A former Head of Implementation at Flutterwave, Clara Wanjiku Odero, has accused the company’s co-founder and CEO, Olugbenga Agboola, of bullying.
In a Monday post on Medium titled “The Flutterwave CEO is bullying me and it ends today,” Odero wrote, “I have been constantly belittled, lied about, harassed, had my name tarnished and almost arrested because of Olugbenga Agboola the CEO of Flutterwave and I am calling time. It has been almost 5 years of constant harassment and I am over it all.”
The Kenyan environmental scientist-turned-tech babe explained that she quit the company in November 2018 because she was not “being treated well”.
She said she was accused, without evidence, of operating a Twitter account calling out male members of management for sexual harassment.
Odero denied the allegation.
She said the alleged bullying began when she demanded the payment of her dues after her resignation.
Odero said that repeated demands were ignored until she sent a message threatening to involve a lawyer.
Instead of authorising the payment, she said, Agboola felt threatened by her message and called her bluff.
She shared a screenshot of her conversation on the subject which is reproduced below:
She said she made good her promise to involve a lawyer, who served the company a demand letter.
Odero said that after the demand letter was served, she began to receive multiple calls from several Futterwave staff who pushed for an amicable resolution.
She said the company’s Chief Operating Officer, Bode Abifarin, was asked to resolve her claims.
Odero said Abifarin mentioned the Twitter account to her lawyer, who asked if she knew anything about it and she said no.
“I want to pause for a second and point out a few things
“1. I asked for my dues multiple times, got no response,infact was threatened and I responded accordingly.
“2. Flutterwave paid me my money after having multiple people call me to call off my lawyers; lawyers I had to call because they refused to pay me simply because they thought I would do nothing aka bully me.
“3. Without any proof, they accused me of being behind an account calling out the male members of management for sexual harassment.
“All of these things hit the key points of bullying; intimidation and coercion but I let it go,” she wrote.
Odero also accused Agboola of sabotaging her efforts to get another job.
“I got introduced to a bank in Nigeria for a role which GB then sabotaged by saying I was a bad worker,a crime in California,” she wrote.
Odero equally narrated how due to Flutterwave’s alleged negligence, her name was linked to fraud.
“While on a work trip to Ghana in May 2019, my mother called me and told me the police were at her office saying I was involved in some Mpesa fraud with Nigerians..she wasn’t coherent because she was obviously scared but I knew it was Flutterwave before she finished the call,” she wrote.
Odero said that when she resigned, she wrote an email to Agboola to ask that her phone number be removed from an Mpesa bill pay number that Flutterwave had registered.
M-Pesa is a mobile phone-based money transfer service, payments and micro-financing service, launched in 2007 by Vodafone and Safaricom, the largest mobile network operator in Kenya.
She said that this was not done more than two weeks after her request.
“Thus began some of the most harrowing weeks of my life. Flutterwave,in an attempt to keep doing business in Kenya with Mpesa had kept my number as the contact person on the Mpesa paybill as they had nobody else.It was used by criminals,the police came to me because my number was attached and honestly hounded me and my family. I had to go to the Department of Criminal Investigations with a lawyer to sort it all out. Neither Flutterwave nor their CEO was of any assistance.
“To put this into context for anyone outside Kenya;the last major terrorist attack was entirely funded via Mpesa. If this was terrorism related I would have disappeared. No investigation. No shot at clearing my name and my life would have been ruined.
“So I sued. Because wasting my time and being negligent with my life deserves to be compensated.
“I won a settlement that I thought was too small; I appealed and the case is still in court,” she wrote.
In the wake of recent stories coming out about sexual harassment at Flutterwave, she wrote, the old accusations of her fuelling the stories resurfaced.
“There are rumors of a story coming out on Flutterwave on sexual harassment as well as other improprieties. I know nothing of any of this but GB in an interview that I will not link tries to smear my name referencing the above Mpesa crime,I guess in a bid to I guess make anyone involved not seem credible? I hadn’t spoken to anyone before but more than happy to now. Reach out.
“I have already directed my lawyers to issue a cease and desist but when does it end?
“I am sick of it to be honest. It has been almost 5 years of constant bullying,trying to malign my name and just make my life more difficult. All of it stemming from me deciding to leave,ask for what is fairly mine AND ask to be compensated for Flutterwave’s negligence.
“I have never spoken about the sexual harassment claims at Flutterwave because I don’t have knowledge of them,” Odero wrote.