The Director General (DG) of the National Automotive Design and Development Council (NADDC), Mr Oluwemimo Joseph Osanipin, has called for proper synergy among all relevant ministries and agencies in addressing the challenges confronting the nation’s automotive industry.
Osanipin made the call on the 4th day of his official tour of automobile assembly plants in Nigeria, during which he visited Origin Tech Group, Cedric Masters Auto, Jet Motors, Honda West Africa and DAG Bajaj on Thursday, July 11, 2024, in Lagos and Ogun States respectively.
During the tour, the NADDC boss harped on the importance of synergy in achieving growth in the industry.
“We need to work with other agencies. We need to work with other ministries and apply inter-ministerial approach in creating a kind of desks for the stakeholders so that when there are challenges, they will be able to report immediately instead of moving from one agency to the other.”
Osanipin, who highlighted the immense potential in the local auto industry, and stressed the importance of human capital development in revamping the industry, added that it was interesting to note that a lot of the assemblers were already providing training programmes and bringing in trainers to train the Nigerian youth in the art of building vehicles as well as converting Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) powered vehicles to Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) powered vehicles.
“On CNG-powered vehicles, Nigerians are already embracing the new initiative and hopefully by the time more of it are on the road, a lot of investors would key into the conversation process”, he enthused.
He reaffirmed the Council’s commitment to align with President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s “Renewed Hope Agenda” in promoting local production of vehicles and components.
“The core stakeholders are ready to embrace the initiative of migrating from SKD to CKD. And this has a lot of advantages. For example, it will generate more employment opportunities, contribute more to the economy and higher percentage of local components” he said.
“In overall, we now know that we have the capability, all we need is to do some things differently in developing the auto sector” he concluded.
The CEOs of the factories visited all acknowledged the efforts of the Director General and the support of the Federal Government in moving the automotive sector of the economy forward.
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