A distant 2nd of the major ills that will continue to limit Nigeria's growth after Corruption is Ethnic Bigotry.

Also ignorance is a very big problem for a huge percentage of our almost 200M population. Basic education (Primary & Secondary) standard's have been shit for almost 30 years.

When people say present administration caused our present problems I weep.

We have been preparing our present situation for decades.

GuyfawkesAB:
As the extremely foolish and ignorant Igbos in this thread will fail to know or acknowledge, Dangote is the biggest customer of Shacman trucks. ANNAMCO is virtually running tight shifts to meet his orders.

NairaMaster1:


Professor of refinery construction. You can construct any refinery in two years if you are serious sir.

Ask Google.

According to you all refinaries are the same size, don't need sandfilling, all the money is available upfront, all the equipment manufacturer will dump other orders to make just yours, Google is now into building refinaries so they will know more than Dangote.. well done sir. This is Nigeria...

NairaMaster1:



Professor of refinery construction. Find out how long it took FG to build our dead refineries. You attach sentiments to every issue. I don't hate dangote.

With the current technology two years is more than enough to build any refinery.

Ask Google.

And what does Dagote a private business man gain from scamming the nation with fake refinery?

HenryWilliams:
Wonder what happened to partnering with IVM?
Peugeot is aiit but how many can afford brand new Peugeot cars even if its assembled here? Such investments can be channeled towards our local substitute here
How do we think the whites or Asians did if? They looked inwards and developed. Sure they made loads of mistakes along the way, that's normal. In the end, we go gaga for their cars
Let's make JVM our own. And in a dacade. We too will be exporting Africa and beyond.

Bros, if you have billions to invest, wud you partner Inosson?
I mean the guy has serious credibility issues

Then again, business isn't done base on sentiments. Let SE state governors partner inoson first

obailala:
Another one suffering from "persecution complex disorder"... Onye obula putara n'uwa imegbu m makana abum onye Igbo.

PAN is a company located in Kaduna and partly owned by the Kaduna state government. PAN has been dead for a while and now the Kaduna state governor has signed an agreement with Dangote to resuscitate PAN.

But of course, for a person suffering from the disorder mentioned above, their expectation is for Kaduna state government to abandon PAN whilst the come to Anambra to support IVM. If the Kasuna state government doesnt do this, then it's because they hate and want to kill Igbo business. Smh!

this degenerate never disappoints. In your idiotic mind there's no persecution against Igbos. Lets forget about this thread. Ibeto cement case isn't persecution. 5% statement sn't persecution. Innoson isn't persecution. Python dance isn't persecution etc etc

I shouldn't really bother to quote you because one does not expect any rational comment from a buhari supporter, but once a while your innate stupidity and acute idiocy must be pointed out

NOETHNICITY:
Bros, if you have billions to invest, wud you partner Inosson?
I mean the guy has serious credibility issues

Then again, business isn't done base on sentiments. Let SE state governors partner inoson first

stupid fools think there stupid opinion matters

Credibility issues propagated by nonentities like you. gtb the rogue bank that lacks credibility trying to play a fast one by conniving with efcc and truncating the court judgement ordering it to pay what it owes innoson.

You evil people will never go unpunished

Idiotss

Picture of an Ashok-Leyland (Lagos BRT) bus in front of the VON plant in Ojo, Lagos.

In search of the Nigerian car

Posted By: Joe Agbro Jr.
On: February 16, 2014



Since the early 1960s, the dream of riding the Nigerian car was only fleetingly realised. However, following the new automotive policy, the country seems to be getting ready to drive the made-in-Nigeria car again, Joe Agbro Jr., reports

To many kids growing up around Ojo, Lagos in the 1990s, Volks was a bus-stop along the Mile 2 – Badagry Expressway. It was also popularly known for football as crowds gathered there to watch footballers ply their trade. Forgotten was the actual purpose for which the sprawling compound was built in the early 1970s – making cars. To say the company was facing hard times at that time was an understatement as the level of decrepit was visible.

