Why Startupsnigeria.com Was Shut Down? (hot piping Gossip)

Quote from http://startupsnigeria.com concerning the controversy surrounding the site


Hello, I am Vic and the founder of Careers Nigeria - a site with focus on jobs in Nigeria. I am based in the UK with my family.

The last few months, I have been too busy with some high profile projects for major Nigerian clients, while also running a UK based consulting and media firm with interests in Recruiting and Social Media. One of our companies own the domain name StartupsNigeria.com and actually created, developed and managed the website itself.

First, I would like to apologize for removing this site for the last 4 months. Many of you depend on the content of the site and benefit a lot from the coverage the last year or so.

I have intentionally remained quiet about the suspension of Loy Okezie as editor of the site, while we focus on other more pressing and active parts of our businesses this year. Personally, I have received a lot of emails - most of which have tried to ask why the blog was suspended and many of which have asked for a peaceful resolution of the issues related to the removal of Loy Okezie. None of these emails I have responded to, as I am not a big fan of feeding people with something to talk about on the Internet. Hence, a lot of confusion has grown over the last months, most of which hinges on very dramatic posts by Loy on his personal blog and also on the wordpress blog.

Interestingly, Loy is my younger brother who has been supported all his life by myself and the family. What he doesn’t fully understand are traits like gratitude when he is giving something and, apology when he has done wrong.

Everybody make mistakes or even does stupid things sometimes. But, the manly thing to do is, apologize sincerely and move on with one’s life. The last few months, Loy has chosen not to demonstrate that apology. That was the only thing he was asked to do, in order to continue blogging on this site. Hence, I will take my time to say exactly what happened.

Loy worked for one of our companies in early 2009. I made efforts to get him the role, after trying to convince other parties involved that he has some relevant skills to establish himself professionally. This job was so he can earn some money (this blog doesn’t generate any money) and get his life on track. After a 3 months period, it was obvious he wasn’t demonstrating any interest in his actual days job and didn’t show any plans to make efforts with the role.

That is fine. It happens in life. So, we made a decision to let him move on. He wasn’t the only person involved. The next thing we found out at the end of April 2009 was that a brand new laptop was missing. The team member who came to pick it up from the office could not find it. He called Loy and asked when he can get it back. Loy claimed the laptop was left in the office and that perhaps someone else could have stolen it. The story went on for 1 week or more, and we began looking at other staff - to question them and find the laptop. I was in the middle of this all, getting emails about this from Nigeria and calls. I asked Loy - he replied to say he surely left it there and that the other staff must have picked the laptop.

Then he promised to come back to the office to help find it where he claimed to have left it. The Manager was at the office the whole day, rang Loy 3 times and in one instance, Loy said that he is too busy. That was when we started suspecting that Loy has gone off with the Laptop and lying as well. We had to stop questioning the other parties and try to track him instead.

Suddenly, Loy implicated himself by posting a picture of himself with the Laptop on 27th April, after attending BarCamp (he has stopped work before then claiming he was sick). In it, he had a brand new laptop. The picture was blurred and I couldn’t tell so I forwarded it to the Team Members who have similar laptops. I am based in UK and don’t know the laptop they recently got in the Nigerian office. The Team Members all confirmed that this was the stolen laptop. View the picture below.

This is my younger brother who I gave a corporate job to, who didn’t do well with it, and went away with the company’s laptop and kept lying about it - in front of professionals who work with me in Nigeria. My first reaction was shock, and then embarrassment, and then anger.

I contacted Loy and asked him to return the Laptop. He admitted, but started asking for damages for very frivolous things. That his salary was not complete for April. Well, he stopped coming to work early April and never bothered to do anything. Fine, again you will think this can be resolved internally and smoothly.

Since he was very attached to Startups Nigeria and the site fuelled his ego (The Startups Man in Nigeria), I warned him that the site will be suspended if he doesn’t return the Laptop. We placed a blank page on the site as a warning. He still defied this. After 2 days of restoring the site again, we finally suspended it. The idea was for him to call the Team Member and return the laptop, and make an apology immediately, so the site can come back - he went to Twitter and Wordpress to write very dramatic posts; mostly attacking me. And also he made sure he sent me a lot of emails attacking my judgement. That was outrageous.

Fine, no one is perfect, but stealing a laptop, lying about it, insulting everyone, making false claims is way too far. Since, the domain name and website are part of one of my companies, I decided to close them until I could make a decision on what to do next. The easiest thing will be to deny him access, and hire a new blogger for the site - but I didn’t think it would come to that.

The only request my family made to him was to fully apologize for all what he has done and said and move on - this he will not do and it is obvious he doesn’t intend to do. He has continued to insult me online with smears and this doesn’t demonstrate that he is interested in a simple resolution. Nor any form of respect!

And for that reason, we have reopened the site now and will welcome interests from anyone who will like 100% take over and ownership of the site or someone who will be involved in the actual writing and editing of posts for the site.

I am sure that Loy will continue his rants with more posts about me or about the lies regarding this issue. The actual truth is that I really do not care. This post was to state the facts of the incidence and at least clear up some theories people may be having.

