If Uber Had Stayed in Nigeria: The People and Payroll Reality Under ILO Convention No. 193
Uber has left Nigeria. But the bigger question for the future of work is what would have happened if it had stayed.
After 12 years in Nigeria, Uber officially wound down its operations in the country on 2 September 2026. The company described the decision as part of a review of its African operations and investment priorities. The exit comes against a backdrop of rising fuel costs, inflation, currency volatility and increasing competition in Nigeria’s ride-hailing market.
But there is another development that makes this moment particularly interesting for Human Resources, payroll, employment policy and the future of work.
In June 2026, the International Labour Conference adopted ILO Convention No. 193 on Decent Work in the Platform Economy, the first international labour standard dedicated specifically to platform work.
So, had Uber remained in Nigeria and had Nigeria moved towards ratifying and implementing Convention No. 193, what would the people and payroll implications have looked like?
The answer is more complicated than simply putting thousands of drivers on a conventional payroll.
The real HR question was never simply: “Are Uber drivers employees?”
For years, one of the defining questions around platform businesses has been whether the people providing services through the platform are employees, independent contractors or some other category of worker.
Convention No. 193 does not simply declare all platform workers to be employees.
Instead, it requires countries to ensure that employment status is correctly determined, taking into account the facts surrounding how the work is performed and how remuneration is structured, rather than relying solely on the label contained in a contract.
That distinction is important for Nigeria.
Uber’s business model depends on a platform connecting riders with drivers. The company does not necessarily need every driver to become a conventional employee for Convention No. 193 to have consequences.
The Convention creates obligations around the quality, transparency and protection of platform work, irrespective of whether the worker is ultimately classified as an employee or self-employed.
That changes the HR conversation.
1. Payroll would become a much bigger question than salary
If some Uber drivers were legally determined to be employees, the financial implications would extend far beyond the amount transferred to a driver’s account.
The company would potentially have to consider the full employment cost associated with:
– minimum wage requirements;
– applicable payroll taxes;
– statutory deductions;
– pension and social security obligations;
– employment injury protection;
– paid employment-related entitlements where applicable;
– working-time considerations;
– occupational safety and health obligations;
– employee relations and dispute resolution;
– termination-related obligations.
Convention No. 193 specifically requires protections for platform workers in employment relationships around remuneration and social security. It also provides that workers in employment relationships should receive at least the applicable statutory or negotiated minimum wage, excluding tips, and should be compensated, according to national law and practice, for expenses or costs incurred in performing their work.
That last point is particularly significant for ride-hailing.
Who bears the cost of fuel?
Who bears the cost of vehicle maintenance?
Who pays for insurance?
Who absorbs the cost of downtime?
Who carries the economic risk when demand falls?
These are not simply operational questions.
Under a more mature platform-work regulatory framework, they become people-cost questions.
2. The “driver earnings” conversation would have to become a “total reward” conversation
One of the interesting consequences of Convention No. 193 is that remuneration becomes more transparent.
The Convention requires digital labour platforms to provide workers with accurate and understandable information about their remuneration and any deductions.
For a platform such as Uber, that could mean greater transparency around the economics of every trip.
A driver should be able to understand:
What did the passenger pay?
What portion was allocated to the driver?
What deductions were made?
What fees were charged?
What costs are effectively being borne by the driver?
What is the driver’s actual net earning after work-related costs?
This is where traditional payroll thinking becomes inadequate.
The platform economy requires us to move from gross pay to net economic value of work.
A driver who receives ₦100,000 in weekly trip earnings but spends a significant proportion on fuel, vehicle financing, maintenance, insurance, data and other operating costs does not experience ₦100,000 as disposable income.
The future of platform remuneration therefore cannot be assessed solely by looking at what the platform pays.
It must examine the economics of performing the work.
3. Social security could become one of the biggest structural changes
Perhaps the most important people implication is social protection.
Convention No. 193 requires Member States to ensure that digital platform workers have access to social security protection on terms no less favourable than those applicable to other workers with the same employment status.
This creates an interesting Nigerian challenge.
If a driver is an employee, the answer is relatively familiar. The employer has statutory obligations associated with employment.
But what happens when the driver remains self-employed?
This is where Convention No. 193 becomes particularly interesting.
It explicitly recognises platform work in both the formal and informal economy and encourages measures that facilitate formalisation, including registration of self-employed platform workers.
So the future does not necessarily have to be:
employee versus contractor.
There is potentially a third conversation:
How do we build portable social protection around people whose work is flexible, independent and platform-mediated?
For Nigeria, this could become a major policy opportunity.
A driver could remain economically independent while having access to mechanisms for pension, employment injury protection and other appropriate forms of social protection.
That would be a much more sophisticated response to the gig economy than simply trying to force every platform worker into a traditional employment model.
4. The algorithm would become part of the employee-relations framework
This may be the most underestimated implication.
Uber’s platform does not simply connect people.
Technology can influence who gets access to work, how work is allocated, how performance is evaluated and what happens when a driver’s account is suspended or deactivated.
Convention No. 193 specifically addresses automated systems and algorithmic management.
Platforms would need to inform workers about the use of automated systems that monitor or evaluate work or generate decisions affecting working conditions or access to work.
More importantly, where an automated decision adversely affects a worker, the Convention provides for access to an explanation and review mechanisms, including where amounts are not paid or an account is suspended, deactivated or terminated. It also calls for appropriate human involvement.
Think about the implications.
A driver wakes up one morning and discovers that their account has been deactivated.
Under a purely technology-led operating model, that may feel like an automated customer-service issue.
