Have we ever asked ourselves why Nigeria is not a major player in the global automobile market?

By Ayo Akinfe 

(1) Today is August 24. As most Nigerians in the UK continue to enjoy the long bank holiday weekend and revel at the carnival, I ask if they actually ever ponder to think about socio-economic developments that took place on this day over the years 

(2) For instance, do you know that on August 24 in 1959, the British Motor Corporation introduced the Morris Mini-Minor, designed by Alec Issigonis. Designed to be low cost and capture a niche in the market, the Mini was only 10 ft long but seated four passengers

(3) The Morris Mini-Minor was built by the British Motor Corporation as a response to the fuel shortages caused by the Suez Canal crisis and launched worldwide in 1959. Its compact form was designed to give as much room for passengers and luggage as possible. 

(4) Following its launch, the Mini proved to be tremendously popular and 5.3m cars were sold worldwide before production ceased in 2000. There are 12m cars on Nigeria’s roads today so we have a captive market. Our production costs are also lower than that of any industrial competitor 

(5) I ask myself how a nation of 180m people cannot have a national car company that is respected worldwide and can compete with the big boys. There is clearly something wrong with the Nigerian as it does not shame him or her that they do not have a global iconic car brand that is seen as synonymous with the nation 

(6) Just look across the globe and see Italy with Fiat and Bugatti, France with Citroen and Peugeot, America with GM and Ford, Germany with Mercedes and BMW, Russia with Lada, South Korea with Daewoo, Malaysia with Proton, Japan with Toyota and Nissan, etc. Nigeria is too large a nation not to manufacture automobiles for the global market 

(7) We should set ourselves the target of not only selling 1m Innoson cars worldwide annually but also manufacturing everything from scratch locally. At the moment, what we have is an embarrassing assembly plant. We have passed that stage in our socio-economic development 

(8) Obafemi Awolowo summed us up when he said: “While many men in power and public office are busy carousing in the midst of women of easy virtue and men of low morals, I, as a few others like me, am busy at my desk thinking about the problems of Nigeria and proffering solutions to them. Only the deep can call to the deep.” Let us be honest, merriment appears to be more important to us as a people than socio-economic development 

(9) Awolowo also wrote: “Any person that is starved with books especially the right type of books, will suffer intellectual malnutrition, stagnation and atrophy.” How many of us would use the advantage of the bank holiday to read about the development of the automobile industry in other nations with a view to replicating the feat in Nigeria 

(10) From what I can see, our appreciation of economics begins and ends with the accumulation of private wealth and merriment. In the midst of such shallow thinking, no government can turn the economy around