John Obaro
Having enjoyed a successful career with International Merchant Bank (IMB), John Obaro founded SystemSpecs some 25 years ago as a West African Partner to Systems Union, UK, offering the SunSystems suite of solutions. The company soon started developing its own proprietary Payroll and Human Resource Management solution, HumanManager, which has become the preferred choice for many leading public and private sector organisations in Nigeria and West Africa.
In the last decade, SystemSpecs has become a leader in the Nigerian e-Payment space with its Remita solution, which enables efficient and easy payments and collections of funds for Individuals and Corporate Organisations (both public and private) on a SINGLE Inter-Bank platform. Remita is currently the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) adopted payment gateway for the facilitation of the Federal Government’s Treasury Single Account (TSA) project. Remita processes about $6 Billion worth of transactions on a monthly basis.
John Obaro is a distinguished alumnus of both Ahmadu Bello University, University of Lagos, and the Chief Executive Program (CEP3) of Lagos Business School. He has served at various times on the Boards of the Ministerial Advisory Council on Information and Communication Technology, Institute of Software Practitioners of Nigeria, Computer Professionals Registration Council of Nigeria (CPN), Governing Council of the National ICT Incubation Program (iDea), and many more.
John Obaro is a fellow of the Center for African Policy Development and Research, Glasgow, Scotland; a Fellow of Nigeria Computer Society (NCS); an ex-member of the Governing Council of Computers Professionals (Registration Council) of Nigeria (CPN) – the highest industry practice regulatory body; and immediate past 1st Vice President of the Institute of Software Practitioners of Nigeria (ISPON). John Obaro was recently recognised with the honour of Leadership in Technology at the 2016 African Achievement Awards in Scotland and also recognised as the ICT Software Personality of the Year 2016 at the Beacon of ICT (BoICT) Award,in addition to other numerous indigenous and international awards he has received over the years.
John Obaro’s successful entrepreneurial adventure in software development architecture has attracted and continues to attract attention from both local and international quarters. The prestigious Lagos Business School (LBS) of the Pan-Atlantic University has written two case studies on SystemSpecs while many newspapers, magazines and journals have also featured him at one time or the other.
He is passionate about the promotion of Nigeria’s indigenous software industry as a capable and comparable rival to anywhere in the world.
John Obaro is known in many circles as ‘The Consummate Innovator’. He is a trailblazer on many fronts, and indeed his footprint is evident across many sectors of the Nigerian economy.