Auto policy: Nigerian-made vehicles not achievable in 30 years

Tayo Oladipupo |

The National Vice President of the Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA), Dr. Kayode Farinto has said that Nigeria cannot achieve the feat of local vehicle production in the next thirty years.

He said this in view of the failure of the auto policy of the government meant to empower local production of vehicles.

According to him, the scheme is formulated to enrich one percent of the nation’s population.

Farinto stated this in an interview with pressmen in Lagos recently saying that the policy which was meant to encourage local production of vehicles in the country had succeeded in ripping off the country through tax rebate and incentives granted the beneficiaries of the policy who end up short changing the government.

In his words, “Auto policy has failed as I told you because what they do in the issue of auto policy is to enrich just 1% of Nigerians. The so-called local assemblers, let me tell you what they do, they will bring in semi knocked down, and the one they call semi knocked down is already having engines, it has tyres, they will now remove the tyres, remove the fender and they will now call that one semi Knocked down, they are milking this country.

“The intention of the policy is to see how we can produce the Nigerian made vehicles but I had told them that we cannot achieve that in the next 30 years.

“What we are expected to do is to think of how we can produce at least radiator in the next 10 years and if the radiator is tested by SON, we can produce the best radiator in Africa. But we want to concentrate on assembling; they have succeeded in ripping us off because they are just milking us.

“They gave them tax rebate and they gave them tax incentive and the money is going into private account which is very unfortunate.

”And talking about the tariff that is usually introduced, I am still studying it but I still look at it as caricature tariff. We have been calling on government to look at the issue of vehicles, the auto policy the second time. Why is Cotonou taking our goods? Cotonou will give you lesser rate of duty, Cotonou will give you 14 days demurrage free period but if you are bringing in new vehicle into Nigeria, you are expected to pay 35% duty and 35% levy. You know what they did smartly? You now pay 20% duty and 50% levies. Is that not ridiculous?

“And the tariff is categorized in such a way that we have raw materials, semi-finished products and finished products. Raw materials will not be more than 5%, semi-finished 10% while finished products is 20%. Is that government serious? And that was why I said that policy formulators in this country are not getting it right because they are giving it to carpenter who does not even know how to manage a policy”.

Farinto who is also the Managing Director of Wealthy Honey Investment Limited added that no policy has worked in Nigeria except the policy of corruption which according to him was embedded in the system everywhere and that the government was allowing it because it was not building institutions rather individuals.

“Look at the call up system for the truckers, NPA got a very nice idea, you will be called when you have deliveries to make in the ports and it was given to the Navy to manage.

“Navy started managing it, because Nigerians were never patient and you wouldn’t blame them, they want to take their cargo on time so that they will not lose money on the deposit, they started bribing the Navy, they started shunting the queue.

“They started with N10,000 and later they graduated to N30,000 and when the thing now became unbearable, that was what led to the last strike but who started it? Navy did not ask for money.

On the inability of the National Single Window introduced by the Nigeria Customs Service, he said it could not work years after it was introduced attributing the failure to territorialism, nepotism and corruption where every agency wanted to hold onto its own and would not want to be seen to have limitations.

He however posited that unless there was attitudinal change by both the leaders and the led and Nigerians seen to be patriotic, the country may still not get it right.

“We need to have attitudinal change, you need to change your attitude, and I need to change my attitude. Above all, we must be patriotic Nigerians.

“Federal government too has a role to play. Government must provide basic amenities. We need a transport policy because we don’t have one”, he stated.