Revised auto policy to become law before year end – NADDC

• Electric vehicle project incorporated

The Federal Government says the National Automotive Industry Development Plan will become law and its provisions binding on all players in the auto business in the country.

Director General of the National Automotive Design and Development Council, Jelani Aliyu, who spoke in Lagos on the FG’s plans for the EVs also said the electric vehicle principle had been incorporated in the revised auto policy.

This came as stakeholders in the EVs and gas-powered vehicles called for the support of government in ensuring mass production and patronage of such vehicles in the country.

Jelani, who addressed participants virtually at a training programme organised by the Nigeria Auto Journalists Association in Lagos, stressed that electric and gas-fired vehicles had become the future of automobile globally with many countries setting target to end the sale of petrol and diesel engine automobiles.

The NADDC DG spoke at the workshop with the theme, ‘Migration to Electric Vehicles and Gas-powered Vehicles; Opportunities & Challenges for Nigeria’, assuring investors in the Nigeria’s auto business that the policy would be passed into law before the end of the year.

According to him, a lot of development like the EVs as well as gas-powered vehicles are springing up as the government fine-tunes the auto policy bill.

On the charging stations for electric vehicle, the DG encouraged Business men and women to take advantage of the opportunity.

The Corps Marshal of the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC), Dr. Boboye Oyeyemi, in his submission said migration into electric vehicles would reduce the dangerous emissions from fossil fuel vehicles mostly second hand flooding the Nigerian market.

Oyeyemi represented by the Lagos Sector Commander, Olusegun Ogungbemide disclosed that 80 per cent of vehicles are second hand.

“Some of them are as old as 30 years and when they come in, we embrace them as new vehicles, we subject them to the same activities that the new vehicles are being subjected to, not minding the costs,” he said.

He said, “This migration is so important to Nigeria especially in the area of health. Many people are in the hospital in Lagos today, which hitherto wouldn’t have been if our atmosphere has been so sanitized.

“The closest to it that we had in Lagos was during the lockdown when we had less vehicles on Nigerian roads. The commissioner for health testified to it when I visited him. During the lockdown, 70 to 80 per cent of vehicles with all these emissions were erased from the system with the exception of articulated vehicles.”