Mr Viral
On March 4, 2025, Adetunji ‘Teejay’ Opayele, Bumpa’s chief technical officer, was returning from a gym in Victoria Island, Lagos, when a careless driver hit him. He died in the early hours of the following day from a lack of timely medical intervention, a cruel end for the 32-year-old engineer, whose startup worked to digitise e-commerce for thousands of informal traders across the country.
The general public learned of Teejay’s death after the “Get Teejay Justice” petition went viral online. It detailed the negligence of the perpetrator, Biola Adams-Odutayo, the hospitals that denied him treatment, and the levity of the ensuing punishment for the driver. It also lists several demands, including that Adams-Odutayo, who was previously arraigned on March 12 and released on bail, be charged with manslaughter, rather than the lesser offense of reckless driving. Over 68,000 people have signed the petition and are closely following the case, furious that systemic failures within the country’s healthcare and justice systems directly contributed to the death of a promising innovator.
Opayele’s legacy extends beyond the algorithms he engineered. He had a voracious appetite for life and a generosity that those closest to him described as bordering on selflessness.
“Teejay was the sort of person who would give you his last ₦200,000 ($130) if you told him you needed it for a flight,” an extended family member who asked not to be named due to privacy concerns, told TechCabal.
Teejay’s early years
Opayele’s life unfolded in Lagos, with a childhood marked by a quiet curiosity and a proclivity for solving problems, foreshadowing his later life as a software engineer. A relative, who asked to remain unnamed to protect their privacy, recalls him retrofitting cardboard boxes with rotors and tyres from toy cars, and making his skateboard with wheels from worn luggage.
“People with mobile phone issues would queue at the gates of their house; he would fix their problem and they’d be on their way,” recalled the extended family member, who lived with Opayele’s family for some years.
Despite his tinkering, Opayele opted to study law at Obafemi Awolowo University, and on the side, began learning programming languages like PHP and Linux. A little over a year into his degree, he landed a job as a website developer at the school’s radio station, Great FM. A relative recalls him putting up flyers advertising his web development services.
“He was super intelligent, even among his law peers,” says Femi Fadahunsi, a faculty mate who first met Opayel in 2011.
Towards the end of that year, he was only sporadically attending classes, Uyoyo Ogedegbe, another coursemate, recalled in an interview with TechCabal. Fadahunsi suggested this stemmed from disillusionment with university education.
“I guess he saw the light earlier than I did; that studying law was eventually a dead end,” says Fadahunsi, who now works as a marketing specialist.
Ogedegbe, studying law to follow in his father’s footsteps, attributed it to Opayele’s personality as an independent thinker who “wanted more.”
Opaleye eventually dropped out but remained on campus.
“He was always going somewhere with his HP backpack, containing a large laptop, as he often carried then, and his glasses, just heading to the computer lab to program all night, and you’d mostly only see him in those places,” Fadahunsi recalled.
By his third year, when peers like Ogedegbe also started dabbling into tech, learning to build e-commerce platforms, Opayele was already far ahead, securing paid gigs and supporting himself financially.
During this time, in 2013, Opayele met Kelvin Umechukwu, who’d become his co-founder eight years later. Umechukwu recalls how quickly they bonded during their first meeting somewhere close to the Student Union Building (SUB).
“I decided that we should not eat anything, and we just sat talking about our work and exchanging ideas,” Umechuwku told TechCabal in an interview.
Both were similar: optimistic about technology, building their ideas, and popular for supporting others in their tech journeys. They had gained campus-wide fame as innovators: Umechukwu’s most popular platform at the time was Voice of Informed Student Social (VOISS), a Facebook-like social app that allowed students to connect and access lecture notes in PDF, audio, or video formats. Opayele had also built several things, including a platform known at the time as “I Rep OAU”, Umechukwu recalled.
