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Comment by adenozine | Hacker News Reader

How horrible. Why would someone do this? I'd never heard of Gokada, it looks like such a cool thing for a developing country.

I wonder what the motivation was. It doesn't seem like a market where there'd be the political pressure to assassinate someone. Maybe if there was someone trying to rethink the way pharmaceuticals or something, I could understand a CEO getting chopped into pieces by some shadowy figure, but ridesharing? It benefits everyone to carpool and use fewer cars to get people from place to place.

Ugh. God bless his family.

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It's worth noting that there was a sudden & pretty draconian regulation passed early this year that gutted Gokada's primary business (ridesharing on motorbikes). He was very passionate in his disagreement with the government's decision. The company pivoted pretty neatly (in my opinion) to last-mile deliveries instead - the pandemic certainly helped drive demand - but currently there's morbid speculation that potential financial struggles on Gokada's part might have been a factor in his murder. There's also the possibility of someone in power being displeased at how vocal he was about the regulation.

Okay, to play devil's advocate for a moment.

What is there to gain financially from killing him, if his previous business was gutted by regulatory changes?

The killer was evidently belonging to a highly capable skillset, and I'm extrapolating that they very nearly got away with his body in tow, and nobody would've been the wiser.

Could they not have kidnapped him and ransomed the company? If there's financial qualms on the board, I just don't understand why they'd just kill him then. If they went to deliveries, does that mean other delivery couriers are to be scrutinized?

Maybe he was involved with something dirty?

If it was a state agent of Nigeria that is responsible, idk, that'd be geopolitical suicide, putting hits out on private entrepreneurs across national borders...

Of course, had they gotten away, it may have seemed as though he just vanished, which I suppose is the ideal scenario for a state-sanctioned killing.

Ugh. This is beyond horrible all the way around.

> if his previous business was gutted by regulatory changes?

There are some people you just don't want to owe money to. I'm not speculating on if that was the case here, just that in the US, that sort of thing is the realm of movies. Elsewhere in the world (and also parts of the US) that still the reality of borrowing large sums of money.

Given the local environment they operate in I wonder if someone was on the take for them to operate originally. Maybe the regulation changes cause Gokada to not want to pay but that wasn't copacetic with the demands of the "shaker"?

As you pointed out, business in these countries isn't clean and clear as it is in most countries HN'ers live in.

I saw crazy shakedowns in Northern Africa when I briefly lived there. I wouldn't doubt the same to be seen in other countries.

Well, the idea is less financial gain and more punishment/retribution. You don't disappear/kill people in such a manner unless you want to send a message of some sort.

It's possible that he might have taken an investment from someone that does not take failure/underdelivery as an answer. Or that Gokada's continued existence pissed off someone that intended the company to go under. It could also possibly be much more personal than that - there are many people who are wealthy enough to order such a hit with relative impunity (as long as they remain in Nigeria - our justice system and infrastructure is frankly not the greatest). It could also have nothing to do with Nigeria at all; he had business ventures and personal affairs elsewhere.

It's all speculation at this point and I just hope whatever it is doesn't crush the company. Gokada employs a thousand riders but beyond that it's helped so many small businesses grow and thrive especially during this period; there's a huge informal vendor culture in Lagos that's enabled by companies like this.

Please don't bad mouth Nigeria. This case is not yet fully understood and we can't make any conclusions yet.

My intention is not to bad mouth Nigeria - I did, quite literally, say that it's entirely speculation and that the case might very well have nothing whatsoever to do with the country (and even if it involves Gokada, the aggrieved party is not necessarily Nigerian).

Regarding infrastructure, my point is that it's far easier for someone to disappear from the eye of law enforcement here than in many other countries.

Please check global number of missing people and kidnapping cases, use it to rightly place your country. That you have weak institutions don't mean that your country is world theater of crime.

Those countries routinely underreport crimes.

Sure of course.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/17/nyregion/fahim-saleh-susp...

>that'd be geopolitical suicide

Saudi Arabia seems to be doing fine last I checked.

That was my thought: Us foreign policy is such a mess that its territory is now open to international hitmen.

One interesting fact linked to this country is that he was born in Saudi Arabia as well.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/14/nyregion/dismembered-body...

Operating mode sounds much like it happened with Jamal Khashoggi, could he be another victim of MBS or some other Saudi prince?

Why would that be the case? Khashogi was clearly speaking up and was wanted killed, even he knew it

Money and/or power tend to be the causes for these things, unless it's personal.

Saudi Arabia carried out an extrajudicial killing in a small, neighboring state. This was carried out in the US. And for all intents and purposes could be considered an act of war against a state that has an unlimited war chest.

Turkey has the second largest military in NATO (after US) and by quite a margin

Turkey leadership may well be sympathetic to the Saudis to some extent. Freedom of press doesn't exactly seem like their biggest concern, and they have an authoritarian Muslim ruler.