However, there is a new lease to the place. Acquired by Stallion Motors, the company now wears a refurbished look. And a recent visit to VON Nigeria as the plant is now known revealed that activities were going on there. Parked all around the compound were red Ashok/Leyland buses, the type of Bus Rapid Transport, BRT. This is in addition to other vehicles that are being assembled here. Inside one of the sprawling halls, local and expatriate workers worked on buses at different stages of construction. Come April, the company is set to roll out Nigeria’s first Sport Utility Vehicle, SUV. And the managing director of VON, Tokunbo Aromolaran, is elated. He should be.

Built for Nigerian road.
While the first SUV might be a feat, the idea of the made-in-Nigeria car is not novel. The adventure began in 1959 when UAC (now known as UAC of Nigeria Plc) set up a plant, Niger Motors, that produced Bedford trucks using semi-knocked down kits. Today, Niger Motors is GM Nigeria, jointly owned by the UAC of Nigeria and General Motors, USA. It was, however, around the eve of the 1970s that very serious attention was given to local automobile production in Nigeria. Yakubu Gowon as military ruler invited 16 vehicle-manufacturing companies on October 6, 1969, to establish assembly plants. Six of those companies were selected and government partnered with them.

And between 1970 and 1980, vehicle assembly plants were set up in the country. Two of those plants, Peugeot Automobile Nigeria (PAN), located in Kaduna and Volkswagen of Nigeria (VON) in Lagos, were dedicated to churning out cars. The other four assembly plants – Anambra Motor Manufacturing Company in Enugu, Steyr Nigeria Limited in Bauchi, National Truck Manufacturers in Kano, and Leyland Nigeria Limited in Ibadan, assembled trucks and buses. Other private companies like UAC, Leventis, SCOA, BEWAC, and RT Briscoe also established assembly plants.

Automobile Peugeot of France’s proposal was selected as a fall-out from the 1969 meeting on May 7, 1971 and Peugeot Automobile of Nigeria Limited, set up in Kakuri, Kaduna State, was incorporated on December 15, 1972. On March 2, 1975, Peugeot vehicles started to roll off the plant. The 504 and 505 series received heavy patronage by Nigerians, especially the government of the day, as official cars. Why not? After all, it was built for the Nigerian road.

Volkswagen of Nigeria Limited also joined the fray. At its plant in Ojo, Lagos, it churned the Beetle and other Volkswagen brands. And Leyland, Steyr, NTM, and ANAMMCO in Ibadan, Bauchi, Kano, and Enugu respectively, started producing buses and trucks. The companies were producing and doing fine. All seemed to be well.

Gathering dust

However, as economy hardship set in, and imbalances came in, manufacturers began to close shop as many of these products became more expensive. The Structural Adjustment Programme, SAP, which was introduced by military ruler, General Ibrahim Babangida, further worsened the economic plight of most people and saw to it that less people could afford brand new cars. And the late eighties into the early 1990s, Nigerians witnessed a proliferation of foreign-used vehicles or what is commonly known as Tokunbo cars over brand new cars because they were cheaper.

And in 2012, Director-General, National Automotive Council, NAC, Aminu Jalal, said the nation imported 200,000 used-vehicles and 80,000 new-vehicles annually which cost N400bn. This condition started killing the local automobile companies and local assembly plants started going moribund. According to the chief operation officer of Nigerian Automotive Manufacturers Association (NAMA), an umbrella body for assembly plants in Nigeria, Arthur Madueke, when Nigeria’s auto industry was at its peak in the mid 1980s, the assembly plants produced more cars for Nigerians than they needed.

But things nose-dived when government policies became inconsistent, Madueke said.

‘Government was not able to monitor the agreements to see who was doing what and when they (government) allowed importation to flood in freely,’ he said. ‘So they (technical partners) started to use Nigeria as a marketing outlet instead of continuing to develop the local industry.’

It was a condition that had to be reversed. And government had plans.

