According to Lawal Surajudeen Olaitan, Marketing: West Africa at WeChat, the popular messaging app has exited Nigeria.

The latest information comes in the wake of recent uncertainty over WeChat's operations in the West African country.

WeChat Nigeria has not engaged users through conventional means on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter for approximately five months. The last posts on Facebook and Twitter were on March 11 and February 28 respectively.

This fuelled speculation that the mobile text and voice messaging communication service, developed by Tencent in China and 34% owned by Naspers, is moving out of Nigeria.

The notion is not farfetched given Naspers' antecedence at growing online business in Africa's biggest economy for the past 10 years. Some of the e-commerce companies it started, but have since shut down operations due to slow growth in Nigeria include Kalahari.com.ng, and online business directory Mocality.com.ng.

Naspers' online job portal Careers24 is still operational, as well as its backed Singapore-based bitcoin startup BitX launched in Nigeria last year. Its online marketplace Konga.com continues to do well.

Classifieds site Dealfish.com.ng changed to OLX.com.ng, Property.com.ng has yet to be fully launched, while pricecheck.com.ng has closed office in Nigeria to operate from South Africa.

WeChat has denied reports claiming it no longer had any local staff in Nigeria.

WeChat Africa head Brett Loubser had said in a Quartz interview that they are "stuck in an extremely aggressive, competitive environment, very fast-growing, very difficult to differentiate oneself."

The company has partnered with two Nigerian startups to launch on its platform, but still has about 3.4 million users according to SocialBakers.