On the morning of 7 September 2023, Titilope Ogunmeru sat down to begin her workday and found that she could not get in. Her Slack had gone dark. Her official email would not load. When she messaged her CEO to flag the problem, the reply arrived not through any office channel but to her personal inbox: a termination letter, sent by the same person she had just reached out to for help.

Ogunmeru had been employed as a Credit and Finance Officer at Pivo Technology Limited, a Lagos-based fintech that had attracted meaningful investor attention. She had worked there since April 2022, supporting a company that positioned itself as a pioneer in supply chain finance for small logistics and haulage businesses across Nigeria.

What she could not have known that morning was that the company was already in its final chapter. Pivo Technology shut down before the end of 2023. What became clear only through litigation — stretching more than two years and concluding in a Lagos court in January 2026 — was that the manner of her departure would say as much about the pressures facing Africa’s startup ecosystem as it did about the specific conduct of her employer.

She had worked diligently, avoided office politics, and suffered a fractured leg visiting the office. When her job was gone, so was everything she had been promised.

The company behind the case

Pivo was founded in July 2021 by Nkiru Amadi-Emina and Ijeoma Akwiwu. The pair identified a genuine problem: small businesses in Nigeria’s supply chain — logistics providers, clearing agents, FMCG distributors — were perpetually short of working capital because they needed to fund transactions before buyers paid them. The market was estimated at $41bn across Africa.

The startup built two products: Pivo Capital, a lending arm, and Pivo Business, a banking platform. Within a year it claimed to have disbursed more than $3m in loans and processed more than $4m in transactions, with a stated repayment rate of 98%.

Investors followed. Pivo raised $100,000 in pre-seed funding two months after launch, then closed a $2m seed round in November 2022 — bringing total funding to more than $2.6m from Y Combinator, Ventures Platform, Mercy Corps Ventures, and over fifteen others. Amadi-Emina told reporters at the time that the funds would go toward expanding into East Africa and launching new payments products.

It did not get that far. By 2023, a worsening funding environment across the continent had claimed more than a dozen African startups. Pivo was among them. But how a company shuts down matters — and the Pivo case is now a documented record of what happens when a startup collapses without the governance structures to protect the people it leaves behind.

A redundancy that didn’t add up

Ogunmeru’s termination letter cited redundancy as its basis. Under Nigerian law, redundancy is a specific category defined in Section 20 of the Labour Act as an involuntary and permanent loss of employment caused by an excess of manpower. It carries procedural obligations and typically entitles affected workers to negotiated severance.

At trial, Ogunmeru introduced a LinkedIn screenshot showing that a Joshua Iniakpaniko had joined Pivo as Head of Marketing and Brand Development in July 2023 — weeks before she was declared redundant and dismissed in September. His purported monthly salary was one million naira. The Defendant did not deny this in its pleadings, nor did it produce evidence challenging the screenshot’s authenticity or explaining how a simultaneous new hire was consistent with a genuine redundancy process.

Justice Ikechi Gerald Nweneka, delivering judgment on 8 January 2026, found that the claimed redundancy appeared to be a pretext, rendering the termination an instance of unfair labour practice.

The oral promise and the CEO who did not appear

At the heart of the case was an unwritten agreement. Ogunmeru testified that, before her dismissal, CEO Amadi-Emina had promised her a redundancy payment of six months’ salary — approximately 2.67m naira — plus a severance package of 5m naira, discussed in the context of her accident and pregnancy. The Defendant denied any such agreement existed, characterising any mention of severance as a gratuitous gesture rather than a contractual commitment.

The dispute came down to who the court believed. Amadi-Emina, named repeatedly throughout the proceedings and the only person who could have spoken directly to the alleged promise, did not testify. The Defendant sent her brother, Philip Amadi-Emina, the company’s legal officer, who admitted under cross-examination that what Ogunmeru was owed was not within his purview and that the CEO had not briefed him on the matter.

The CEO signed the termination letter, promised a severance package in writing, was named more than thirty times in proceedings — and did not appear in court once.

The court invoked Section 167(d) of Nigeria’s Evidence Act, which allows an adverse inference to be drawn when a party withholds evidence it would naturally produce. It found the CEO’s absence fatal to the Defendant’s case. Applying the doctrine of apparent authority, it held that the company was bound by representations its CEO made to staff in her official capacity, regardless of whether they were documented.

On the same day as the termination, Ogunmeru had been presented with a mutual separation agreement offering only her September salary and one month’s pay in lieu of notice — no mention of the five million naira or the six-month redundancy payment. She refused to sign. The court agreed with her reasoning: a contractual right should not require further negotiation to activate.

What the court ordered — and what comes next

The judgment ordered Pivo to pay Ogunmeru her full September 2023 salary of 445,986 naira; the six-month redundancy payment of 2,675,916 naira; the 5m naira severance package; and 500,000 naira in legal costs — a total of approximately 9.12m naira, equivalent to around $7000 at current exchange rates, though considerably more significant in domestic terms.

The court declined to award an additional 5m naira in general damages, finding that the substantive payments already granted constituted adequate compensation and that further awards would amount to double recovery. A formal declaration of unlawful workplace oppression was also refused, as the harassment allegations had not been separately proved to the required standard.

On the Defendant’s counterclaim — seeking the return of a company laptop Ogunmeru had retained since her termination — the court ordered its return, but dismissed the accompanying claim for 500,000 naira in conversion damages. Ogunmeru had consistently said she was willing to hand it back; the logistics had simply not been agreed. That is not conversion. The Defendant’s claim for one million naira in counterclaim costs was also denied, on the basis that the dispute would not have arisen at all had Pivo honoured its obligations.

Whether the judgment translates into actual payment is uncertain. Pivo’s closure was reported in 2023. Its operational status at the time of judgment is not established in the court record.

The Broader Lesson for Africa’s Tech Scene

The Pivo case highlights a growing “accountability gap” in the African startup sector.

• Governance Failures: High-profile VC backing (YC, Ventures Platform) does not always guarantee professional HR or legal compliance.
• Informality: Reliance on oral promises and informal separation agreements often leaves employees vulnerable when the “move fast and break things” culture eventually breaks the company itself.
• Enforcement: Nigeria’s industrial courts are increasingly protective of labor rights, but the lack of transparent liquidation processes for startups makes financial recovery difficult.

For Titilope Ogunmeru, the two-year battle was about more than the money. It was a refusal to be a footnote in a founder’s “pivot” story. For the rest of the ecosystem, it is a reminder that the “human cost” of a startup’s failure is often borne by those least able to afford it.