“Made-in-Nigeria Vehicles Launch Not Feasible By 2017” – Jalal

The director- general, National Automotive Design and Development Council, NADDC, Aminu Jalal, in a recent interview with Leadership, reveals that local production of cars in the country is not feasible until 2017.

Jalal stressed that until nation’s policy structure begins to encourage local production of vehicles and discourage importation, the plans for Made-in-Nigeria cars will remain a pipe dream.

He said the proposed launch of the Made-in-Nigeria vehicles in 2017 is not realistic due to unfriendly government policies that encourage vehicle importation to the detriment of local production.

According to him, Nigeria’s import duty is 10 per cent for commercial vehicles and 20 per cent for cars and complete knock downs are being imported at 5 per cent.

“About 50,000 new and 150,000 used vehicles are imported into the country yearly. Nigerians spend an average of N550 billion on importing passenger-cars and by the time you add trucks and other vehicles, the amount Nigerians spend on imported vehicles will be running into N600 billion annually,” he said

Nigeria’s capacity and capability to meet a significant portion of its automotive needs has been undermined by massive wholesale, and seemingly, juicy imports. Facts about the operation capacity of Nigeria’s automotive sector in the past are well documented.”

“The assembly and component manufacturing plants in the 1970s and 1980s peaked at over 120,000 cars, commercial vehicles, and tractors, per annum.” Jalal said.