BenueTech Foundation’s Pitch Friday just closed out its second episode, and by most accounts it was a clear step up from the first. Season 1, Episode 2 brought five startups from Benue’s growing tech scene onto one stage, and when the pitches were done, identity verification startup LumiID walked away as the overall winner. The rest of the field, Matchotels NG, Sheltrify AI, Foodra, and Earnversity, rounded out a lineup that organizers say reflected a wider and more established pool of founders than the series’ debut a few months earlier.
The prizes went beyond bragging rights. LumiID took home 100,000 naira as overall winner, while the four other finalists each received 50,000 naira for placing second through fifth. On top of the cash, every finalist walked away with a share of 200,000 naira worth of mentorship and training, credited to Maxify Global, the same ticketing and events platform that has backed Pitch Friday since its first episode. Wellington Workspace added its own contribution, giving every participating startup a full month of free workspace and internet access, a practical bit of runway for founders who might otherwise be pitching from a laptop at home with an unreliable connection.
The judging panel drew on people who’ve been steadily building Benue’s startup ecosystem rather than outside names parachuted in for the event. Solomon Kershima Yateghtegh, founder of SKYHub Nigeria and a 2025 Mandela Washington Fellow, sat on the panel alongside Terese Shadrach Akpem, with Mary Onyagebo Oigocho joining as a guest whose presence organizers singled out as adding real weight to the day. That’s notable continuity for anyone tracking the region’s tech scene closely: Yateghtegh has shown up repeatedly around Benue’s tech infrastructure this year, and having him back as a judge for Pitch Friday’s second episode suggests the same small circle of builders and mentors is showing up consistently rather than a one-off guest list assembled for a single event.
BenueTech’s programs lead, who goes by Adeke, framed the episode as proof the format is compounding rather than plateauing, calling it bigger, stronger, and more impactful than the debut and pointing to the growing web of judges, mentors, and collaborators now attached to the series as evidence the ecosystem around it is thickening episode by episode. The foundation says it plans to keep expanding its network of Benue founders, deepen its existing collaborations, and push toward bigger stages for the startups coming out of the programme, alongside more direct support of the kind Wellington Workspace and Maxify Global already provided this round.
None of the five startups from this episode are likely to show up in a major funding roundup any time soon, and that’s not really the point yet. What Pitch Friday is actually building, one 100,000 naira prize and one month of free workspace at a time, is a repeatable local pipeline in a part of Nigeria that rarely gets this kind of dedicated startup infrastructure, run by people who keep showing up for it themselves rather than treating it as a one-time initiative.
