The Director General of the National Automotive Design and Development Council (NADDC), Joseph Osanipin, has advocated backward integration for Nigeria’s automotive assemblers.
Osanipin said the assemblers have enough capacity and are doing more than what Nigerians expect.
He stated this in Lagos after a tour of assembly plants around the state.
He said the agency would go back to component manufacturers to see how they could meet the demands of assemblers.
He also said the assemblers have shown readiness to adopt the CNG conversion programme by the Federal Government.
He said the automotive assemblers can move production with complete knocked down (CKD) kits but need the input of local components manufacturers in the area.
The NADDC boss said being the third facility visited, it is an eye opener for him saying the essence of the tour is to promote local production of vehicles manufactured in Nigeria.
He said the local assemblers need the assurance of local manufacturers to meet their demands.
He said if we can get investors to invest in battery production to crash the price of electric vehicle production in the country.
Head of Operations, Proforce Limited, Ayobami Ogundeyi, said the government needs to re-establish the production of steel in the country as it contributes 70 per cent to the production of armoured vehicles for the army.
This, he added, would reduce the cost of importing steel for the production of vehicles for the intelligence sector of the country.
He stated that the company has challenges in sourcing foreign exchange for buying most of the material used for the production of trucks and other intelligence gadgets.
According to him, the company currently has 30 per cent of local components in its production of vehicles to increase capacity to 70 per cent if the materials are available in Nigeria.
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