Mr. Joseph Osanipin is the director-general of the National Automotive Design and Development Council (NADDC), in this exclusive interview with Blueprint Weekend, he unveils his achievements since he assumed office after his appointment by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
Could you please give us a highlight of your achievements since coming onboard as the DG of this agency?
When I came in, the first thing I did was to identify what is going to take us to where we need to be. In identifying it, the first thing I focused on was local components development.
This is because the local component is the bedrock and foundation of the auto industry. If you are not strong in local component production, you will not be able to attract top manufacturers to your economy. They only go to where they can get local components and spare parts.
Local component is also good for after sale service. You buy a vehicle once every four or five years, but you maintain the vehicle regularly. You change tyres, brake pads, lubricants and so on regularly. All these are component parts that make up the vehicle. You have to think of developing the components of the vehicle before the vehicle itself.
For example, big vehicle manufacturers don’t keep stock. They don’t keep stock of seats, tyres, dash boards, brake pads, etc. They only keep stock of the chassis and the engine. They outsource other parts of the vehicle like bumper, dashboard, tyres and so on in line with the sequence they send.
So, the vehicle that you and I are using, we need to provide the parts and I always tell people, that is the economy. For example, the vehicle assembler does not employ 10 per cent of what the component manufacturer does.
What is the multiplayer effect of local components production?
The multiplier effect of component manufacturing on the economy is way higher than that of vehicle assemblage. As a matter of fact, a single part manufacturer can employ more than what a vehicle assembler can employ.
They also use more resources than the assembler. For example, if you are going to produce a shock absorber, you use steel, iron and other raw materials, and by the time you source all these materials locally it will impact positively on the economy. The same thing happens to the person manufacturing tyres locally.
The person doing vehicles will only ask those producing all the parts to supply the different parts based on specifications.
If you take Mercedes, for example, what the manufacturer has is the chassis and the design. The other parts come from other companies that specialise in components manufacturing. So, if you cannot provide that, you should be able to provide the after sales. This is because after you buy your vehicle you are going to be changing brake pads, engine oil, etc. If you can do these it will have a positive impact on the economy.
What practical steps did you take in identifying the parts that we can produce in Nigeria?
The first step I took was to identify those who have the capacity and ability to produce these component parts. So, we went to different parts of the country, we know the ones they are producing in the South-east where most of them operate from, we know the one in Kano, people send vehicles from Niger and Chad to Kano. We have visited them and we know their capabilities.
If Nigeria needs 500, 000 fuel filters per day, for example, and our company in Uyo can only produce 100, another company in Lagos can only produce 50 it means our capability in Nigeria is only 150 while our demand is 500, 000. This will help us in policy formulation. The decision we are going to make is different from when we have full capabilities.
Firstly, we need to see how we can encourage them to increase their capabilities. Is it funding? Is it some kind of protection? We need to work with them to come up with policies that would lead to the expansion of that product line. That is what we are doing now.
From your engagements with local components manufacturers, what are their capabilities?
We have seen that we have almost 70 per cent capacity to produce and we have identified those areas. Take motorcycles, for example, we have capacity to produce most of the plastic parts here. Our focus for now is on development of local content.
It is important to note that you cannot do all these without building the capacity. In building the capacity, we work with stakeholders to train those that work in that system.
We used our staff and wrote some of the assemblers to give us some of their staff to train them on how to design products using reverse engineering. If you bring a part, for example, the software will help them design the part, it will tell you the kind of raw material you need to design the part.
Some of the people that attended the training have set up their own businesses, while others are already training others. One of them has been employed by a company in South Korea to be one of their trainers in Nigeria.
We have also launched our curriculum to train people on Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) and electric vehicles. So, we have two curricula that we have released, which have been approved by the National Board for Technical Education (NBTE), they are one of the partners.
What kind of training do you offer on CNG?
In terms of technology transfer, you know that CNG is a new product, it is the new thing in town now, and it is part of the Renewed Hope Agenda of Mr. President in order to cut waste and empower more Nigerians.
All the gas we were flaring before, we can now turn them from waste to wealth. We trained people on how to adopt the technology. We have trained a lot of technicians to convert vehicles hitherto using petrol to CNG.
What is the level of awareness of locally assembled vehicles in Nigeria?
Again, we did a lot of awareness so that people will know about locally assembled vehicles. A lot of people don’t know that there are vehicles assembled in Nigeria. A lot of people don’t know that some security vehicles that PROFORCE is doing are done in Nigeria. We have done a lot to give our local assemblers exposure.
Apart from that we have brought other stakeholders together. The Ministry of Finance is a very critical stakeholder to us because they are the ones that issue Import Duty Exemption Certificates to support local assemblers, so if there is any delay from their own end it is going to affect us.
