Treepz, the Lagos-based mobility technology company, has announced a partnership with CMS Taxi & Motor Nigeria Limited (CMS T&M) to introduce cashless payments and digital ticketing on the operator’s CMS–Ajah bus routes.
The announcement frames the deal as a fresh milestone in Nigeria’s transport digitization. But it is not the first time the two companies have said this. Treepz and CMS T&M announced a strikingly similar partnership in December 2021, at the time promising to digitize ticketing for what they said were 1.2 million to 1.6 million annual passengers, with comparisons drawn to London’s Oyster card system.
Neither this week’s release nor Treepz’s public materials explain what happened to that earlier rollout, why a second announcement was necessary, or what portion of CMS T&M’s operations, if any, was actually digitized in the intervening four years.
What the deal covers
According to the companies, the new arrangement integrates Treepz’s digital mobility platform into CMS T&M’s operations on the CMS–Ajah corridor, one of Lagos’s busiest commuter routes connecting the Central Business District to the fast-growing Lekki-Ajah axis.
Passengers are expected to pay digitally rather than in cash, while CMS T&M gains access to real-time operational data, digital ticketing and revenue tracking tools.
Johnny Enagwolor, Treepz’s co-founder, described the partnership as part of the company’s broader mission to modernize public transportation across Nigeria.
“By replacing manual ticketing and cash collections with digital systems, we’re creating greater transparency for operators while delivering a better everyday experience for commuters,” he said.
Andrew Akhigbe, CMS T&M’s managing director, echoed that framing, saying the partnership would improve operational efficiency and accountability for a company that has served Lagos commuters for decades.
A crowded digitization narrative
Treepz, formerly known as Plenty Waka, has positioned itself as a pan-African mobility infrastructure company, with past acquisitions of Ghana’s Stabus and Uganda’s Ugabus, and previous fundraising aimed at expansion into East Africa.
The company has repeatedly announced cashless-payment partnerships with Nigerian bus operators over the past several years, part of a broader pattern among African mobility startups of pairing legacy transport operators with app-based ticketing layers.
Lagos State’s own transport authority, LAMATA, has separately pushed digitization through its Cowry Card system for BRT and bus services, meaning Treepz’s private-sector push runs alongside, rather than in place of, government efforts already underway on some of the same corridors.
Why it matters
Cash-based ticketing remains the norm across most of Lagos’s informal and semi-formal bus network, creating well-documented problems: revenue leakage for operators, fare disputes for passengers, and limited data for city planners. If executed, digital ticketing on a route as heavily trafficked as CMS–Ajah could offer a meaningful test case.
But the unexplained gap between this announcement and the nearly identical one from four years ago raises a fair question for commuters and industry watchers: whether this represents a genuine relaunch after early struggles, a narrower pilot than previously attempted, or simply a repackaged announcement.
Treepz did not address that history in its statement, and it remains unclear whether Lagos commuters on the CMS–Ajah route will notice any change on the ground in the near term.
