Bolt says it has sharply reduced the number of Nigerian drivers taking passengers off its platform, but the practice has exposed a deeper dispute over who bears the cost of running a ride-hailing business.
By July 2025, Bolt said offline trips in Nigeria had fallen 42% after it tightened monitoring and penalties for drivers who moved rides outside the app.
The company argues that off-platform trips expose both drivers and passengers to greater risk because tracking, emergency assistance and other safety tools no longer apply.
Drivers have a different problem.
Bolt currently charges a 20% commission on the final price of rides in Nigeria, including cash and card trips. The fee does not apply to tips, bonuses and some additional charges.
For drivers paying for fuel, repairs, tyres, insurance and, in some cases, vehicle financing, avoiding that commission can make an offline trip more attractive.
That puts Bolt’s safety policy directly against the economics of the work.
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Why drivers take trips offline
An offline trip usually starts on the app.
A driver accepts a passenger request, then asks the passenger to cancel the Bolt trip and pay directly. The driver keeps the full negotiated fare instead of owing Bolt its commission.
Bolt loses revenue from the transaction. The passenger and driver also leave the protections attached to the platform.
Bolt Nigeria General Manager Osi Oguah said in 2025 that trips outside the app remove access to safety features and increase exposure to disputes and other incidents. The company has cited fare disputes and violence among the risks associated with unrecorded rides.
Bolt’s response has included real-time monitoring and sanctions against accounts it identifies as moving transactions off-platform. Drivers can face suspension or other penalties.
The company says the measures worked.
It reported a 42% reduction in offline rides and increased use of its safety tools. Bolt said use of its Trusted Contacts feature rose from 7,839 users in January 2025 to 31,216 in June, while 5,568 Nigerian riders had activated its Pick-Up Code feature.
Those figures are Bolt’s own data.
The company has not published enough information to determine how much of the reduction came from drivers abandoning offline trips altogether, rather than changing how they arranged them.
The 20% at the centre of the dispute
Bolt’s Nigerian driver guide says the company takes 20% of the final fare on each ride.
The company says drivers still retain most of what passengers pay. In February 2026, Bolt used a ₦5,000 Lagos trip to argue that a driver receives more than 75% of the total fare after platform charges and statutory deductions.
Drivers say that calculation does not capture what happens after the trip ends.
They pay for the car. They buy the fuel. They replace the parts. They absorb much of the cost when the vehicle is off the road.
Those costs became harder to carry after Nigeria removed its petrol subsidy and inflation pushed up the price of vehicle maintenance.
The Amalgamated Union of App-Based Transporters of Nigeria, or AUATON, said in March 2026 that fares had failed to keep pace with fuel, maintenance and other operating expenses.
The union said drivers were working long hours while commissions and costs reduced what remained from their fares.
Bolt has previously acknowledged the pressure from fuel costs but argues that fares cannot simply rise without regard for what passengers can afford. Its Nigeria management has said pricing has to balance driver earnings with enough rider demand to keep trips flowing.
That leaves the platform managing two customers with opposing interests. Passengers want lower fares. Drivers want higher earnings. Bolt earns when enough of them agree to transact through the app.
Drivers took the dispute off the road
By March 2026, the argument had moved beyond complaints. Ride-hailing drivers in Lagos staged a three-day strike across platforms including Bolt, Uber, inDrive and LagRide.
AUATON cited low fares, rising fuel and maintenance costs and difficult working conditions. Drivers demanded higher fares, lower commissions and better protections.
The disagreement was not limited to Bolt. But Bolt’s crackdown on offline trips matters because one of the ways some drivers had tried to protect their earnings was being closed off.
A driver who takes a passenger outside the app avoids the platform commission. Bolt sees that as a safety and platform-integrity problem.
The driver may see the same transaction as a way to keep more of the fare. Both can be true. That is why penalties alone cannot settle the dispute.
Lagos lawmakers have also stepped in
The tension has attracted regulatory attention.
In June 2025, the Lagos State House of Assembly summoned Bolt, Uber, inDrive, Rida and LagRide following a petition from AUATON.
The union wanted lawmakers to examine driver contracts, earnings, safety and what it described as labour-rights problems in the sector.
Drivers were still pressing for intervention in 2026.
Some began discussing the possibility of building locally controlled ride-hailing platforms that would give drivers greater influence over commissions, fares and operating rules.
Whether such platforms could attract enough riders, finance technology and maintain safety standards is a separate question.
The interest itself says something about the relationship between drivers and the companies whose apps distribute their work.
Drivers provide the vehicles and absorb much of the operating cost. The platforms control pricing systems, access to customers and the rules governing transactions.
That imbalance sits behind many of the arguments over commissions and deactivation.
Bolt has reason to keep the transaction inside the app
The safety case is only part of Bolt’s interest in offline rides. Bolt earns its commission when the transaction remains on the platform.
An offline trip uses Bolt to find the customer but moves the payment outside the system.
The company therefore loses revenue while still bearing some of the cost of acquiring the rider and maintaining the marketplace. It also loses visibility over what happens during the trip.
For passengers, the consequences can be more immediate. A ride outside the app can remove live location tracking, trip records, emergency features and other protections Bolt attaches to an active booking.
That makes the company’s opposition to offline trips commercially rational as well as safety-driven.
For drivers, the calculation starts somewhere else: what remains after the commission and the cost of operating the car.
The earnings numbers need context
Bolt said in August 2025 that its top 50 Nigerian drivers earned an average of ₦9.6 million in gross trip revenue and bonuses during the first half of that year, equivalent to about ₦1.6 million a month.
Those were the platform’s highest earners, not a measure of what a typical driver made. Gross revenue is also different from take-home income.
Fuel, maintenance, financing and other expenses still have to be paid. The distinction matters because headline driver earnings can look substantial without showing the cost required to generate them.
A driver operating a financed vehicle for long hours has a different profit calculation from someone who already owns a fuel-efficient car. Bolt’s own driver materials say earnings vary according to location, demand, activity and vehicle category.
There is no single Nigerian Bolt-driver income.
Uber’s exit raises the stakes
The ride-hailing market that has changed again.
Uber stopped operating in Nigeria on September 2, 2026 after 12 years in the country. The company said the decision followed a review of its business priorities and investment focus in Africa. It did not blame driver protests or fare disputes for the exit.
Bolt has said it has no plan to leave Nigeria. Uber’s departure nevertheless reduces the number of large international platforms competing for Nigerian drivers and passengers.
For drivers who already use several apps to find the best available fare, one major option has disappeared. For Bolt, that makes the relationship with its Nigerian driver base more consequential.
Its campaign against offline trips has already shown that a platform can change driver behaviour when it controls access to customers.
