Director General, National Automotive Design and Development Council (NADDC), Oluwemimo Joseph Osanipin, yesterday said the Federal Government has concluded plans to invest in Made-in-Nigeria vehicles.
To this end, Osanipin said President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has directed Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) to patronize vehicles manufactured or assembled in Nigeria.
The NADDC boss spoke with The Nation during an Inspection Visit to Lanre Shittu Motors in Lagos.
He called on Nigerians to embrace manufactured or locally assembled vehicles.
He said: “The first support is patronage and that is what we have seen and it is not only government but all Nigerians. The first support we are asking is from all Nigerians. Let’s replicate what we’ve done in truck business. Most of the new trucks you see on the road today are assembled in Nigeria and Nigerians have embraced that. Can we now start taking it further by doing so with buses. Yes, it’ll be easier with buses. People that are investing in buses are not investing it in for luxury; they’re investing in it in order to make more money. They’ll be cautious of downtime. If it can go down with truck, let Nigerians embrace buses. And for government too, government is going to patronise made in Nigeria vehicles. The President said the other time for any MDA to make any submission for vehicle acquisition, it has to be those manufactured or assembled here in Nigeria; in fact, it has to be Compressed Natural Gas (CNG). This is how governments support and that is what government is doing currently. Part of what we are doing is what we are here for; to lend our support for those in the automobile sector.”
Osanipin said he was impressed with what he saw at the Lanre Shittu Motors.
“We came here to look at the process because we have been talking about building capacity, and then doing full Semi-knock down (SKD). We have the plan to transmit from SKD to Complete Knock Down (CKD). And you could see that, especially, we’ve seen the way the pickup came, the frame and everything are being done.
“In this factory, you’ve seen how the heavy-duty vehicles are being assembled. We are here to look at what they are doing and look at how we can now take it further. We want to see some of these things being done right here in the factory and I was just told that the other facility under construction is for wielding, while the painting will be somewhere in Ogun State – it is being built now.
“You could see that we have CNG pick-up assembled already, and we have another facility at the back where they do conversion to CNG. It means we are ready. What we are appealing to Nigerians is to start adopting this. You could see that the distance of what the 60kg would cover would be more than 300 kilometres. So, when you compare that to other source of powering vehicle which is PMS or diesel, we now know that CNG is far better. And you could see again the safety aspects of it are being put in place. We are ready for CNG,” he stated.
He praised Lanre Shittu Motors for identifying with government’s policies.
Osanipin said: “One other thing I am Impressed about is the human capital development – the man power development. You’ve seen the training process, not only that, the aftersales; you’ve seen the parts there. It means they’re ready to support their customers with after sales services and that is very critical. Of course, without that, you can’t sustain the market. I’ve seen capacity, I’ve seen ability. They’ve the ability to meet the market demand.
“I’m not too surprised because Lanre Shittu has been in the industry for so long. With my discussion with them, we want to take it further. We want to go beyond that. We have seen the whole pick up assembled together from nothing- we want to go beyond that. We want to start having Nigerian component being part of what they’re assembling here and that’s what we’ve discussed.”
