Technology expert Femi Bejide has attributed Uber’s decision to exit Nigeria partly to intense competition from rival ride-hailing platforms Bolt and inDrive, saying the company had lost significant market share in the country.
Bejide, a software and solutions architect, said Uber failed to adapt its business model quickly enough as Nigeria’s ride-hailing market evolved, while changes to the company’s global strategy also contributed to its exit.
“Uber exited because, amongst other things, they lost market Share, brutally TKO’d by Indrive and Bolt. Full stop and full stop,” Bejide said in a LinkedIn post on Thursday.
According to him, Uber had fallen to third place in Nigeria’s ride-hailing market because its model did not evolve at the same pace as its competitors.
“They fell to a distant number 3, majorly because their model didn’t adapt as the our market evolved, in a way like indrive and Bolt are trying, in addition to a recent shift in their global strategy,” he said.
Bejide also linked Uber’s Nigerian exit to the company’s wider global downsizing, saying the restructuring exposed its operations in Nigeria to cuts.
“Meaning, as Uber global downsized, Nigeria operations became fair game,” he said.
He added that his team had been monitoring industry data and would release a report on developments in Nigeria’s ride-hailing sector.
“We have been tracking their data for a bit and in due course will release a profound industry report,” he said.
Bejide’s comments followed Uber’s announcement that it would cease operations in Nigeria and Uganda from September 2, 2026, after 12 years in the Nigerian market.
Uber said the decision followed a review of its “evolving business priorities and investment focus” across Africa.
The company launched in Lagos in 2014 and expanded to Abuja in 2016. It said its departure from Nigeria would not affect operations in other African markets, including Egypt, Ghana, Kenya and South Africa.
Although Uber did not specifically cite competition from Bolt or inDrive as a reason for its departure, Bejide argued that the changing competitive landscape played a major role in the company’s decline in Nigeria.
He described Nigeria’s market conditions as challenging but said the country represented only a small portion of Uber’s global business.
“Goodbye Uber, We love you. But las las Nigeria was nothing more than a rounding error in your $60b global revenue,” he said.
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