In February 2025, the Ministry of Finance Incorporated (MOFI) made an argument that should not be forgotten.
Following an engagement at the Presidential Villa involving President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and Flutterwave’s leadership, at which MOFI’s managing director was present alongside the then Minister of Finance, MOFI publicly welcomed the fintech company’s proposed Nigerian listing.
In its own account of the meeting, the institution described the impending listing as a landmark moment offering ‘increased transparency, liquidity, and a pathway for more fintech companies to follow suit.’
MOFI was right…
When a successful Nigerian-facing company enters the public markets, the choice of exchange determines more than where its shares are traded. It determines who can participate easily, where part of the resulting wealth is distributed and whether the domestic capital market captures any of the value created within the domestic economy.
OPay now puts that conviction under examination
The payments company is reportedly preparing for a potential United States initial public offering (IPO), with Citigroup, Deutsche Bank and JPMorgan engaged and a valuation of approximately $4 billion under consideration. Though, the plans remain subject to market conditions and corporate decisions, but the direction is clear enough to raise a legitimate national question.
Does MOFI believe the argument it made for Flutterwave also applies to OPay?
This is not a demand for the government to decide where a private company must list. OPay’s board and shareholders will determine the structure that best serves the company. But that does not prevent Nigeria’s public investment vehicle from making a clear case for Nigerian participation.
MOFI is not a passive government department. It describes itself as the sole manager of Federal Government investment interests, estates and rights. It also presents itself as an institution that uses investment and partnerships to support innovation, competitiveness and national economic development.
That mandate should extend to how Nigeria responds when its most successful companies approach the public markets.
OPay’s commercial relationship with Nigeria is not marginal. Its Nigerian operating company is licensed by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), its mobile-money operations appear on the Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC) list of insured institutions, and tens of millions of Nigerians use its services daily.
The company may have international ownership and operate across several markets, but the overwhelming weight of its business, and the scale behind its investment proposition, has been built on Nigerian economic activity.
A Nigerian listing would not require OPay to abandon its international ambition. It could take the form of a secondary listing that gives Nigerian institutions and retail investors an accessible route to ownership.
On Thursday August 6, President Tinubu announced that NNPC Limited would be reformed and listed in the capital market.
That commitment concerned a state-owned company, but its significance extends beyond NNPC. It recognises the capital market as a mechanism for widening ownership, mobilising capital and allowing Nigerians to participate in the value of major national enterprises.
MOFI has already expressed a similar view in relation to fintech. Indeed, its own words anticipated this very moment.
If Flutterwave’s listing was to create a pathway for more fintech companies to follow, OPay is ideally the next company on that path.
MOFI cannot celebrate the prospective domestic listing of one Nigerian fintech and remain silent when another, with an even larger domestic consumer footprint, prepares to enter the public markets elsewhere.
Consistency matters because institutional credibility is built from positions maintained across transactions, not positions adopted only when convenient.
While MOFI does not need to disclose confidential discussions or claim powers it may not possess, it needs to answer a straightforward question: does it support OPay evaluating a Nigerian component alongside its proposed international listing?
If the answer is yes, it should say so clearly.
If MOFI believed a domestic listing would strengthen transparency and liquidity in the case of Flutterwave, the same reasoning deserves to be considered in the case of OPay. Silence would also communicate a position. It would suggest that MOFI’s enthusiasm for domestic fintech listings is selective, rather than a conviction grounded in Nigeria’s long-term economic interest.
OPay’s possible IPO is therefore more than a corporate milestone. It is a test of whether Nigeria’s public institutions will consistently make the case for retaining part of the ownership opportunity created by companies that achieve scale in this country. MOFI has made that case before. It should make it again.