Adetunji ‘Teejay Opayele, wearing a blue shirt and glasses, and his PayPanda team members in 2015. Image Source: Techpoint
“He always had ideas, and one was for a reverse marketplace where the buyer, having the demand and money, could post a description of the item they wanted, and sellers could bid for their purchase,” Umechukwu said.
Beyond ideas, Opayele also possessed staggering gumption. Umechukwu recalls a back-and-forth Opayele had with the university administration about the official student platform. Opayele believed he could build something better and told the university they would have to overhaul the entire legacy system, as it was obsolete, Umechukwu said with a hint of amusement in his voice as he recalled the incident from over a decade ago. They didn’t budge, but it was one of many instances that demonstrated Opayele’s desire to improve things.
Opaleye’s bravado wasn’t all talk. In 2015, Paypanda, an eight-person team he was part of, won first place and ₦1 million ($5,000*) in a competition co-organised by Oracle. Their technology was an online escrow service that held funds paid for merchandise until the buyer was satisfied, based on the seller’s terms of agreement.
After the competition, Opayele secured another job as a software engineer at E-Settlement Limited, where he helped build fintech and mobile money solutions.
Building Bumpa
By the time Umechukwu finished university, Opayele had taken another leap forward and founded a hosting service, HostCabal. Umechukwu says Opayele started the business due to dissatisfaction with local cloud providers at the time. He hired Umechukwu, who had built a community of developers (HostCabal’s target customers) at Consonance, to attract users, while he managed the backend.
Adetunji ‘Teejay’ Opayele with Kelvin Umechkwu and some friends in a promotional video for HostCabal in 2018.
Image source: HostCabal’s Twitter page.
Later, Opayele and Umechukwu launched SalesCabal, a side project that would evolve into Bumpa. It stemmed from a straightforward observation: their customers, who were mostly developers, were repeatedly creating similar websites for clients, mostly e-commerce ones. HostCabal also started to get direct requests for website development services, and the requested sites were much alike. They decided to create SalesCabal to offer a standardised, easily replicable site. With 1,700 sign-ups, the company was handling 1,000 monthly orders. They later realised they needed a mobile app store, but neither was a mobile app engineer, so progress halted.
“I was surprised when, out of the blue, after the COVID-19 lockdown, [Opayele] called me to say he had built the mobile app,” Umechukwu recalled. Opayele had taught himself mobile app development during the lockdown. “I think that was when I truly grasped the ingenuity of the person I was working with.”
Adetunji ‘Teejay’ Opayele and Kelvin Umechkwu, now co-founders of Bumpa. Circa 2021. Image source: Twitter
That ingenuity reached merchants like Raffy, an early Bumpa user. She had joined on a friend’s recommendation, which said Bumpa was building for small business owners like her. Raffy mostly dealt with Umechukwu, who passed her feedback to Opayele, but she remembers Opayele from the early days when they visited customers together.
“He was shy and reserved,” she said, recalling a trip to her office. “He gave me a gift on my birthday—I think it was in 2020 or 2021; I’m not certain,” she added.
She observed that he lingered behind the scenes, upgrading the app with customer feedback and our needs.
“Bumpa made my life easy,” she said of the platform, which bundled inventory management, sales, and web hosting into one—tasks that once demanded multiple tools. “I was using other tools before, but Bumpa simplified everything. I started spreading the word—not like an advert, just because it worked.”
They relaunched the service as co-founders in 2021 and renamed the platform Bumpa. It had 7,000 merchants with 30,000 product listings. The company raised a $200,000 pre-seed that same year.
Bumpa took off. Now it is a digital lifeline for over 60,000 brick-and-mortar retailers, enabling them to create storefronts, manage inventory, and boost sales. Since its launch in 2021, the platform has processed over ₦160 billion (~$651,000) in transactions.
Beyond work: A life of adventure and connection
Opayele preferred to work behind the scenes, quietly shaping Bumpa’s technical core, but outside the office, he was a sanguine thrill-seeker—skydiving, riding a power bike, and nurturing a wide circle of friends.
