How to get the cheapest motorcycle-hailing service

Lagosians commuting from Iyana-Ipaja to Ikeja-Along axis didn’t have it pleasant last week as there was a resurgence of traffic congestion along the route, a trend that hasn’t been witnessed in a while, Bosun Olanrewaju, a 32-year-old man, said last Friday.

While the horrible traffic gridlock, which spanned through the week, held thousands of workers and students hostage, making them resume late at work and delaying some behind schedules for key appointments. Despite the tacky state of the road, some had a smooth ride at almost no cost.

“This is a time you wish you had a helicopter,” Olanrewaju said. But how the 32-year-old man, with a monthly remuneration slightly above the newly but yet-to-be, implemented minimum wage of N30, 000, would procure the much-desired luxury makes one thinks of when pigs fly and hell freezes over.

The story is not different from that of Omolara Balogun who sells clothing materials in Oshodi, but has to ply the route from Abule Egba where she resides. The woman spent more than double what she would regularly spend during the period.

“I don’t mind how much it would cost me to get to Oshodi in order to attend to my customers,” the trader lamented. “My worry now is that, despite paying exorbitantly for transportation, we are still trapped in this traffic.”

While Balogun can conveniently pay any amount to get to her shop, she was not aware of the various e-hailing platforms that operate within Lagos.

But for Olanrewaju who had budgeted N200 to get to his office as expected for each of the weekdays, he had only three choices. One was boarding a commercial transport bus which travels along the route at an average speed of 250 metres per hour; the second was using one of the ride-hailing service platforms currently operating in Lagos, or waking up earlier to trek the distance.

Of these choices, using one of the ride-hailing service platforms appeared unrealistic for the young man, especially considering the financial implication on his budget.

But people like Bosun might find respite in OPay’s entry into the Lagos motorcycle-hailing ecosystem, joining the competitors such as MAX Okada, SafeBoda, and Gokada.

OPay, owned by Opera, has a ride-hailing platform called ORide. Checks by BusinessDay show the platform is one of the features on the OPay mobile application. Other features on the mobile app are fund transfer, which allows users to transfer money, order food from restaurants, pay electricity bills, mobile airtime recharge, sports betting and manage mobile data subscription and pay television.

ORide allows users to book for a ride using mobile application, but the strategy being deployed by ORide to have a reasonable share of the market is its affordability. Riders can pay N200 for each trip that costs less than N2, 000. Unlike other motorcycle-hailing start-ups in the country, OPay only accepts online payment, indicating riders must have at least N200 before embarking on any ride on the platform. In June, it cost as cheap as N100 to ride with OPay.

Nothing serves Olanrewaju better right now in shuttling between his home and office this July, but the concern remains how the man and several other people faced with this gridlock would cope should OPay fail to sustain the customer-acquiring strategy or Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu shuns the traffic situation.

While this looks impressive, the intent behind this strategy of subsidising riders’ payment may not be unconnected to creating enough customer base for its payment channel where users can perform myriads of payment transaction.