Uber and the cost of Nigeria’s trust deficit

In Nigeria, ordering an Uber often meant opening the app, switching the payment method to cash and waiting for the inevitable question: “cash or card?” Sometimes the driver accepted the booking but later explained that the fare displayed in the app did not work for him.

After 12 years, Uber wound down its Nigerian operations on September 2. It cited a review of its investment priorities across Africa. The company also left Uganda that day and Tanzania in January, following a dispute with regulators over fixed fares. It exited Côte d’Ivoire in 2025, leaving Abidjan to Yango. In less than two years, half of its African footprint had disappeared.

The fare problem was not simply a matter of drivers distrusting passengers. The removal of the fuel subsidy in 2023 raised operating costs, while drivers spent years challenging commissions of up to 25 percent. They protested in 2017, 2023 and 2025, and the Public Complaints Commission directed the Federal Capital Territory administration to intervene in July.

Drivers could not renegotiate with the platform, so they renegotiated with passengers at the roadside. That turned a routine pricing dispute into a breakdown of the platform’s authority. Uber still matched riders and drivers, but its displayed price no longer settled the transaction. Once the fare became a suggestion, the company was generating leads rather than setting terms.

That weakened the service’s value and left it exposed to cheaper competitors. InDrive made negotiation its central feature, allowing passengers to name a fare while drivers accepted or countered. Uber’s Nigerian withdrawal therefore reflects more than a corporate retreat. It shows what happens when the part of a platform that requires trust, the agreed price, stops working.