Rolls-Royce, Daewoo gave my father breakthrough – Lanre Shittu Motors MD, Taiwo Shittu

Lanre Shittu Motors’ Managing Director, Mr Taiwo Shittu, was recently crowned Nigeria’s Auto Personality of the Year and the late father and founder of the auto company received a posthumous award for his developmental strides in the sector.

The MD, in this interview, reflects on the implications of these awards, the genesis of the company and its current state as well as other automotive industry issues

How do you feel winning the Auto Personality of the Year award?

First, I have to express gratitude to Almighty Allah. I thank Him for the opportunity given to me. I feel happy to be so honoured. I know now people are watching everything everyone is doing in the industry. This award, I know, is as a result of hard work. This also means working harder henceforth. One has set the pace; one cannot therefore afford to lower the standards or go down.
I also see this as an opportunity to do more for the industry and ensure that it does not collapse.

Where do you hope to take the company in the next five years?

I give God the glory for what we’ve done so far. The credit goes to my late father Alhaji Razaq Alanni Olanrewaju Shittu, for building the brand name. There is nothing like a good name. If you don’t leave anything for your children other than a good name, the sky is the limit for them. In our own case, he left us money and the good name.
We can’t thank him enough for leaving us with a good name. You can imagine that everywhere we turn to in the country, once we mention we are Lanre Shittu’s sons, we are ushered in immediately. People would say ‘Your father was a good man. He won’t cheat if you did any business with him. His word was his bond; he never broke his promises’. I have heard this many times. And the only thing we can do is to build on this legacy.
In the next five years, I see us growing the LSM brand name to become a sought-after brand in Nigeria. We are starting off with the commercial vehicles. Already, we have the LSM-branded CNG buses, 100 per cent CNG buses, in Nigeria. Right now, we are penetrating the market with the CNG buses. We want to bring in the smaller buses – the 18-seater and 11-seater buses (korope). We have the pickup too, which is also a commercial vehicle, lined up.
From experience, I can tell you that once the commercial sector has tested and found your brand worthy, it will be very easy to migrate to the passenger cars.
When the commercial vehicles are doing well and there is no downtime, you are in business. By the time you bring in the passenger vehicles, it will be a walkover.
One of the reasons we are coming out with the LSM brand is to immortalise our late father’s name.

We see ourselves taking a big chunk of the commercial vehicle segment in Nigeria in the next five years and making the LSM a household name in Nigeria. Lanre Shittu Motors as a company is a household name already, doing other automakers brands. But we want to shift the focus to the LSM brand with high after-sale service. We had represented a lot of brands in the past such as Mack, Yutong, Sany and JAC; we have learnt so much in 43 years from the industry on how to build a brand to penetrate the market – the support, communication. The good name and goodwill will be added advantage for us.

What is the secret behind the success of the Lanre Shittu Motors even after the demise of the founder?

I will say it’s God; the good legacy left behind by the founder, our father, and the unity among the 20 of us – his children, for trusting and believing in me to lead the business. A lot businesses collapse after the death of the owners. Once a business founder is dead, the next you hear is that a fight has broken out and while one person is taking the arm, another is claiming the leg, the other is going for the body. And in six months, the whole empire is gone down.
In our case, we have 20 siblings that are cooperative and believe in my ability to lead the business with my other brothers.
We had a father who never spoiled us. He taught us sincerity, commitment and accountability. All these are coming to play to make his business and legacies live after his death. Our target is to make it live to the next generation; that’s when we can say we are really successful.

What is the relationship between Lanre Shittu Motors and the Mack truck brand in Nigeria?

We still buy spare parts from Mack to support the truck brand in Nigeria. We sold the last Mack truck in Nigeria. No other auto company aw we speak has brought any Mack truck into the country. We are still supporting the brand. Some of my teams are in big oil and gas companies in the South-South catering to their Mack trucks. Our mission is to be one of the best auto solution providers with perfect after-sale service in the country. So we still support every brand that we have done in the past with after-sale service. That way, it will be easier for us to shift the customers to our own newer brand. It is the support they are buying now, not the brand.

