Few days after announcing an investigation into alleged sexual harassment against its chief executive officer, Tizeti Network Board said it has asked Kendall Ananyi to step down from his role as CEO.
The company said in a statement posted on its Twitter handle that: “Kendall Ananyi has agreed to remain fully compliant until the independent investigation concludes.
We want to affirm that we take all allegations of harassment, discrimination or misconduct of any kind, very seriously.
Patricia Aiyedun, current Tizeti CFO and Ifeanyi Okonkwo, current Tizeti COO will assume the position of interim co-CEOs effective immediately.
“Before joining Tizeti, Patricia was a senior manager at PricewaterhouseCoopers with over 13 years of professional accounting and financial management experience.
Ifeanyi Okonkwo has over 14 years experience in the Telecommunications industry and is co-founder and current COO of Tizeti. Before co-founding Tizeti, Ifeanyi worked with various Telecom companies including Blackberry and Eircom.”
“We’re thrilled to support Patricia and Ifeanyi as they assume their new roles within the company.”
“Tizeti continues to be fully committed to high ethical standards, gender equality and making sure our diverse team feels safe, valued and comfortable at all times,” the statement said.
It would be recalled that Kendall Ananyi, the former CEO of Tizeti Network, was accused of sexually harassing a lady while working at MEST.
As a background to Kendall’s resignation, a lady named Kelechi Udoagwu has accused the CEO of an internet network company, Tizeti Network Limited, Kendall Ananyi of sexually abusing her two years ago.
Kelechi took to Twitter, narrating how she was abused by the CEO of Tizeti in 2018 while she was undergoing a mentorship programme at MEST Africa.
According to Kelechi, Kendall Ananyi was a guest speaker at MEST, though they became friends, their friendship was platonic and professional until one afternoon when he pulled out and put his penis in her hands begging her for sex.
Kelechi said that she spoke to her friends about it and they told her that everything will be alright.
Reacting to the allegations, MEST Africa reached out to Kelechi via a comment on her tweets saying that they have zero tolerance for sexual harassment and assault. They added that they’ll stand behind her and help escalate action if she wishes.
A co-founder of Jobberman, Mr Opeyemi Awoyemi also reacted to Kelechi’s accusations on Twitter saying:
“I know Kendall but won’t stand for sexual harassment of any kind. He should defend himself if this isn’t true. Moving from Tizeti till justice is done.”
Tizeti Network owns and operates wifi.com.ng, a Nigerian Internet service provider, based in Lagos, Nigeria. The company raised a $2.1 million funding to scale its operations in 2017. It has also worked with Facebook Inc., to provide free Internet access across Nigeria for people to use Facebook for free under the Facebook basics programme.
