Expert blames Uber’s Nigeria exit partly on market-share losses to Bolt and inDrive

Uber’s Nigerian business was “brutally TKO’d by Indrive and Bolt,” technology expert Femi Bejide said after the ride-hailing company announced its planned exit from the country.

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Uber exited because, amongst other things, they lost market share, brutally TKO’d by Indrive and Bolt. Full stop and full stop.

Bejide, a software and solutions architect, said Uber had fallen to third place in Nigeria’s ride-hailing market because its business model did not adapt quickly enough to changing local conditions. He also said the company’s global strategy played a role in the decision.

“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 in a LinkedIn post.

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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.

Uber announced that it would cease operations in Nigeria and Uganda on September 2, 2026, after 12 years in the Nigerian market. The company said the move followed a review of its “evolving business priorities and investment focus” across Africa. It launched in Lagos in 2014 and expanded to Abuja in 2016.

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Meaning, as Uber global downsized, Nigeria operations became fair game.

Uber said its departure from Nigeria would not affect operations in Egypt, Ghana, Kenya or South Africa. Bejide said the company’s global downsizing had made its Nigerian operations vulnerable to wider restructuring. He said his team had been tracking industry data and would release a report on the sector.

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Goodbye Uber, We love you. But las las Nigeria was nothing more than a rounding error in your $60b global revenue.