As Nigeria works towards actualizing its dream of becoming the hub of advanced automotive manufacturing, the National Automotive Design and Development Council (NADDC) last Monday in Abuja, the federal capital organized the NADDC Automotive Design Challenge in a renewed strategic move to make it a reality.
The NADDC Automotive Design Challenge which will culminate into the design of applicable mini taxi and mini tractor that will be tropicalised to the local environment is the brainchild of Aliyu Jelani, the Nigeria automotive design prodigy and current director-general of the National Automotive Design and Development Council to discover and promote automotive design capabilities among Nigerians which will in turn lead to the development of innovative transportation solutions for the country.
Aliyu Jelani told an enthusiastic audience inside the conference and events hall of Fraser Suites, Abuja that includes Abubakar Malami, attorney-general and minister of justice, the Ondo state deputy governor, Osita Izunaso, chairman of the NADDC board, automobile assemblers in the country and representatives of the university community that for the 2019 Automotive Design Challenge, participants between the ages of 18 years and 40 years,
He said that participants will be required to submit entries between October 21 and December 5, 2019 of their automotive designs and creative concepts through a dedicated NADDC online platform for assessment by a combined team of foreign and local experts. At the end of the six (6) weeks time frame allowed for the submission of entries to the NADDC, the winners will be attached to the NADDC to be part of the Council’s exciting research and development/product team.
The NADDC DG said that Nigeria has no business being a dumping ground for used and sub-standard vehicles despite all the potentials in terms of human and material resources that, the country is endowed with. According to him, Nigeria is on the march towards economic prosperity and that can only be achieved through meaningful developmental efforts and patriotic zeal of every citizen,
He said that plans are underway to make locally-made vehicles readily available for Nigerians to buy and make payments in at least five-year installments against the backdrop of the recent allocation of N5billion by the President Muhammadu Buhari administration towards the car financing and acquisition scheme.
According to him, in about three months’ time, Nigerians will be able to put down 10% and drive off made-in-Nigerian vehicles and pay over five years. He said: “Instead of continuing to be importing fully-built vehicles from overseas, we are working towards promoting and sustaining the production of vehicles in the country.
“Today’s effort will give in the near future give make available brand new vehicles to Nigerians that would be fuel-efficient, very modern and it will create tens of thousands of jobs, grow the economy and also stop us from being a dumping ground for old and dilapidated vehicles’’. Jelani noted.
At the last GITEX 2019 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, the former design egghead with General Motors, United States of America stated that his agency was collaborating with JAIZ, WEMA and Zenith banks with a view to providing single-digit financing for made-in-Nigeria vehicles.
“We feel that with this scheme in place, Nigerians can now buy and drive new vehicles. Nigerians deserve more than that. On the prices of these vehicles, the D-G said the vehicles are cost-effective, affordable and in tune with the environment”.
He said that the objective of manufacturing these vehicles locally in the near future is to make it to be cost-effective, affordable and very in tune with the environment and elegance. ‘’So we are looking at the price much, much lower than what we have today, probably between N3 million and N5 million”, Aliyu told the audience in Dubai.
On his efforts towards making Nigeria one of the vehicle-manufacturing countries to reckon with, he said: “We as a government body, we encourage the private sector to produce vehicles in Nigeria through the National Automotive Industrial Development Plan, NAIDP that stands on five cardinal elements to help promote local production of vehicles.
“Those elements include investment promotion, which is to work with the private sector and encourage and support them in bringing money into Nigeria to set up their factories. There is the infrastructure plan to provide the necessary infrastructure for the industry to set up and be sustained and the standards to make sure that the components that go into the vehicles meet minimum global standards.
“We as well deal with market development. First, we promote the production and then work with stakeholders, end-users and the companies to help people to be able to buy these vehicles”.
Another element will also be the training aspect where every year we train thousands of Nigerians on mechatronics so that they understand the new automotive technology and be capable of fixing and maintaining these vehicles professionally.
MIKE OCHONMA, Abuja
