Nigeria’s regulator asks Uber about the services it did not deliver before leaving

Nigeria’s Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission is investigating Uber’s abrupt exit, particularly unfulfilled services to customers, after the company shut down without warning as part of a global review that cut 3,300 jobs. The main beneficiary is Estonia’s Bolt, and EU platform rules would have required 30 days’ notice to drivers.

Nigeria’s competition and consumer protection regulator is investigating Uber’s abrupt departure from the country, Bloomberg reported. The company left last week without telling anyone first.

Officials at the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission are “looking into the manner of their exit, particularly in respect of unfulfilled services to the customers“, its chief executive Tunji Bello said in a text message.

Uber shut down in Nigeria and Uganda on Wednesday, as part of a global shake-up that also cut 3,300 jobs, about 10% of its workforce worldwide.

Riders and drivers found out when the service stopped, and Bloomberg reported confusion on both sides of the app.

Uber did not respond to a request for comment sent on Sunday, and has given no reason for leaving Africa’s most populous nation. In the same week it put $100M into Atoms, the company run by its own founder Travis Kalanick.

It launched in Lagos in 2014 and was dominant for years, in a country where a decade of double-digit inflation has eroded purchasing power and pushed millions into poverty.

The company that stands to gain most from the exit is European, which is the part worth noticing from here.

Bolt, based in Estonia, is among the rivals Bloomberg says have eaten into Uber’s once-dominant Nigerian share. It now inherits a market of more than 200 million people with its largest competitor gone.

TNW argued in 2019 that Bolt would not beat Uber by copying it, and would have to forge its own path. In Lagos it may not need to do either.

The manner of the exit is also the sort of thing European rules address directly, though not here.

The platform-to-business regulation requires at least 30 days’ notice before an online intermediation service is terminated entirely for a business user, with a statement of reasons on a durable medium setting out the specific facts behind the decision.

Its exceptions cover legal obligations, imperative national law and business users who repeatedly breach the terms. A commercial decision to leave a market is not among them, and drivers are business users.

None of that reaches Lagos. Nigeria’s regulator is asking the question anyway, under its own consumer law, and Uber has left African markets before.