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Home HEADLINES Behold an Uber driver - and she’s a lady

Behold an Uber driver – and she’s a lady

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By Pascal Oparada

Slaying comes easy for Ibukun Olukoya if you are chanced to slide into her private world. Her various social media accounts show that she has mastered the art well.

But slaying is not the only thing the 22-year-old knows how to do. She is on the platform of one of the world’s biggest ride hailing app – Uber. She is one of the few ladies who decided to take on the job most people would say is an exclusive preserve of men.

The chatty undergraduate of Lagos State University is surmounting the odds to take her share of the industry. How on earth did she convince someone to allow her drive his/her car on the platform remains a topic for another day.

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What is important is that she has taken on the job head on. And she says her folks are very comfortable with her choice of ‘hustle’.

“Well, aside the fact that there is no job anywhere in the country, I love the flexible work schedule as I plan to resume my studies soon. I’d be funding it myself, I needed to be on the platform that can enable me do both and thanks to Uber, I got my answer”, Olukoya told TheNiche.

In the job dominated by men, Olukoya does not feel intimidated. She says her biggest supporters are men.

“In fact, the level of respect they (men) show throughout in the trip is amazing. I’ll give that to most of our men. We have really good and funny chats on general topics but nothing unpleasant occurred so far”.

But she regrets that she has not gotten that same support from her fellow ladies.

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“But others (mostly women) have had to cancel on me because as soon as my picture appears on my profile, they already believe I am incompetent even without having met me. And they reason they do that remains unknown to me.

“And that makes me really uncomfortable because I feel like women as a community should always have each others’ back no matter what. And this I even like I am at least doing something to help make the world one less of an idle mind and all I ask is a little encouragement from fellow women”, she said.

She said that is also what other ladies on the platform complain about, lack of patronage from fellow women.

Olukoya says she targets from eighty to one hundred thousand naira weekly from her job.

She says she is happy because she helps to facilitate the movement of riders within Lagos while making some money as well.

The bad state of the roads and the current fuel scarcity remains a daunting task, not just to her, but to other riders on the platform.

“Having to queue for fuel every now and then, especially now that the fuel scarcity is up again, it makes our time worthless. And having to cancel a trip due to a rider’s destination as a result of bad roads within the state. I have had to take riders to some areas in the state with really brutal roads and that’s not good for the car”, she told TheNiche.

Olukoya said she enjoys driving late into the night because she gets to have the roads to herself.

The amiable Olukoya says despite trying to meet up with her target for the week she is not missing out on the social life. She still finds time to frolic with her friends.

“I hangout with my friends whenever work takes me to their neighbourhoods”, she said.

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