Nigerians and South Africans are at each other’s throats once again. Following the quelling of the battle for the soul of Chidimma Adetshina, the warriors appear to have found a new battleground for their war of attrition and this new battleground appears to be nowhere else than on the apps of leading ride-hailing companies, Bolt and Uber.
According to information available online, South Africans started the trend of sitting in the comfort of their homes and offices and sending fake ride orders to Nigeria. The intent is to target Nigerian e-hailing drivers, sending them on false errands to particular pick-up locations only to cancel the rides when the driver gets there.
In some of the screenshots seen online, the South Africans who ordered the fake rides can be seen mocking their Nigerian victims. They made references to the recent saga of the Nigerian-born South African, Chidimma Adetshina who pulled out of the Miss Universe, South African beauty pageant after xenophobic attacks. They also mockingly communicated to the Nigerian drivers in local South African languages just to continue poking fun.
The situation is made worse by the fact that Nigeria is currently going through a cost of living crisis made worse by a biting fuel scarcity. This means the drivers are actually losing a lot on such false ride orders.
But Nigerians have decided to respond and are threatening to take it even a notch higher. Not just content with wasting the South African drivers’ effort and fuel, the Nigerian fake riders have decided to actually waste their time by having actual conversations with them, with real albeit unrealistic locations for the riders. Imagine telling a driver in Cape Town that you are in the Illorin post office and the driver actually thinking that is a real place in Cape Town.
One fake Nigerian rider even said he was looking to transport chopped human body parts to which the South African driver agreed to help him transport the dismembered bodies of two people for an improved fee. At one point, the driver was even advising the Nigerian rider on the best way to package the butchered bodies in a black bag, stating that it is easier that way.
“South African Bolt drivers go too suffer this morning. We go lower until we find oil,” a Nigerian fake rider said.
Bolt and Uber apps might need some review
In the end, this speaks to how easy it is to manipulate the apps of both Uber and Bolt such that they could be deployed for such mischief. Understandably, the idea is for someone in one country to be able to book rides for someone else in another country without hassles. For instance, a Nigerian based in the USA can easily book a ride for their aged parent in Nigeria. However, situations like these are always prone to happen.
This reporter tried it as well and it was really easy to do. Pretty much type any location in South Africa as your pick-up point and another location as your drop off and just like that, you are in. Interestingly there is no way to detect these fake ride orders. The question, therefore is, are cross-border ride orders considerable and profitable enough to shrug off the risk of having these kinds of mischief?
Thus, Uber and Bolt probably need to look into their analytics to determine how many cross-country rides they get and if they are considerable enough to risk these mischiefs. If cross-border ride orders are not that popular, then they may have to adopt the InDrive strategy where the country registered on the app is the only country it would allow rides from.
This reporter reached out to both Bolt and Uber for their responses and will update the story when he gets them.
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