We have the Nigerian Customs Service (NCS) too; they are the eyes of most of the agencies that use the Sea Ports. We also have the Bank of Industry (BoI) which provides funds for our assemblers.
So, we brought all these people so that they can explain their roles to our assemblers in order to cut time. You know for you to be efficient you talk about time, cost and energy.
We want them to be more efficient, if they are efficient their cost will reduce and they will be able to compete with their foreign competitors.
Where and when do you offer training for youth on CNG?
After our workshop in Abuja, we have trained youth in Ekiti in collaboration with our partners on CNG. We are also working with the Industrial Training Fund (ITF) to train youth across the six geopolitical zones.
We are partnering with other stakeholders because we know that we cannot do the training alone. We work with companies like auto gas, Portland to do the training. This is because the level of training that we do is technical because the training is technical, we cannot put 100 people in a room; so we normally train a maximum of 45 people in one session and each session is five days minimum.
We have done training in Osun, Oyo, Kwara and a lot of states apart from the ones we do almost every week here in Abuja.
What is the number of youth you want to reach with the training?
If you look at the youth that are in the auto industry that is Nigeria Automobile Technicians Association (NATA), they are more than 10, 000, we cannot train all of them. However, working with our partners, we have so far trained up to 1000 youths.
On our own, our target is to train another 1, 000 alone aside from the ones we do with our partners.
What are you doing to tackle the challenges of infrastructure in the CNG value-chain?
Unfortunately, we are not in charge of infrastructure; however, the beauty of CNG is that it has a lot of value-chain; the economy of CNG is massive. The kind of employment CNG can generate is also massive.
So, when you talk about the value-chain you look at the kits. The kits are totally out of our control. The Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON) certifies the kits. So, we walk with SON to ensure standards. In August 2024, SON released 70 guidelines to regulate standards in CNG. We work with them in that regard.
Another agency is the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA). They are the ones in charge of gas, not us.
The one that concerns us is whatever is going to happen to the vehicle itself. So, whatever you do with the vehicle concerns us.
Once a vehicle leaves the factory today, if it is a PMS vehicle and you convert it to CNG, the producer of that vehicle wants to know the process you took. So, we must have documentary evidence to show everybody that this is the process it took. That is what is going to guarantee safety and give people confidence that the right thing has been done.
Having said this, I know that the government is investing heavily on infrastructure but it is not what the government alone can do.
The private sector has to be involved. However, investors naturally go to where the profit is. For CNG, you are going to reduce the cost of fueling by 70 per cent. As I am talking to you now, a lot of people want to convert their vehicles to the extent that there is pressure on those converting. Some people park their cars for four days before it gets to their turn. It means people are beginning to see the advantages of CNG. The more they are doing that, the more people want to invest in CNG.
What are you doing to implement the Renewed Hope Agenda as it concerns your sector?
If you look at the Renewed Hope Agenda of Mr. President, it talks about revamping the economy. It talks about job-creation and industrialisation. The Renewed Hope Agenda has eight priority areas and the number seven which talks about industrialisation is the one that concerns us.
We are working hard to move the economy from consumption to production and we are doing that through component production because that is where the jobs are, it has a huge multiplier effect.
I was at Nnewi in Anambra state and I met a lot of young people, some have only one person, others only two people producing different types of parts. If you bring your parts to them and say this is the type that you want, in 24 hours they will produce it for you. These are the kind of people we are supporting because of the multiplier effect; they are creating jobs.
For instance, we did training for those guys converting cars from PMS to CNG. After the training, when we went to Oshogbo, we saw one of the guys we trained training people.
When we went to Ekiti, another company brought him back to train 35 people. As I am talking to you now, the guy has trained over 100 people.
Also, one person with a disability that we trained has been employed by a South Korean firm and he is training people. Some of them got jobs with international organisations.
Again, Nigeria is a gas country, if we do most of these things internally, we will save a lot of costs and we will have foreign exchange. By the time we consolidate production components locally, we are going to conserve foreign exchange.
When you look at our activities as it concerns the Renewed Hope Agenda, it has created jobs, conserved foreign exchange and moved towards industrialisation.
What is your message to Nigerians in the New Year?
My message to Nigerians is that we should be patient. We have to be patient because if you have a child who has fever and the child needs to take a bitter pill to get well, it is not because you hate that child that made you give him a bitter pill, but because you love the child. The pill may be bitter temporarily, but when he eventually swallows it, he is going to get well and enjoy his life and you too will have peace.
The decision to give that bitter pill is out of love and care. And you are taking responsibility as the father of that child. This is what is happening now in Nigeria.
This is the time for Nigerians to take that pill and we will get well. When we get well, Nigeria is going to prosper.