Last year, during a tour of Peugeot’s Kaduna plant by the NAC board, Alhaji Ibrahim Boyi, the managing director of PAN Nigeria Limited, lamented the deplorable situation the company weathered. “In 1985, we produced 90,000 cars,” Boyi said. “Government policy was very favourable then. But after that, the environment became very bad as all kinds of vehicles started coming into the country.”

And as at last year, PAN that now assembles Peugeot 307 and Changan Alsvin produced around 30 cars daily and with a reduced workforce of 250 compared to 4,000 in the 1980s.

Revving up again

Till 2007, when these six assembly plants were privatised, they merely spluttered, producing well-below their capacities while some crumbled. Following the privatisation, PAN Limited became PAN Nigeria Limited, VON Limited bought by Stallion Motors became VON Nigeria Limited, and Leyland became Leyland Buslan.

And following NAC’s recommendation, the new automotive policy hopes to hike the price of Tokunbos to make them unattractive by raising taxes on imported vehicles to 70% of the car’s original cost. According to stakeholders in the automotive industry, this price hike was to discourage the importation of cars, whether new or used, which overall had negative effects on the nation’s economy.

Aromolaran put it bluntly: “What the incentive has tried to do is to make it easy for people who are ready to invest to be able to compete effectively with people who have already reached a certain level world over and has made it difficult for us to thrive before now.”

Hence, from Kano to Ibadan to Lagos, Ode Remo to Kaduna, Nnewi to Kano, and Bauchi to Enugu, assembly lines are once again producing vehicles. At the VON premises, it’s a frenetic pace at which local and expatriate workers worked side by side on the assembly lines. It currently produces Ashok/Leyland buses used in the BRT system of the Lagos Stat government. Also, the company is set to produce the Nissan Patrol, Nigeria’s first SUV. Though, only 200 workers are employed on the line that makes buses at VON, the managing director said: “As we are hoping to go into passenger car production, we see that number increasing by about 150 per cent to about 500 very shortly.”

The story of activity is the same at Innoson Vehicle Manufacturing (IVM) Company, in Nnewi, Anambra State, which founder Chief Innocent Ifediaso Chukwuma incorporated in February 2007. IVM, which started as a trading business in 1976, now produces commercial automobiles, utility vehicles and passenger cars, in collaboration with some Chinese auto manufacturers. It also enjoys government patronage as recently in January, the Federal Executive Council (FEC) approved N240.2m to purchase 44 locally-made IVM G5 Jeeps for chairmen and coordinators of the Subsidy Reinvestment Programme (SURE-P) across the country.

At ANAMMCO in Enugu, Mercedes Benz trucks began to be churned out after a lull. In the case of Leyland it was sold in 1994 to its current owners but this was revoked two years later by the late General Sani Abacha. And in 2006, in a Sale Revalidation/Privatisation Process the company was returned to its current owner. Since then, it started production of buses, three-ton cargo trucks, and specialised three-ton garbage trucks, leveraging on support of its technical partner – China FAW (China Fist Auto Works), the largest automobile company in China.

Another company producing vehicles locally is Proforce Limited. Located in Ode-Remo, Ogun State, the company designs and manufactures armoured vehicles that are resistant to AK-47 assaults and Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs). And since 2010, it has made various armoured vehicles for police and military operations as well as bullion vans for conveying cash.

According to the new automotive policy, vehicle manufacturers in Nigeria are to enjoy zero duty on Completely-Knocked-Down (CKD) parts while Semi-Knocked-Down (SKD) parts attract five per cent duty. This contrasts 35 per cent levy and 35 per cent duty for imported cars and 35 per cent duty for commercial vehicles. Also, the policy recognises that there will be development of component manufacturing in Nigeria. There are certain aspects of the policy that have already specified the components that will not be part of the CKD package that anybody is going to import.

