A survival guide to ‘oga culture’ in Nigerian startups

Nigerian founders are often good at hiring talent, but many struggle to step back and let that talent do its work. People are brought in for their expertise, only to find that decisions are still driven by instinct, personal preference, or what competitors appear to be doing. 

I know this pattern well because I have worked with a fair number of Nigerian startups, and the behaviour is consistent enough to be recognisable. It slows innovation, erodes trust in expertise, and creates cycles where teams execute ideas they did not shape, only to absorb the blame when those ideas fail. At the same time, most founders are not acting out of malice. They are under pressure, short on time, and focused on survival, which makes control feel necessary.

This tension between intention and impact is what I refer to as ‘oga-led culture.’ In this article, I break down why it happens and share practical ways to work within it without losing your effectiveness or your sanity.

Understanding oga-led culture (and why it happens)

Before you can navigate the Oga-led culture, you have to understand why it exists in the first place. Let’s look at some of these reasons below. 

Founders are scared of failure

Many founders are carrying the weight of investor expectations, shrinking runways, and a market that can change its mood overnight. In those moments, authority becomes a coping mechanism. The founder believes that if they can tightly control decisions, they can also control outcomes, even when reality does not work that way. 

Lack of functional expertise

Another driver is the simple fact that many founders do not have deep experience across every function they oversee. A CEO might be brilliant at fundraising or sales, but have limited exposure to marketing strategy, product discovery or operational systems. Now, instead of leaning into the expertise they hired for, most rely on instinct because instinct is familiar, and expertise feels risky when you cannot fully evaluate it.

This is how you end up with marketing decisions driven by personal taste, product decisions driven by gut feeling, and operational choices made because “this worked somewhere else.” 

Hero-founder bias

The Nigerian tech ecosystem plays a role, too. We celebrate founders as visionaries, disruptors, and lone geniuses who carried companies on their backs. Over time, that narrative creates an imbalance where the founder’s opinion is treated as inherently superior, even when it falls outside their area of strength.

Questioning an idea can be considered disloyalty, and offering an alternative can be seen as ego. In such environments, expertise loses its weight while proximity to power gains.

Cultural inheritance from traditional workplaces

Many Nigerians grew up in schools, homes, and offices where hierarchy was unquestionable, and authority was rarely challenged. You did not debate your boss; you complied, and you hoped your obedience would be rewarded.

When people from these systems build startups, they often recreate what they know, even when they believe they are building something modern. The titles may be new and the offices more relaxed, but the power dynamics remain familiar. The result is a startup that looks innovative on the outside but operates like a traditional organisation on the inside.

How can you navigate the oga-led culture?

Working under oga-led leadership can feel disempowering. Still, there are ways to influence decisions, earn autonomy, and protect yourself in the process. Here are these strategies:

Always defend your decisions with data

In oga-led environments, data is your strongest form of protection. When a decision is backed by data, it becomes harder to reduce it to “your idea” or “your preference.”

Here is what this looks like in practice:

• Use numbers instead of emotion when explaining your position, even when the decision feels personal or the stakes are high.
• Reference past performance so you are not arguing in hypotheticals, but pointing to what has already happened inside the business.
• Bring in benchmarks to show how similar companies approach the same problem, especially in markets the founder respects.
• Propose experiments rather than absolutes, because small tests feel safer and reduce resistance.

When presenting your thinking, structure matters as much as substance. A clear narrative makes it easier for decision makers to follow your logic and harder for them to dismiss it outright. A simple framework that works well:

• Data: What you are seeing, measured clearly and without interpretation.
• Insight: What that data suggests, based on patterns, trends, or anomalies.
• Recommended action: What you believe should be done next and why it logically follows.
• Expected outcome: What success looks like and how it will be measured.

This approach does two important things at once. It shows respect for the founder’s role as the final decision maker, while also asserting your credibility as a professional who thinks beyond instinct.

Learn to frame your ideas like a founder

Founders are constantly weighing trade-offs around risk, cash, and speed, even when those calculations are not visible in meetings. They are asking what could break, what money is exposed, and whether a decision will move the company forward fast enough to justify the effort. 

When your ideas are provided within those constraints, they stop sounding like suggestions and start reading as decisions that serve the business.

Before you present an idea, pressure-test it as a founder would:

• What are the real risks if this fails, and how contained are they?
• What is the short-term impact on cash, spend, or revenue?
• What changes for the customer if this works, and how noticeable is that change?
• How quickly can impact be measured, and what signals confirm progress?

