FG To Invest In Made-In-Nigeria Vehicles – Independent Newspaper Nigeria

NADDC also called on Nigeri­ans to support locally manufac­tured or assembled vehicles, say­ing this would further encourage investment in the sector.

Osanipin stated this on Tues­day during an inspection visit to Lanre Shittu Motors in Lagos.

According to him, President Bola Tinubu has directed Min­istries, Departments and Agen­cies (MDAs) to patronise vehicles manufactured or assembled in Nigeria.

Osanipin explained that the first support was patronage, which the government had tapped into, but insisted that in­dividuals and corporate organ­isations too should patronise local auto companies.

He said: “The first support we are asking is from all Nigerians. Let’s replicate what we’ve done in the 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 who are investing in buses are not investing in it 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 a truck, let Nigerians embrace buses.

“And for the government too, the 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).”

However, Osanipin expressed delight at the progress made by Lanre Shittu Motors, especially the processes of auto manufac­turing.

“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).”

He observed that at Lanre Shittu Motors, the factory has heavy duty vehicles line, saying that the government would assist the company and others to grow.

“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 sources of powering ve­hicles, which are PMS or diesel, we now know that CNG is far better,” he added.

He lauded Lanre Shittu Mo­tors for identifying with govern­ment’s policies.

He added that Lanre Shittu Motors has good human capital development, which included training process, after-sales and others, stressing that this indi­cated the fact that the company was ready to support its custom­ers at all times.

He maintained that without a good after-sales service, no com­pany could sustain the market, assuring that the company has the capacity 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,” he said.