA of 3.98/4.00.
He boasts of over 4,000 followers on Twitter.
He has experience in the public investment policy, promotion, and facilitation space at the subnational level.
“I’m passionate about economic development for Africa, and I’ve spent the last 3 years helping to grow Kaduna State’s economy via dedicated efforts of improving the business environment to attract private sector capital. This deliberate and coordinated effort culminated in Kaduna State being ranked number 1 in the World Bank’s 2018 sub-national Doing Business in Nigeria report with over $2 billion dollars worth of investments attracted,” he said.
He is also a voracious reader and a major exponent of the teachings of complex adaptive systems and heterodox approaches towards the field of economics and finance.
He was appointed Executive Secretary of Kaduna State Investment Promotion Agency on the 11th of October 2021.
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Obi Nwosu
Nwosu with the Twitter handle @obi co-founded a serd-level cryptocurrency startup called Coinfloor, the UK’s first Bitcoin exchange. He has over 20 years of experience building online marketplaces including QXL and WeeWorld, a service where tens of millions of users bought virtual items using a virtual currency. Information obtained from Crunchbase shows that the startup has raised a total of $300,000 in funding rounds from three investors.
“My passion for Bitcoin and Fintech as well as growing businesses is what led me to the position I am in today. Beyond this, I am a born and bred Londoner from a lower working class Nigerian family.
“I like to think that my background has meant that I have the natural business instincts of a Nigerian while still remaining worldly wise enough to realise that the vast majority of my success has nothing to do with my own ability, even though I have worked extremely hard to get where I am,” he disclosed during an interview with a local media (No Light without Darkness) 2020.
He started researching Bitcoin in 2011 through a friend and he quickly became excited by its potential; an entirely digital currency, and how it could solve a lot of the problems associated with money we use today.
The Nigerian London-based entrepreneur bought a few Bitcoins at which point the price immediately dropped! Then he sold his holdings and didn’t return until 2013 when Bitcoin was again in the news, and it was clear that the existing UK trading platforms lacked trust, reliability or security.
He has over 8,000 followers on Twitter and follows 457.
Obi leads commercial strategy and a team of finance and cryptocurrency experts. Since 2014, Coinfloor’s market share has grown over 5 times and now handles the majority of GBP exchange volume under his watch.
Previously, he was Founder and CEO of Supalocal and held senior roles at ebookers.com and WeeWorld, overseeing the development of a virtual currency, used by 30 million users.
Ojoma Ochai
Ojoma Ochai is Director Programmes British Council and leads the council’s arts and creative economy programme in West Africa, working with partners in the region and internationally to strengthen creative industries policy and practice through interventions including research, skills development, and advocacy.
She also oversees the education and society portfolio to support the education sector and improve outcomes in social justice, governance, inclusion and related themes.
In the last fifteen years, Ojoma has worked in various creative economy development roles with organisations like the British Council (2006 to date), World Bank (2014 to 2016), and since 2015 has been a member of the UNESCO expert panel on the 2005 Convention on Diversity of Cultural Expressions.
Nominated Young Person of the Year (2010) in Nigeria by The Future Awards, named by YNaija in 10 Most Powerful People in Nigeria’s Arts and Culture (under 40) 2014, and YNaija 100 Most Influential Women in Nigeria 2015; Ojoma is a Fellow of the DEVOS Institute of Arts Management, University of Maryland, USA and Associate Fellow of the Nigerian Leadership Initiative (NLI).
She was Chair, Lagos Theatre Festival (2015 -2018), Chair, Open House Lagos (2015 – 2017) and on the board of Music Museum Foundation of Nigeria.
She serves as the Chief Technology Officer Recursive Capital, according to her LinkedIn profile. She is also a bitcoin core contributor, and had recently received $50,000 in BTC from Human Rights Foundation for her work on Bitcoin wallet software.
With over 4,000 followers on Twitter, Ojoma is indeed a name to reckon with in the world of technology today.
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