The Director-General of the National Automotive Design and Development Council (NADDC), Mr. Joseph Osanipin, has called for enhanced collaboration and synergy among relevant stakeholders to effectively tackle the challenges plaguing the country’s automotive industry, paving the way for sustainable growth and development.
The DG made the call on the fourth day of his official tour where he visited Origin Tech Group, Cedric Masters Auto, Jet Motors, Honda West Africa and DAG Bajaj recently in Lagos and Ogun States, respectively.
During the tour, he underscored 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 highlighted the immense potential in the local auto industry and also stressed on the importance of human capital development in revamping the industry, adding that it was interesting to note that alot 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, alot of investors would key into the conversation process,” he added.
He reaffirmed the Council’s commitment to align with President Bola 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 of NADDC and the support of the federal government in moving the automotive sector of the economy forward.