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Nigeria’s electric vehicle market is gradually developing, with charging infrastructure emerging across major cities and businesses exploring new opportunities around electric mobility.
As the market grows, questions around the availability, reliability and commercial viability of charging infrastructure are becoming increasingly important for drivers, businesses and investors.
In an exclusive Nairametrics interview, Philip Ogunleye, Founder and CEO of Vine Mobility & Technologies, discusses the current state of Nigeria’s EV charging infrastructure, the evolving charging experience for drivers, the role of software and data in managing charging networks, the business models shaping the sector and what is required for electric mobility to achieve wider adoption in Nigeria.
Ogunleye also shares insights from Vine Mobility’s experience operating within the emerging charging ecosystem, including what charging patterns reveal about EV adoption, the role different sectors could play in expanding infrastructure, and the lessons businesses can draw from the market’s development so far.
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Nairametrics: Nigeria’s electric mobility ecosystem has continued to evolve in recent years. How would you describe the current state of EV charging infrastructure across the country? Which cities are leading adoption, where are the biggest gaps, and how quickly is the network expanding?
Philip Ogunleye: Nigeria’s electric mobility sector is still young, but its direction is encouraging. A few years ago, most conversations questioned whether electric vehicles made sense here at all. Today, the questions are more practical: where should charging networks be built, how should they be run, and what makes them commercially viable. That shift in the conversation is itself a sign of a maturing market.
Lagos remains the clear frontrunner, supported by the highest concentration of electric vehicles, growing private investment and rising interest from businesses that want charging built into their locations. Abuja is picking up pace as well, and a handful of other cities are beginning to explore what charging could look like for them.
The real gap isn’t the number of chargers installed. It’s the ecosystem around them. Drivers need confidence that a charger will work when they arrive, and providers need the tools to monitor their networks, respond quickly and keep uptime high. As the physical network expands, operational discipline is becoming just as important as the hardware itself.
Through the platforms we build and the sites we help manage, we’ve watched this shift happen in real time. The industry is moving past simply deploying equipment and into building networks that are genuinely intelligent and connected. That transition, more than any single number, is the real milestone for where Nigeria’s charging ecosystem is headed.
Nairametrics: For someone considering buying an electric vehicle today, what does the charging experience in Nigeria actually look like? How easy is it to locate a charger, make payments and complete a charging session, and what improvements would further enhance the user experience?
Philip Ogunleye: Almost every prospective EV owner asks some version of the same question: where will I actually charge this car? It’s a fair concern, and the honest answer is that the experience is improving steadily, especially in cities where networks are expanding.
Charging is becoming a far more digital experience. A growing number of providers now let drivers find a station, start a session and pay without cash, all from a mobile app or an integrated payment platform. The experience still varies from one network to another, but the direction is clearly toward something more connected and easier to use.
What stands out most from our work is that drivers value certainty over speed. Knowing a charger will be available, working and simple to use tends to matter more than shaving a few minutes off the charging time itself. That’s why accurate information, dependable uptime and a smooth payment flow matter as much as the number of chargers on the ground.
Looking forward, wider coverage, stronger interoperability between networks and better real time information will push the experience even further. The goal should be a charging process so intuitive that drivers stop thinking about it altogether and simply focus on where they’re going.
Nairametrics: Many people associate EV charging with installing physical charging stations. From your perspective, why has software become such an important part of charging infrastructure, and what operational capabilities are now essential for charging network operators?
Philip Ogunleye: It’s natural to focus on the charger itself since it’s the part people can see and touch. But a charging network’s real backbone is software, not hardware.
Installing equipment is only the starting point. Someone has to monitor whether each unit is available, process payments securely, catch faults before drivers notice them, manage pricing and make sense of how the network is actually performing. Once a network grows past a handful of sites, none of that is manageable without intelligent systems behind it.
What we’ve learned is that reliability is engineered, not inherited. It comes from giving providers real time visibility into their own infrastructure, so problems get solved before they reach the driver rather than after. As networks scale, the data generated becomes almost as valuable as the equipment itself, since it’s what allows a business to improve uptime, get more out of existing assets and make smarter decisions about where to invest next.
Looking ahead, software’s role will only deepen, through predictive maintenance that catches failures before they happen, smarter energy management, and greater interoperability across networks that today largely operate in isolation.
Nairametrics: Through Vine Mobility’s charging network and software platform, you’ve had firsthand visibility into how charging infrastructure is being used. What has that experience taught you about EV adoption in Nigeria, and are there any trends in charging behaviour that have surprised you?
Philip Ogunleye: What our experience has shown, more than anything, is that the real barrier to adoption was never convincing people that electric vehicles make sense. It’s giving them confidence that charging will actually work when they need it. Once a driver has one genuinely good charging experience, that confidence builds quickly, and it shows in how often they return.
One pattern we’ve observed consistently across our network is a direct link between reliability and repeat usage. Sites with strong uptime see drivers coming back again and again, while inconsistent performance quietly erodes trust even when a driver never complains about it directly. That insight has shaped how seriously we treat reliability, not as a technical metric but as the foundation of the entire customer relationship.
Operational data has also changed how we manage the network day to day. Visibility into availability, usage and performance lets a provider shift from reacting to problems after the fact to catching and preventing them before they affect a driver. As a network grows, that intelligence becomes one of its most valuable assets.
Perhaps the most encouraging shift is in the nature of the conversation itself. A few years ago it centred on whether electric mobility would happen in Nigeria at all. Today it’s about how businesses actually participate in it. That’s the clearest sign of an industry moving from curiosity into execution.
