Oxygen X went to Lagos Tech Fest 2026 with a bigger point to make

When the second day of Lagos Tech Fest 2026 kicked off at the Landmark Event Centre in Victoria Island, the energy on the floor made one thing clear: Nigeria’s tech conversation has grown up. The usual buzz around funding rounds and product launches was still there.

Still, the afternoon session on the Innovation Stage took a different turn, one that sat closer to the uncomfortable truths founders rarely say out loud.

The session, titled “Tech Is Only Half the Story: People & Strategy as the Real Drivers of Growth,“ brought together five panellists who have, between them, built companies across nine African countries, raised millions in venture capital, and navigated the kind of organisational chaos that rarely makes it into pitch decks. 

For 40 minutes, they traded insights. For the 20 minutes, the audience came with questions. But for Oxygen X, the digital lending company was carving out its place in Nigeria’s financial services landscape.

The day was about more than a seat at the table; it was a statement.

Representing the company was Chidiebere Ihejirika, Head of IT Operations at Oxygen X, who joined the panel that included some of Nigeria’s most recognised tech and business names. His presence was deliberate.

For a company that launched just two years ago and has already disbursed billions in loans, Lagos Tech Fest was not just an event. It was a platform.

When the machine runs smoothly, nobody notices, until it doesn’t

On the panel session, Ihejirika was asked a question that cuts deep for any fast-scaling tech team: how do you keep operational friction from killing momentum? 

His answer was direct and practical: “Standardise processes, automate aggressively, and make friction visible with data using alerting systems, a dashboard to proactively monitor system health, service performance, thus allowing the engineering team to cross-correct issues quickly,” he said. “Operational friction is inevitable, but it’s not fatal if managed properly.”

 In his framing, it is not a question of whether friction will happen in a growing tech organisation. It is a question of when and whether you have the systems in place to absorb the impact without losing pace.

On IT spending in volatile markets, and Nigeria qualifies every day, he argued for a structure that separates the non-negotiables from the experiments. Critical operations get protected first. New initiatives get evaluated with clear thresholds. 

Everything else gets moderated.

“You categorise your IT spend into critical operations, new initiatives, and moderated investments, and you stay lean by default with scalable infrastructure without compromising what actually keeps you running,” he explained. 

For a finance company leveraging technology like Oxygen X, where infrastructure directly determines how fast a loan decision is made, that discipline is not administrative; it is competitive.

Perhaps the most pointed moment came when Ihejirika addressed technical debt, the accumulated cost of shortcuts taken during periods of rapid growth. His take: stop arguing about it in engineering terms and start framing it as a business conversation. 

“When technical debt starts touching revenue, customer trust, compliance, and regulation, it’s no longer a technical argument; it becomes a business decision,” he said. When it crosses that line, it demands a strategic response, not just a sprint.

Beyond the stage: a company worth watching

Away from the stage, Oxygen X’s story carries its own weight. The company is a finance company, but the category alone does not do it justice. What Oxygen X has built is a credit decision engine that pulls from bank statements, credit bureau data, and lifestyle signals to assess borrower eligibility in a way that goes well beyond the traditional salary slip. 

“Our data-driven approach is what sets us apart,” Ihejirika told Technext on the sidelines of the event. “We look at bank statements, creditworthiness, and repayment history, and with the use of data models built with AI to make smarter decisions faster.”

The company serves both individuals and businesses, with loan offerings that scale based on the borrower’s financial data, from salary loans to SME and turnover-based products.

In a market where millions of creditworthy Nigerians were historically excluded from formal lending systems, this approach is not just innovative, it is structural.

Since launching in 2024, Oxygen X has moved swiftly, putting over ₦17 billion into the hands of individuals and small businesses across Nigeria. Oxygen X is building assessment infrastructure, one that gets sharper with every loan decision it makes.

Also read: From ‘urgent ₦2k’ to real credit: How Oxygen X wants to help Nigerians breathe

The bigger picture

One notable fact from the Lagos Tech Fest event: Nigeria’s most interesting companies are not necessarily the ones with the flashiest products. They figured out the harder problem: building an organisation that scales.

Oxygen X’s presence at the event, both on stage and in conversations, showed a company that understands its mission.

The team is not just lending money. They are building a credit infrastructure layer for a market with significant room to grow, and they are doing it with the kind of operational discipline that Ihejirika articulated so clearly on that panel.

Nigeria has no shortage of ambition. What it needs more is execution; companies that can survive and scale. Based on what Lagos Tech Fest revealed, Oxygen X is putting in the work to be one of them.

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