The Federal government of Nigeria has embarked in evaluation of the nation’s existing assembly plants with a view to ascertaining the ones that are still up and running.
The Director-General, National Automotive Design and Development Council (NADDC), Mr. Oluwemimo Joseph Osanipin disclosed this on Thursday during an interactive session with the African Association of Automotive Manufacturers (AAAM), the Nigeria Auto Manufacturers Association (NAMA) and local auto components manufacturers at Radisson Blue Hotel, Ikeja, Lagos.
According to Osanipin, the council has sent evaluation forms to over 30 local auto assemblers, several of which are yet to respond.
He said: While some of them have replied, others have not. Their failure to reply after a stipulated time will signify they do not exist in Nigeria again. If they are in existence, we will find out the number of brands, the number of staff they have, the employment they are generating, the number of vehicle sold, the number of local component they have. These are the question we will ask them. We are asking these questions to streamline the brands. We want to know the number of brands especially utility vehicles and commercial buses. What areas do you have strength in as an assembler?
‘’We need to evaluate and get the best out of the existing assembly plants. We believe if an assembler has three or four brands, it should be able to concentrate and generate that volume, may be focus on those areas where they have comparative advantage and generate volume. We will do our own part and expect the assembly plants to do theirs.
“At a point, we will fix the date for evaluation, pick those that are running and focus on them. We have set out on this, because we feel that is the way forward. When we come out with numbers, we do hope some of them will not be disgruntled.”
“When we complete the evaluation, we will list those that are running and give them permits. There are plans to give incentives to the assembly that are working,’’ Osanipin added.
NADDC boss maintained that, given the volume of vehicles on Nigerian roads, which is more than other African countries, Nigeria has the potential of becoming the Africa’s automotive manufacturing hub.
“Nigeria has more vehicles on the road than other African countries,” he said. “The question we need to ask is: where are the parts that will service these volumes? We need to have direct source for them. The vehicles, where are they coming from? It means that there is market somehow. That is the essence of what we are working on.
‘’Can we really produce those volumes? The component that service the number of vehicles on our road, can we produce them? I think we can. Like you heard earlier, we already have some local content producers. We are already working with them.’’
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