The Managing Director of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria, FAAN, Mrs Olubunmi Kuku has stated that the Uber Company exiting Nigeria may be connected to their own economic and regulatory decisions.
Speaking on the sidelines of the maiden induction into the Nigeria Aviation Hall of Fame, NAHF, organised by Co-Founders Mr. Wole Shadare and Mr. Gboyega Adeoye at the Gulf View Hotel, Ikeja, Lagos on Friday, Mrs Kuku noted that though she cannot speak on Uber exit from Nigeria, but that what was important for FAAN is to ensure that it address passenger concerns.
She explained that FAAN received a lot of concerns, especially around the December holiday period, about passengers who took some of the e-hailing services and even the car hire services, who had very terrible experiences.
According to her, some of them went all the way from intimidation to being dropped in other places, and even more extreme situations.
We have situations where some of the Uber and Bolt drivers would get down from their cars under the guise of coming into the airport as e-hailing drivers, and they would join the car hires to charge higher fares. Based on this, it was important, because everybody was complaining about the touting at the airport, that we provided even some sort of regulatory oversight on the car hires.
Kuku pointed out that the App that was developed was strictly to focus on the fact that passengers have visibility on who the car hire companies are, so that passengers know who the driver that is taking them from point A to point B is.
She said FAAN does not collect money on behalf of the driver as those car hire drivers are not FAAN drivers, adding that all they do is to give passengers a sample of the rates based on the destination that they are going to.
She noted that the car hires by nature have always charged a higher fare, because their reason is they’re only going from one point to the airport and returning to the airport.
In her words: “It is the choice of the passenger, whether you want to pre-book your cars, whether you want to use the e-hailing app, or you want to use the car hires. We have no jurisdiction over that. The only thing that I have a responsibility to do is to ensure that you have visibility over who is driving you and those within our airport. One of the things that we were struggling with the e-hailing companies was largely around liability clauses. So they wanted us to give them dedicated pick-up zones, which we agreed to, but we also wanted them to take responsibilities for the drivers. But we were told that those drivers are not the drivers of Uber, rather they’re independent drivers. So any safety concerns that we have, they wanted the passengers to use the safety features. They did not want to take up that responsibility, and we had a major issue with that. That’s all I’m going to say about that matter. Again, I’m sure that they had their own reason, and I know that they had been considering exiting Nigeria for a while, which is indeed why we had a stumbling point with them. So it has nothing to do with that”.
She continued that: ” Again, the airport is just a small jurisdiction of the area under the cover within Nigeria”.