Nairametrics: Reliable electricity remains one of the defining realities of doing business in Nigeria. How are charging network operators designing infrastructure that delivers dependable services while remaining commercially sustainable?
Philip Ogunleye: Reliable electricity is one of the biggest variables any charging network in Nigeria has to design around, which means successful providers think beyond simply installing equipment. They think about building systems that can absorb disruption without passing it on to the driver. That starts at the site selection stage: understanding what power is actually available in an area and designing around its limits rather than assuming the grid will cooperate.
Technology carries much of the operational weight from there. Modern platforms let a provider monitor performance remotely, catch a fault the moment it happens and respond before a customer ever notices. The better a network can be managed from a distance, the easier it becomes to hold reliability steady while keeping operating costs under control.
In the end, commercial sustainability comes down to one thing: delivering something people can depend on. Drivers return to the stations that have earned their trust, and that trust is built through consistent performance over time, not through the infrastructure alone.
Nairametrics: Building charging stations is one thing, but building a commercially sustainable charging network is another. What separates successful charging operators from those that struggle, and what business models do you believe will define the industry’s long term viability?
Philip Ogunleye: Installing a charger is the easy part. Building a network that people actually use, again and again, is where most of the real work happens.
The providers who succeed tend to get three things right: they choose locations where demand genuinely exists rather than where it seems convenient to build, they deliver an experience drivers can depend on, and they use technology to run their operations efficiently rather than reactively. Uptime and ease of use end up mattering just as much as the equipment itself, because that’s what determines whether a driver comes back.
Looking forward, I think the strongest business models will be built on partnership rather than standalone deployment. Charging works best when it’s woven into places people are already going: shopping centres, workplaces, hotels, fleet depots, transport hubs. Done well, it stops feeling like a separate errand and simply becomes part of wherever someone already is.
Nairametrics: As more companies invest in EV charging, how important are interoperability and open standards in creating a seamless experience for drivers? What would a well connected charging ecosystem look like in practice?
Philip Ogunleye: Interoperability matters because a driver shouldn’t need to think about who owns a particular charging station before they can use it. The same way a bank card works at almost any ATM regardless of which bank installed it, an EV driver should be able to expect a consistent experience across different charging networks.
Open standards are what make that possible. They allow equipment and software from different manufacturers to communicate with each other, which gives providers more flexibility while removing unnecessary friction for the driver.
A genuinely connected charging ecosystem is one where the experience feels simple and consistent no matter who owns the infrastructure behind it. That kind of seamlessness is exactly what will give more people the confidence to make the switch to electric.
Nairametrics: Oil marketers, shopping malls, commercial real estate developers, fleet operators and energy companies are all exploring opportunities in electric mobility. Which of these sectors do you believe will play the biggest role in expanding Nigeria’s charging infrastructure over the next decade, and why?
Philip Ogunleye: No single sector will carry this transition alone. Building infrastructure at a national scale will take collaboration across several industries, each bringing something the others don’t have.
Fleet operators are likely to move first, since their charging demand is predictable and the business case is straightforward to make. Real estate developers and shopping centres can widen access simply by folding charging into places people already spend time, while energy companies and fuel retailers bring the operating experience and physical footprint needed to deploy at real scale.
The organisations that ultimately succeed will be the ones that treat charging as more than an energy service. It’s a piece of the broader customer experience and a long term infrastructure bet, and the businesses that understand that distinction early will be the ones still standing a decade from now.
Nairametrics: As the founder of Vine Mobility, you’ve had a front row seat to the evolution of Nigeria’s EV charging ecosystem. Looking back over the past few years, what assumptions about the market have proven right, which ones have been challenged, and what lessons should other businesses looking to enter the sector take away?
Philip Ogunleye: One assumption that has held up well is that electric mobility in Nigeria would keep gaining momentum regardless of how bumpy the path looked in any given year. Interest from businesses, investors and everyday consumers has grown steadily, and the conversations happening today are far more practical than they were even a few years ago.
What’s been challenged is the idea that installing infrastructure is most of the work. It isn’t. Durable success depends on building an experience, for both drivers and the businesses operating the network, that’s dependable, convenient and commercially sound at the same time. That’s why technology, operations and customer experience have earned equal weight alongside the hardware itself, rather than sitting somewhere behind it.
For anyone entering this space, my advice is simple: solve a real problem rather than chase a trend. This industry rewards patience, genuine partnership and a willingness to think in years rather than quarters. The companies focused on building lasting value will be in a far stronger position than the ones chasing a quick win.
Nairametrics: Looking ahead, if Nigeria gets the right mix of policy support, private investment and infrastructure development, what do you envision the country’s EV charging ecosystem looking like over the next five to ten years? What key milestones should the industry achieve before electric mobility becomes a mainstream transportation option?
Philip Ogunleye: I’m genuinely optimistic about where this is heading. Over the next decade, I expect charging to become something people simply encounter in daily life rather than something they have to plan around, present at shopping centres, office buildings, residential estates, transport hubs and along the routes people already travel.
Getting there will take sustained private investment, supportive policy and real coordination between government, energy providers and technology companies. It will also take open standards and an experience simple enough that anyone can use it without a learning curve.
The milestone that actually matters won’t be a specific count of chargers installed. It will be the moment someone chooses an electric vehicle without giving a second thought to where they’ll charge it. Once charging feels dependable, convenient and unremarkable, electric mobility stops being an emerging trend and becomes simply how people get around.