Are the Mack trucks sold eight years ago still on the road in Nigeria?

Yes, they’re still on the road. I sold 30 Mack trucks last month.

Are you partnering other automakers to produce the LSM brand of vehicles?

We are partnering reputable automakers. For us at the LSM, we are careful not to select as partners anyone not in the top three of the segment of vehicle we’re doing in that country. For instance, in the our pickup segment, we are going to China for the selection of partners. Our target is for the first or the second in that country’s pickup.

Where are you in the CNG buses now?
For the CNG buses, we are assembling in our own brand name LSM. This is a new opportunity. It was a big risk we took; but it’s a risk that is paying off because we believe in the government of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. We knew when he said fuel subsidy was gone, the next thing would be CNG-powered vehicles. It was clear that Nigerians would not run to electric vehicles as an immediate option.

Electric vehicles can only be driven by solar in this country. The high inflation has knocked off the national electricity grid to drive the EVs. You need an investment of over N300 million to have a commercial electric charging station. How many Nigerians can afford this?

Are you saying Nigeria is not ripe for electric vehicles?
Nigeria is ripe for EVs but we’re not yet there. But we’re there on CNG, with the government leading the initiative and abundance of natural gas. I see a lot CNG stations fast coming up. Lagos, Benin, Abuja, Kano, Port Harcourt and Ilorin among others are cities where CNG refilling stations are springing up.
The CNG idea is taking shape. A trip to the South-East now costs N53,000 per person (I was told). But with N72,000 of CNG, you can almost fill the tank of a bus and drive to the East conveniently. With a mass transit CNG bus, you can take a large number of people to a 400km destination on N72,000 worth of CNG. You cannot get that anywhere.

Apart from the high capacity CNG buses, our 18-seater and 11-seater will come out early next year. Thereafter, we will move into the passenger vehicles.

Are you planning to go into the coaches for long distance travel?

We missed the business this year. It requires adequate planning. We intend to go into it next year. It should be around September next year in preparation for the end of the year travels.

How did your father, founder of LSM, Alhaji Olanrewaju Shittu, start the automobile business?

He started the automobile business small, with three vehicles at Aguda, in the Surulere area of Lagos.
It was from a shoe business that he switched over to the auto business.
In starting, he travelled with his wife out of the country to buy things including vehicles around 1978. He bought the vehicles in Valencia, Spain.

Shoe and car business are not related. How did he suddenly develop interest in automobile business?

He just felt like changing his line of business. It was Debasco Motors Chairman, Otunba Babatunde Onakoya, that put him through. Debasco was a big auto company in Lagos at that time.

My father was seen as creditworthy, so people trusted him and were always willing to give him vehicles on credit.
He would go to Ogbomosho to buy six vehicles, by would come back to Lagos with additional six vehicles on credit. They had no doubt that he would pay back quickly.
Sometimes, he would travel as far as Kaduna to buy 12 cars from PAN, he would be the last driving the last vehicle while others were ahead driving all the way to Lagos.
This gave the auto company the strength to grow fast from the three vehicles he started with.

Which brand gave him a breakthrough?
It’s Daewoo and Rolls Royce that gave him a real breakthrough. That is why we have the signs of the two brands engraved on the wall of the LSM office at Alaka Lagos.
Lanre Shittu Motors was the only one selling the Rolls Royce then. That was in the 1990s.

Was he a car freak?

Yes, he loved cars. He used to have a Rolls Royce. But no longer had it before he died. What he had was a Mercedes-Benz Mayback. His car garage was not packed full. Even though he was a car dealer, he changed his main car every 10 years. He was a very prudent man. At the beginning of his adult life, he had many cars; in the middle, he was prudent It was at the end that he bought some flashy cars such as Lexus L600, MayBack 650 engine – at that time only he and ex-President Muhammadu Buhari had that car. He bought the car then because there were three weddings in the family. By time he died, the car had only ran 600 miles. He also had a Ford Expedition, which he liked to drive. He had a Lexus LX570 First Edition almost the same time.
He was a family-oriented man.