The Nigerian startup community deserves better than Loy and his antics - and if you beleive you can do better than him, then please drop me an email at editor at startupsnigeria.com


SOURCE: http://www.startupsnigeria.com

@seun please dont put me in trouble O

i just saw it online while i was researching for my direcotry http://www.websitenigeria.com

to confirm pls visit http://www.startupsnigeria.com for details.


i am not vic. i was just posting what he wrote

@gamine

my exact sentiments. it's all soooooo,

assuming it is true?, 

it does not mean that you wash your dirrry linens in public


FAMILY IS SUPPOSED TO BE FAMILY

But then i guess

ALL IS FAIR IN LOVE AND WAR

@yawa

thanks for drawing out the need of hearing the other side of the story. i am a regular reader of the accused blog http://www.loyokezie.com and i digged in some more and found this

quote from http://www.loyokezie.com/startupsnigeria/

Hi there,

For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been asked several questions about Startups Nigeria, so I thought it’d be nice to share the untold story behind the incident that happened about four months ago.

Startups Nigeria, a technology community blog I founded in April 2008 is currently undergoing a re-launch after the domain found at www.startupsnigeria.com was ‘unethically’ shutdown by the organisation that provided web hosting. As a result of irreconciliable differences resulting in a ‘conflict of interest’, the organisation decided to terminate the relationship.

Apparently, the organization had repeatedly expressed their interest in a stake in Startups Nigeria, which I’ve almost always rejected. Since the site had been hosted on their server, a deadline of May 1, 2009 was given to transfer the domain to another server.

At the time, I was working for the organization and there had been several debates over issues of a conflict of interest between my job at the company and my involvement and commitment to building Startups Nigeria. When it became evident that my goal was to have 100% control over Startups Nigeria, my employment was terminated prematurely.

While I was making alternative arrangements to transfer domain to another server and having talks with the organization, the organisation decided to completely shutdown the site. Following this, several attempts to retrieve the site’s backup proved abortive, thus I made the decision to forgo the domain name and re-build the platform under a new domain name.

Update 1 (Aug 11): StartupsNigeria.com Has Been Redirected to Careers Nigeria website.

Update 2 (Sept 7): My Respone to the Startups Nigeria online brand attack.

Even though this incident may have affected the ‘young and emerging’ business and technology startup industry in Nigeria, it succeeded in opening up new opportunities for collaboration, participation and engagement within the Nigerian technology community.

True, a crisis is a gift.

While it might seem that the irrational action and rash decision have drowned the hopes and dreams of Nigerian Internet businesses and entrepreneurs around the world, I am confident that it didn’t kill the idea and vision of building the largest business and technology startup community in Nigeria. This vision will soon become a reality.

Re-building the Startups Nigeria brand



The “new” Startups Nigeria platform will be designed as an online community for people interested in sharing business ideas, launching business start-ups, showcasing their products and innovations, business and technology-related jobs and freelancing, finding business partners, student entrepreneurs and investors.

The community will be run by several contributors and community managers, so if you’re interested in becoming a part of the team, kindly send me your CV with relevant experience via startupsnigeria [at] gmail.com or DM me via Twitter @startupsnigeria

I’ll officially be announcing the re-launch of the new Startups Nigeria platform here on this blog, so you can check back soon.

Update (Sept 1): We have pre-launched the new platform. You can sign up to get notified when we launch public beta.

Thanking you for your patience and understanding.

- Loy Okezie, founder of Startups Nigeria

sometimes, you are unfortunate to know people (relatives) who will tick you no end and leave you absolutely exasperated (finally got the spelling right first time) regarding what else to do about them.
1: Loy is obviously no longer in the employ of Vic,  he should have cut himself off. officially on all forms of information distribution available to him.
2: Vic is running a business and made the mistake of considering employing a member of the family without rigorously slicing him through the recruitment grater. He was emotional and his reasoning lacked objectiveness.
3: When he decided to become objective, he made the mistake of firing Loy without going through the same rigorous exit process businesses go through when letting a staff off the boat.
4: He also made the mistake of using the business as a bargaining chip when it came to re-claiming the laptop, unless it contained confidential, intellectual property of the company, he should have cut his losses and taken the 'OFFICIAL' approach; Make a legal statement of staff disengagement, online and offline. by suspending the site for a couple of days, he actually hurt the business at the expense of a 'missing laptop' and a 'black-sheep' brother. in the long-run, it will tell on the brand (it always does). Startupsnigeria may have lost significant credibility and traffic due to this.

On the whole Vic should have considered the trade-offs Business or Family, Business+Family or Business-Family

Hello everyone,

This is Loy Okezie, founder of Startups Nigeria. I appreciate your comments and have taken your criticisms in good faith. You can read my own response to this issue on my personal blog.

Here is the link: http://www.loyokezie.com/2009/09/18/response-to-brand-attack/

Thank you.

I have heard both sides and I still donat know what to say or who to believe but since these guys are brothers couldn't this have been settled within the family?

Two brothers attacking themselves on internet.Outrageous!

I am not a biggest fan of Loy neither is Neither is Vic an Angel but how can somebody said his younger is a confirmed Laptop robber? - Posted in an internet for that matter!I cannot expose my brother like this online even he committed murder .

I am not interested in this story and will advice Vic to stop killing Loy future.Loy is a star!

All because of a laptop,  too Bad,   

too bad. the fact that they are brothers made everything worse.

someone is obviously skipping the real story behind the incident.

just like the poster above me said, the laptop is not the issue.


the company VIC requested for a stake
The employee rejected , despite the fact that the COMPANY hosts the WEBSITE;
Things started going wrong there,

My question is : LOY? were you paying for the hosting ?

if yes, You had the right to reject
If no, you are very greedy.