When every pitch clearly ties back to growth, survival, or customer value, it becomes much harder to dismiss it as “just a marketing idea” or “an ops suggestion” and easier to see it as a strategic move the company should take seriously.

Use experiments to earn autonomy

Small experiments work because they reduce perceived risk and shift decisions from belief to evidence. For these experiments to work, a few things must be clear from the start:

• The scope is narrow, so failure feels contained and manageable.
• The timeline is defined, whether seven or fourteen days, so expectations are fixed.
• Success and failure signals are agreed on before the test begins.
• There is a clear commitment to revert if the numbers do not move.

A simple way to position this is to say, “Let’s test this for 14 days. If the numbers don’t move, we revert.” That single sentence signals confidence without arrogance and accountability without defensiveness. 

Document everything

Writing things down creates a shared record of what was agreed, why it was agreed, and what assumptions were in play at the time. It slows down revisionist narratives and gives context to outcomes, whether they are positive or disappointing.

At a minimum, get comfortable documenting:

• Meeting notes that capture key discussions and conclusions.
• Decisions that were made and who signed off on them.
• Assumptions that informed the direction taken, especially where data was limited.
• Timelines that show what was expected to happen and when.

Clear documentation improves continuity, reduces confusion, and makes future decisions easier to evaluate. When things go wrong, you are no longer arguing from memory or emotion; you are pointing back to a shared trail of reasoning that everyone had access to.

Choose your battles

Restraint is strategic. If you push back on everything, your voice starts to lose weight, but if you reserve it for moments that truly matter, people pay attention when you speak. And so, it helps to filter decisions before you respond by asking these questions:

• Does this materially affect revenue, retention, or customer experience?
• Will this create long-term constraints that are hard to undo?
• Is the cost of being wrong here high, either financially or reputationally?

If the answer is no, it may be better to observe rather than intervene. Saving your energy for high-impact decisions keeps you effective, preserves relationships, and ensures that when you do push back, it is clear that the issue actually matters.

Build internal allies

When the same conclusion is reached from multiple angles, it stops sounding like a personal opinion and starts reading as a business reality. Sales brings real-time customer objections, Product understands constraints and trade-offs, and Finance grounds decisions in cost and sustainability. When these perspectives reinforce your thinking, your recommendations carry more weight because they reflect how the business actually operates.

Building this kind of alignment requires intention:

• Loop in sales when ideas affect pipeline, positioning, or conversion.
• Partner with product when decisions shape user experience or long-term direction.
• Validate assumptions with Finance when cost or revenue is involved.

Over time, being known as someone who builds alignment increases your influence and makes it easier for your ideas to travel upward.

Make your work visible

When progress is not visible, founders feel out of the loop, and that gap invites late questions, overrides, and unnecessary intervention. Visibility creates reassurance, and reassurance reduces control.

This does not require excessive updates, just consistent signals of movement:

• Share weekly reports that show progress, blockers, and what is coming next
• Use dashboards to surface key metrics and trends without over-explaining.
• Call out wins so outcomes are clearly linked to decisions.
• Document learnings so missteps are treated as insight, not incompetence.

When founders can see what is happening and understand why it matters, they are less likely to hover or second-guess. That clarity creates space for you to work with focus and intent.

When to walk away

Not every oga-led environment can be navigated, and not every culture is meant to be endured. Knowing when to walk away requires honesty with yourself and a clear set of criteria, so you are not making the decision in a moment of anger or exhaustion.

Some signs are subtle at first, but they become clearer over time:

• Your mental health is consistently taking a hit, and work anxiety follows you outside working hours.
• Your career trajectory starts to flatten because you are executing without learning or ownership.
• You are being held responsible for outcomes you did not meaningfully influence.
• Expectations shift without warning, but accountability remains fixed on you.

There are also clearer signals that the culture is unlikely to change, regardless of how patient or skilled you are:

• You have little to no decision-making autonomy, even within your area of expertise.
• Blame flows downward whenever results miss targets, while credit rarely travels the same way.
• Evidence is repeatedly ignored or overridden in favour of instinct, even after it has proven accurate.
• Psychological safety is absent, and speaking up feels risky rather than encouraged.

A few additional red flags worth paying attention to:

• Feedback is framed as personal failure rather than process improvement.
• Documentation and clarity are discouraged because they “slow things down.”
• Turnover is high among senior or high-performing team members.
• Promises of change are vague and never followed by action.

I know walking away is often considered a sign of weakness, but in this case, it simply means you recognised that the environment was not built to let you do your best work, and choosing yourself is the most strategic decision you can make.

Written by Jeremiah Ajayi

Last updated: March 5, 2026