And as part of efforts geared towards revamping the automotive sector, the Nigerian Automotive Manufacturers Association (NAMA), an umbrella body for all assembly plants in Nigeria with 16 members included companies such as PAN Nigeria in Kaduna, National Trucks Manufacturers Limited (NTM) in Kano, Steyr Nigeria Limited in Bauchi, and ANAMMCO in Enugu was set up. Other members are Innoson Vehicle Manufacturing Company in Nnewi, Zahav Automobile in Lagos, Leyland Buslan in Ibadan; VON Automobile, Lagos, and Leventis Motors in Lagos. The rest were Iron Products Industries Limited in Lagos, Gorgeous Metals Limited in Kaduna, Autobahn Techniques in Lagos, Proforce Limited (armoured vehicles) in Ode-Remo, Ogun State, Lasbag in Akure, and others.

Of these, Autobahn Techniques and Lasbag make tricycles, NTM now makes tractors, while others makes cars, buses and trucks.

And one major fear is that vehicles would just end up being wholly imported with replacement with local content being put to rest by stakeholders.

‘Peugeot plant in Kaduna attained 35 per cent local content in the 80s,’ Madueke said, ‘and Peugeot sourced some of its components from Nnewi, from Port Harcourt and other places, and abroad.’

And already VON Nigeria has achieved 30 per cent local content replacement in assemblying Ashok/Leyland buses. “We started Ashok/Leyland with a 100 per cent importation of the parts. Today, we only import about 70 per cent of the parts,” Aromolaran said. “Over time, we have been able to identify local components and over time we have been able to substitute them.”

However, with the current trend, Madueke, like other players, is optimistic, saying the lessons from government’s previous interventions has been learnt.

‘The fact remains too that most of the companies today are no longer government-owned,’ he said. ‘They are private sector-driven, and I believe that given the environment created by President Goodluck Jonathan, they are going to do a lot better than when government was in control, provided that there is consistency in policy, and that the policy is properly implemented.’

http://thenationonlineng.net/in-search-of-the-nigerian-car/

shizzle1:
this degenerate never disappoints. In your idiotic mind there's no persecution against Igbos. Lets forget about this thread. Ibeto cement case isn't persecution. 5% statement sn't persecution. Innoson isn't persecution. Python dance isn't persecution etc etc

I shouldn't really bother to quote you because one does not expect any rational comment from a buhari supporter, but once a while your innate stupidity and acute idiocy must be pointed out

The only one here expressing stupidity in its purest form is the person who wails about Dangote setting up an automobile plant because he believes it is an act of persecution against Igbos. You reason in such manner yet you think someone else is stupid?... *spits*

In business, people always have rivals and each one lobbies the ogas ontop to curry favours. OBJ may have favoured Dangote over Ibeto, but only a pathetic tribal bigot, especially the ones suffering from severe inferiority and persecution complex disorder will always automatically ascribe everything to the tribe of the individual. Ibeto wasn't the only businessman across Nigeria who was disfavoured to favour Dangote and neither were the rivals of Dangote all Igbos.

And then what exactly is the persecution against Innoson?... A businessman has a problem with his bank that has spanned several administrations, now he refused to honour court orders. But tomorrow if the matter hits the fan, worthless buffoons again would ascribe it to tribe as if to say he is the only one that has every had such an issue with a bank.

May God deliver some people from this compulsive clannish foolishness before it totally eats up what'sleft of their esteem.

shizzle1:
stupid fools think there stupid opinion matters

Credibility issues propagated by nonentities like you. gtb the rogue bank that lacks credibility trying to play a fast one by conniving with efcc and truncating the court judgement ordering it to pay what it owes innoson.

You evil people will never go unpunished

Idiotss

Bros, u can get emotional all you want. It doesn't change the status quo - that Inosson is too toxic to be entrusted with billions.
You can't force other Nigerians to do business with ur tribal man who has a toxic personality.
Don't bother to quote me again
Take ur insults elsewhere

Fukafuka :

Oga shut up

omoola007:


According to you all refinaries are the same size, don't need sandfilling, all the money is available upfront, all the equipment manufacturer will dump other orders to make just yours, Google is now into building refinaries so they will know more than Dangote.. well done sir. This is Nigeria...

Know Dangote knows more than Google.