Under the emerging platform-work framework, it becomes an employee relations, fairness and due-process issue.
The HR department of the future may therefore need to understand not only employment law and payroll.
It may need to understand algorithms.
5. “Deactivation” could become the new disciplinary hearing
Traditional organisations have disciplinary processes.
There are allegations, investigations, hearings, decisions and appeals.
Platform businesses have historically had a much more technology-driven approach to access.
An account can potentially be restricted or deactivated based on data, ratings, complaints or other platform signals.
Convention No. 193 pushes this conversation towards procedural fairness.
Where automated decision-making results in significant adverse consequences, workers should have access to explanations and review mechanisms.
That means the future platform HR function may need something that looks remarkably familiar to traditional employee relations:
algorithmic grievance management.
The question would no longer simply be:
“Was the driver deactivated?”
It would become:
“Why was the driver deactivated, what data informed the decision, was the process fair, and can the decision be reviewed by a human?”
That is a fundamentally different people-management architecture.
6. Data privacy would become an HR issue
Platform workers generate enormous amounts of data.
Location.
Trip history.
Ratings.
Working patterns.
Customer interactions.
Performance indicators.
Acceptance behaviour.
Cancellation behaviour.
Vehicle information.
Potentially even behavioural patterns inferred from the platform.
Convention No. 193 requires safeguards around the processing of platform workers’ personal data and provides rights concerning access, rectification and erasure, subject to applicable retention requirements.
For HR leaders, this is important because people analytics is becoming inseparable from data governance.
The question is no longer only whether an organisation has enough data to manage its workforce.
It is whether it has the right to collect, analyse and use that data in the way it does.
7. The payroll team would need to understand the entire worker ecosystem
Another important feature of the Convention is that it recognises the role of intermediaries.
Platform businesses do not always operate through a simple company-to-worker relationship. There may be fleet owners, vehicle owners, outsourcing arrangements, intermediaries and other entities between the platform and the person actually performing the work.
Convention No. 193 requires countries to determine and allocate responsibilities between platforms and intermediaries where intermediaries are permitted.
That creates an important Nigerian compliance question:
Who actually bears the employment obligation?
The platform?
The fleet partner?
The vehicle owner?
The intermediary?
Or some combination of them?
This matters because ambiguity in the operating model can quickly become ambiguity in payroll, tax, social security and employment liability.
8. The cost of compliance would not necessarily mean “put everyone on payroll”
This is where I think the conversation needs more nuance.
There is a tendency to assume that decent work means converting all gig workers into employees.
Convention No. 193 does not require that.
It explicitly allows different employment classifications and does not prohibit self-employment or particular platform business models.
The challenge is to ensure that the classification is genuine and that workers receive the protections appropriate to that status.
For Uber, therefore, the strategic question would have been less about:
“How many drivers do we put on payroll?”
and more about:
“What is the true employment and economic relationship between Uber, its intermediaries and the people performing the work?”
That is a much more difficult question.
And potentially a much more expensive one if the operating model does not withstand scrutiny.
9. Nigeria would have had to decide what platform work means
There is an even bigger issue here.
Convention No. 193 is not automatically binding on Nigeria simply because it was adopted by the International Labour Conference.
Like other ILO Conventions, it becomes legally binding for a Member State after ratification and entry into force for that country.
As of now, Nigeria’s ratified ILO framework does not include Convention No. 193. Nigeria has, however, ratified a number of relevant labour standards, including the fundamental conventions on freedom of association, collective bargaining, equality and occupational safety and health.
This creates an opportunity.
Nigeria does not have to wait until platform work becomes a bigger labour-market crisis before developing a framework for it.
The country can begin answering the questions now.
Who is a platform worker?
When is a platform worker an employee?
How should self-employed platform workers access social protection?
Who bears employment-related responsibilities where intermediaries are involved?
How should algorithms affecting work be governed?
What constitutes fair deactivation?
How should platform earnings and deductions be disclosed?
How do we protect workers without destroying the flexibility that made platform work attractive in the first place?
These are not Uber questions.
They are Nigeria’s future-of-work questions.
The Uber exit should not end the conversation
Uber’s departure is understandably being discussed as a business story.
It is also a labour-market story.
A major global platform has exited a market after 12 years, at the same moment the international labour system has produced its first dedicated standard for platform work.
That coincidence should make HR professionals, policymakers, technology companies and business leaders pay attention.
Because Uber will not be the last platform.
Ride-hailing is only one manifestation of a much larger transformation.
Delivery platforms.
Freelance marketplaces.
Digital creators.
Online tutors.
Professional services platforms.
Home-service platforms.
AI-enabled work marketplaces.
The boundaries between employee, contractor, entrepreneur and platform worker are becoming increasingly fluid.
And our people systems have not always kept pace.
The real lesson for HR leaders
For me, the most important lesson from Convention No. 193 is not that platforms will suddenly have enormous payroll bills.
It is that the definition of “payroll” itself is changing.
Payroll used to mean:
salary + deductions + benefits + statutory contributions.
The platform economy forces us to think more broadly:
remuneration + work-related costs + social protection + algorithmic management + data rights + occupational safety + due process + access to justice.
That is a much bigger people architecture.
The future CHRO may therefore have to sit at the intersection of:
HR + employment law + tax + payroll + technology + data governance + AI + public policy.
And the organisations that understand this early will have an advantage.
Not because regulation is something to fear.
But because decent work is increasingly becoming part of the operating model.
Uber may have left Nigeria.
But the platform economy is not leaving.
And the conversation about how we design decent, productive and sustainable work within it has only just begun.