Third-party trip data: Uber paid Nigerian drivers up to 23% more than riders were charged on some short trips

Convert Obi's finding into a take rate and it comes out near minus 23%: on the short trips the aggregator measured, every 100 a passenger paid went back out as 123 to the driver ^[5][1]. Above 12 miles, Uber adjusted the pattern ^[6]. The report puts no figure on what Nigeria cost Uber. The per-driver side is smaller than that percentage suggests, because a typical Nigerian Uber driver averaged 130 rides over the first seven months of 2026, about 19 a month, fewer than one a day ^[7][2].

The subsidy was the price of getting a car to show up. "Pay had to be subsidized to make drivers willing to take rides. There was just no way for Uber to dig itself out of this pattern," Ashwini Anburajan, Obi's chief executive, told Semafor ^[11]. She also said demand in Nigeria was low and the political and economic climate was not helping ^[10]. Obi's report found that after 12 years Uber still did not have enough active passengers in Nigeria, and that high inflation and currency depreciation had made the ones it had increasingly price sensitive ^[13].

If 130 rides is just over a tenth of what Uber's South African drivers did in the same seven months, the comparison is roughly 1,300 rides, about 186 a month ^[7][3]. Nigerian drivers nonetheless kept a larger share of each fare paid than their South African counterparts, Obi said ^[8].

InDrive, on the same roads and the same fares, did not use the short-ride subsidy, according to Obi ^[6]. Bolt held 60% of the Nigerian market by the time Uber left, on Obi's count ^[16], and Sensor Tower put active Nigerian users at 3.3 million last December, more than six times Uber's ^[17]. That puts Uber under about 550,000 ^[4]. Semafor reports that some analysts credit local features for closing the gap: InDrive's bargaining tool, Bolt's flexibility on cancellations, car models and payment options ^[19].

Nigeria analysts have cited a "challenging macroeconomic environment" as the root cause ^[15], with fuel up more than five-fold since the government subsidy ended and the naira down more than 70% over the period ^[14]. And the exit landed the same day Uber announced a global restructuring that cut 10% of staff ^[2], while the company kept four African markets including South Africa and Kenya ^[3]. Obi is a third-party price and trip aggregator ^[4], not Uber's ledger, and if the 23% gap is driver incentive spend booked as acquisition cost, Uber could have switched it off without leaving. The sample also spans two platforms: more than 20,000 rides from more than 300 drivers on Uber and InDrive works out near 67 rides each, below the 130 the report attributes to a typical Uber driver ^[9][5].

What the evidence supports is narrower than the leading-role claim: a platform paying above the fare to fill short rides in a market where the rival taking 60% did not ^[5][6][16]. Whether that decided the exit, or made Nigeria the cheapest line to cut inside a 10% global reduction, the record does not settle ^[2]. Anburajan said a uniform model has its place: "Keeping your business model and experience for users and drivers relatively uniform across markets can work if your target riders are international travelers who will place value on an experience that's the same from one country to the next," she said ^[20].