He's also richer than Google.

Thank you.

Idrismusty97:
And what does Dagote a private business man gain from scamming the nation with fake refinery?

You will not understand.

A project like this will help him access funds from the banks with ease and divert to cement business, make some profits.

I don't hate dangote. Who am I?

NairaMaster1:


You will not understand.

A project like this will help him access funds from the banks with ease and divert to cement business, make some profits.

I don't hate dangote. Who am I?

Na wa o. Wouldn't it be easier to just get the loan for the cement business? Seems your brain is located under your feet and you step on it every time.

naptu2:
There were multiple vehicle assembly plants that were established by the government in the 1960s, '70s and '80s. These include:

1) Peugeot Automobile Nigeria (PAN). This was a joint venture between the Federal Government, Kaduna State Government and Peugeot.

2) Volkswagen Of Nigeria (VON). This was a joint venture between the Federal Government, Lagos State Government and Volkswagen.

3) Mercedes Benz-ANAMMCO. This was a joint venture between the Federal Government, Anambra State Government and Daimler Benz.

4) Leyland Motor Company. This was a joint venture between the Federal Government, Oyo State Government and British Leyland.

5) National Truck Manufacturing Company Limited. This was a joint venture between the Federal Government, Kano State Government and Fiat.

6) Steyr Nigeria. This was a joint venture between the Federal Government, Bauchi State Government and Steyr.


The Federal Government sold its shares in these companies as part of Obasanjo's privatisation programme.

The company that bought PAN were unable to run it profitably and AMCON took over the company. The Kaduna State Government has been looking for a private investor to take over AMCON's shares in the company. Governor El-Rufai made a pitch to Aliko Dangote and it appears that Dangote was convinced.

Stallion Motors bought the VON plant in Lagos and the Leyland plant in Ibadan. The Leyland plant is used as a training center and Nissan vehicles are assembled at the VON plant in Lagos.

Volkswagen of Germany sued Stallion Motors because they did not give them permission to restart production at the Lagos plant, but they reached an out of court settlement. The VON plant now also assembles Volkswagen vehicles.

The Lagos State Government is a shareholder in VON, therefore Lagos State BRT buses are assembled at VON.


Similarly, G.U.O. Okeke bought over the Anambra Motor Manufacturing Company (ANAMMCO), Enugu in 2006. They were not able to run it profitably and A.B.C. took over a production line at the plant. They now assemble Shacman trucks at the ANAMMCO plant.


1 and 2) General Gowon commissions the Volkswagen plant in Lagos

www.nairaland.com/attachments/6423933_17984611avolks20plantjpeg6072d80b88eb0d961939797fc72df66e_jpeg0f869846d798114a9474ff0257e1d181

www.nairaland.com/attachments/6423934_17984601avolksjpega68628ae3655f3311dd201342c72df24_jpegb12a93a05a347bc456fde17696ec8374



3) President Jonathan marks the resumption of activities at the VON plant in Lagos as Nissan rolls out its first vehicles from the plant.

www.nairaland.com/attachments/3094603_jonahdrive2_jpegccc9c6a25690d04fb4a31d5cdcfc8096

Business partnerships with government in Nigeria usually fails due to corruption and bureaucracy especially if government is allowed to participate in the running of the business

Idrismusty97:
Na wa o. Wouldn't it be easier to just get the loan for the cement business? Seems your brain is located under your feet and you step on it every time.

Thank you.

Don't abuse someone in a debate.

It's childish. Serious. So childish.

NairaMaster1:


Thank you.

Don't abuse someone in a debate.

It's childish. Serious. So childish.

Maybe if you weren't being intentionally silly you wouldn't get insulted.

Idrismusty97:
Maybe if you weren't being intentionally silly you wouldn't get insulted.

It's in the blood.

Violence and Terrorism.

NairaMaster1:


Professor of refinery construction. You can construct any refinery in two years if you are serious sir.

Ask Google.

boss as a petrochemical engineer working with one of the biggest refinery's in the world it's not possible get your facts right