Lidya, the Nigerian digital lender that once promised to transform SME financing, the final act played out not in boardrooms or investor calls, but in unpaid salaries, silent codebases, and a string of high-profile departures.
BusinessDay learnt that the company’s collapse was preceded by months of internal hemorrhage, culminating in the exit of co-founder Tunde Kehinde in October 2024, the departure of Cristiano Machado, the chief technology officer a month earlier, and the complete disbandment of its Portugal-based tech team between May an