They might be, no doubt. I was mainly objecting (unrelated to the article) to the 'smallness' of the neighboring state and to the fact that if something could be considered an act of war doesn't mean it will be one. Bottomless oil well is a good counter to an unlimited war chest.

They 'may be', but they're not. They are on opposing sides of a huge regional political divide, and pretty much in cold war against eachother.

I would argue that in the ME everyone is and is not in cold war with everyone else, at any given time. Erdogan and the Saudis, for example, both helped ISIS... until they didn't.

There isn't a fundamental ideological divide, everyone is just jockeying for a few more square-meters of this or that.

The jockeying isn't for some square meter of land. It's for influence over the muslim world.

It was a figure of speech. Influence is what gives you control, of course.

Turkey is totally not friends with Saudi Arabia right now.

Turkey has gone downhill in the last five years due to the actions of Turkish leadership. I no longer see them returning to the path of democracy sadly. The Trump administration are saints in comparison.

Turkey isn’t small in any way. It’s a regional powerhouse.

Not to mention and I guess a lot of people dont know this but Turkey was one of the main allies of the USA not too long ago for quite a while at that. It was quite a strategic alliance too. Just look at Turkeys neighboring countries sometime.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkey%E2%80%93United_States...

A superpower doesn't go to war over an isolated assassination of (with all due respect to the victim and his family) some random rich kid. Casus belli is invoked only where there was a pre-existing ambition. I don't think the US have any ambition to take over Saudi Arabia, when they couldn't even run Iraq.

You don't need to go to war. But you certainly also don't need to defend them. See how the UK responded to the Skripal case or Litivenko.

> small, neighboring state

That "small, neighboring state" is a №2 state in NATO

I look at one possibility as he raised/borrowed money from the wrong people and then when things went pear shaped, he couldn't get them their promised profit, got chopped up to set an example.

Either that or sex

He was followed by a man he did not invite to his apartment, doesn’t look like he knew his killer

I think they meant sex with the wrong person, not the killer.

Jilted lover etc

> What is there to gain financially from killing him, if his previous business was gutted by regulatory changes?

Devil's devil's advocate - the motivation for the killing doesn't need to be "rational" or make sense from our perspective. It could be pathological, it could be revenge, who knows?

First thing that comes to mind: What was the financial or other motivation behind Mohammed bin Salman killing Khashoggi?

It's a power move. Putin does it too.

The degree to which the American president praises the dictators of this world makes you wonder if he wishes he could do it too.

I think he might if he thought he could get himself out of it someway. Look at how callous the administration has been about allowing covid to go wild without even blinking until lately. Tens of thousands of people dead for no reason, soon to be hundreds of thousands. It's a nightmare.

> nobody would've been the wiser.

Except they would have footage of two people going into the apartment (one person apparently wearing a ninja outfit), and only one person leaving.

That could have been a tipoff that something was askew.

Are you inferring "ninja outfit" from the article description? Because it vaguely mentions a black suit and face mask. And I'm not entirely sure "face mask" doesn't just mean a now-standard-in-a-pandemic mask type.

In some parts of the world, for some people, it was enough to want to kill him to actually do it. And in such a brutal way.

It doesn't have to be that complicated.

"The killer was evidently belonging to a highly capable skillset," - no, it's not skill, it's just the diabolical will to actually do such a thing. Depending on circumstances, there can be a lack of evidence ... and that's that.

> What is there to gain financially from killing him, if his previous business was gutted by regulatory changes?

It may be as simple as being the member of the board another member is displeased with. Not suggesting that, just saying sometimes your very existence is a liability to others.

> If it was a state agent of Nigeria that is responsible, idk, that'd be geopolitical suicide, putting hits out on private entrepreneurs across national borders

When in Rome....

Could have just as easily been a date, a hookup, a serial killer, someone perturbed at wealth inequality and better living standards.

Just as much as this financial or business hitman speculation.

Its all happened in NYC. Chopped up into bags sounds like cartel or organized, it happened to OneCoin promoters in Mexico this month too. But we dont know yet for this case.

The chance is part of the rush.

>Could have just as easily been a date, a hookup, a serial killer, someone perturbed at wealth inequality and better living standards.

The CCTV footage would seem to make those first two somewhat less likely:

"One of the law enforcement officials said a surveillance camera had captured video of Mr. Saleh in the building’s elevator with another person who was wearing a black suit and black mask."

"On the video, the elevator door opens and Mr. Saleh goes into the apartment, the official said. The masked person follows directly behind him, and the two immediately start to struggle, the official said."

Did the assailant come with a chainsaw? How did the saw get there? It's highly unlikely that a condo dweller would have a chainsaw sitting around.

It just says an "electric saw". Probably a reciprocating saw or something. You'd get even more attention from neighbors (who apparently heard a violent altercation, and didn't call police-- instead calling his sister??) using a chain saw.