In January 2025, months before his death, he joined fifteen bikers for a ride to Ekiti State, a trip that revealed Opayele as a stickler for road safety codes.
Adetunji ‘Teejay’ Opayele wearing his biker’s gear. Image source: Bumpa
“Not everyone bothers. And that is why I prefer riding with him,” one of the riders on the Ekiti trip nicknamed Aladdin, told TechCabal.
He peppered his fellow thrill-seekers with questions, curious about their lives and ambitions. He offered ideas freely and enthusiastically offered support. Aladdin recalls Opayele lighting up when he shared plans to start an animal farm. Opayele had suggested using AI-powered facial recognition to identify the cows and other ways to use technology to make the work easier.
“He was so enthusiastic, so supportive,” Aladdin told TechCabal.
Another rider, Joshua, recalled a similar enthusiasm when he told Opayele about his furniture business.
“It was only an idea, but Teejay was already trying to place orders,” Joshua said.
The captain of their team, who recalls jolting out of bed around midnight when he heard of Opayele’s accident, described Opayele as generous.
Adetunji ‘Teejay’ Opayele skydiving. Image source: Bumpa
That zest and kindness endeared him to many, especially his co-founder Umechukwu, who says Opayele became an indelible part of his life. The two, who were roommates from 2022 to 2023, were like family to each other, gym partners, and travel mates—it went beyond work. Sometimes, Opaleye’s younger brother introduces himself as Umechukwu’s sibling, the co-founder said.
“He’d bike from the mainland to the island just to gym with us,” Umechukwu says. “That’s why he was out there [the night he was killed].”
Grief, outrage, and demands for justice
The “Get Teejay Justice” petition details the shocking refusal of the driver Biola Adams-Odutayo, a healthcare worker, to transport injured Opayele to the hospital. She allegedly refused due to concerns about blood staining her car, delaying crucial medical assistance.
With no centralised emergency service like 911 in Nigeria—where ambulances are scarce, state-run response systems are unreliable, and better options remain obscure—bystanders scrambled to find transport, ultimately relying on an Uber taxi and minibus.
The petition also revealed that two hospitals rejected Opayele; private facilities in Lagos frequently turn away critical cases due to inadequate equipment, staffing shortages, or demands for upfront payment, squandering vital minutes before a third hospital took him in, too late.
Although he ultimately died from his injuries, Adams-Odutayo was briefly detained and subsequently released on a ₦1 million bail, facing only reckless driving charges instead of manslaughter. The case was adjourned to April 16, according to Benjamin Hundeyin, the Lagos State Police spokesperson.
This incident has sparked widespread outrage, directed at both Adams-Odutayo and the perceived failures of law enforcement.
Friends, family, and the broader community mourned his loss. The “Get Teejay Justice” petition rapidly amassed 70,000 signatures in four days, sharply criticising the driver’s conduct and the perceived leniency of the legal charges.
Remembering Teejay
Online, friends and colleagues have shared condolences and memories, recalling him as a cherished friend, respected leader, and the driving force behind one of Nigeria’s most promising e-commerce ventures. Opayele’s family is devastated by the loss of a son and brother to three siblings, as is his fiancée, whom he frequently visited in Canada.
At a candlelight memorial which held on Friday, March 28, friends left several notes about their most poignant memories of him.
“I remember the first time we met. He took me to his place, showing me his collection of robots. He explained various concepts of robotics to me with so much excitement! That very moment made me realise that he had a fun, innocent spirit that looked forward to the good in the future. Sums up the kind of person he was—a kind, good and hopeful spirit,” Aderinsola wrote.
Aderinsola echoes the thoughts of several friends and family who spoke to TechCabal, emphasising his infectious optimism and generous spirit. Opayele was a man whose ambition was driven by an unshakable belief in a better future—one he would never see, though he built tirelessly towards it.
*Dollar equivalent at the time $1=₦199.1
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