The economics already work. The capital now has to catch up.

We started with the riders.

We asked 106 riders what they spend. Energy came back at ₦4,085 a day, 19.7% of gross revenue, against a petrol baseline every one of them described as materially higher. That is the largest expense they pay out of daily earnings, and it is counted rather than modelled.

That saving is a foundation of our thesis. Nigeria's electric mobility transition is not waiting on consumer enthusiasm, a technology breakthrough, or a policy that has yet to be written. It is being pulled forward by operators who have already run the numbers on their own duty cycles and found that electric wins. Subsidy removal and devaluation made petrol permanently costlier; lower EV tariffs and local-content incentives are pulling assembly onshore; battery, motor and telematics costs keep falling. We observed the demand, then built projections.

Multiply the rider's saving across okada, keke, ride-hail, buses and delivery fleets and the compounding pull becomes an industry. Our models put the ecosystem on track for ₦6.2 trillion in annual economic activity by 2030 (roughly ₦12 trillion cumulatively over 2026 to 2030) across four value pools: vehicles, charging, fleets and enablers. The vehicle parc grows from about 25,000 EVs today to just shy of 500,000 by 2030, with two- and three-wheelers carrying almost all of the volume and fleet operator revenue carrying most of the value.

Where the money is made, pocket by pocket

Returns are not uniform, and treating the sector as one asset class is the first mistake capital makes here. Local SKD assembly earns 16 to 22% gross margin per unit after financing costs, on a roughly nine-month working-capital cycle secured against kits and finished vehicles. Grid-tied charging at medium scale and above returns 17 to 26% unlevered over a 15-year asset life. Two-wheeler fleets run net margins near 17% and buses clear roughly 29% on proven financing terms. Four-wheel passenger vehicles remain loss-making at today's landed costs and market lending rates, and should not be financed without intervention.

Across those pools, Leke Services has identified a path to a gross IRR approaching 19% in naira over ten years — about 17% net to investors, holding between 12.5% and 19.8% across the six world-states we model. These are averages across likely futures, not a promise about any one of them.

The binding constraint is the cost of capital

Nigeria needs more than ₦3 trillion of asset investment to reach the 2030 case. Almost none of it is available at a tenor and a rate that fleet economics can absorb. Operators are quoted short-dated naira debt above 30%; the assets they are buying are recoverable, telematics-visible and increasingly liquid, but they are underwritten as if they were not. Currency compounds it: most development-finance appetite is dollar-denominated, and lending dollars against naira revenue hands the borrower a risk no operator can manage.

The structural answer is a blended local-currency stack. We are proposing a dedicated industry facility starting at ₦100 billion (roughly 3% of the capital the market needs) layered from concessional government and philanthropic capital through senior DFI debt, mezzanine and senior commercial tranches. The stack blends to an 18.3% cost of capital and an all-in lending rate just under 27% to start, with recovery data working to walk that rate toward the teens operators keep asking for.

The economics work. The gap is the cost of capital and the absence of coordinated infrastructure. This library sets out the evidence for both.