Last month, Lagos State officials hailed a new pact with the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW) and the Road Transport Employers Association of Nigeria (RTEAN) as a historic breakthrough to digitise the city’s chaotic danfo (minibus) fleet. Under the deal, both unions signed on to the state’s Bus Industry Transition Programme (BITP), which folds informal operators into a regulated network with digital fare collection.
But a venture-backed startup named GONA unlocked that exact efficiency seven years ago, only to face stiff resistance from those very same unions.
For many years, the danfo ecosystem — a sprawling fleet of yellow minibuses operated by private owners — has been defined by arbitrary fare surges during downpours, high-speed battles for passengers, and an extortionate governance structure enforced by park bosses (agberos) collecting cash levies at bus stops.
In 2018, a group of Chinese tech founders with experience at Huawei Africa, Didi, and
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