The part about not calling the police is not that surprising. You call the NYPD if you would like everyone in the area shot and drugs and guns planted on the bodies. Otherwise, they're not very useful.

New York’s finest protect New York’s richest though.

My goodness what has happened to this place

Dismembering someone is something that most people do not have the fortitude for and goes way beyond a crime of passion. It is not just as likely to have been a "date, hookup or somone perturbed at inequality". Serial killer, maybe, however they are much rarer than some sort of cartel/organized outfit.

Could just be a mentally ill person who somehow latched onto this one guy in their paranoia. Also probably much rarer than organized crime hits.

I know television and film popularize this kind of thing, but how often are people actually murdered and dismembered for financial reasons??? Same question around murder-for-hire generally, as well as specifically "someone in power" being so upset as to murder the man brutally?

He was facing an Uber-like regulatory situation in Lagos where his startup was facing a ban.

If this was related to his startup (and not some other personal dealing) then a clear motive would be for a legacy carrier being disrupted to want end his startup...

Oh!

Your comment made me realize I was making an assumption that it was related to his business. I guess I just figure for someone to be trying to make progress in a place where progress is sorely needed, that its unlikely for them to have relationships or dealings that would warrant such heavy-handed consequences.

If it was political, I wonder who benefits the most from this. Surely there will be scrutiny now, if there's more case details than are reported. I hope they don't get away with this. This will scare off entrepreneurs, maybe that's exactly what the killer wants. Maybe they want to discourage not only Gokada, but any company or product that might disrupt status quo.

Who knows. This is nasty stuff.

It could simply have been personal too. Have you ever watched Uncut Gems? I knew someone like the loan shark guy that if he didn't win, he would "win" anyways just to ease his inner cognitive dissonance. Just glad that he didn't have the money to pay for a hitman cause I could be dead too.

His start up?

Wasn't just his company - bike sharing was banned in the state without warning. Also, commercial bike operations were banned on major roads and completely in some cities.

Following Lagos state, neighboring states immediately announced bans, telling the ride sharing companies not to come over.

Bike ride sharing companies were forced to rebrand as dispatchers. The bikes however must have delivery boxes fitted on the bikes else - the bikes would be seized.

you'd be surprised. it seems he was getting death threats because of his business. disrupting established syndicates doing business transferring large amounts of cash everyday is risky. in France for example, taxi drivers burned Ubers in protest.

Did they burn them with the drivers inside? If not, how is that comparable to killing and dismembering a human being?

> how is that comparable to killing and dismembering a human being

It's comparable because it happened in France? :)

It's comparable because usually you don't get these kinds of violent reactions when you disrupt a market

>you don't get these kinds of violent reactions when you disrupt a market

Only in developed countries, in a lot of the world that's actually exactly what you get when you disrupt someone's market.

Very true.

I worked at a small US defense contractor for a couple of years. I was not in that loop, but my impression from those that were was that this sort of thing was to be expected if you entered into competition against the wrong incumbent.

Referring to that happening in the US too or just abroad?

In the US. But here we are better at keeping it down low.

Arson may not be murder, but comparing one violent felony to another doesn't seem too unreasonable to me.

It's definitely in the same direction if not the same league.

Not specifically in France, but at least in Pretoria, South Africa an Uber driver's car was set on fire with him inside and he died. That's the only one where someone was burned to death in a car that I remember hearing about but there may have been other similar incidents.

Ask Jimmy Hoffa.

In Korea, taxi drivers burned themselves to protest ride-sharing: https://www.vice.com/en_au/article/qvyzn5/south-korea-uber-k...

"If not, how is that comparable to killing and dismembering a human being?" The power differential isn't there either, the comparison would be 'head of Uber' not an 'Uber Driver'. Also, France is not Nigeria.

> Why would someone do this?

Robbery? Murder during attempt to get the victim to transfer money or bitcoins to an intruder? Lots of possibilities even without any context except the victim being somewhat wealthy.

I'm not well versed in these matters but I'd imagine it takes some effort to butcher a fully grown human body. Most likely the perpetrator went there with the intention to butcher the body for whatever reason. Possibly ease of transport. Seems like a lot of effort for robbery.

Organised crime sending message to others unwilling to "cooperate".

Clearly a message was being sent

Oh, hey, I got that scholarship.

business deal gone bad. one simply does not start a business in Nigeria without paying local gangs first.

I'll preface this by saying it is utter, pure, unmitigated speculation.

With that out of the way, as someone who's lived in NYC for decades, I would say that most stories you hear with these broad strokes involve cocaine.

> I wonder what the motivation was. Maybe if there was someone trying to rethink the way pharmaceuticals or something, I could understand a CEO getting chopped into pieces by some shadowy figure, but ridesharing? It benefits everyone to carpool and use fewer cars to get people from place to place.

If I were a betting man, my money would be on he owed someone money from his part of the world and decided that because the law said that the debt evaporated his creditors would let it go.

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