Several billions of naira invested by the Federal Government in acquiring massive land and equipment for automotive projects may have gone down the drain, a former Acting Director General of the National Automotive Design and Development Council, Mr Luqman Mamudu, has said.
He stated this in Abuja, where chief executive officers of auto companies and other stakeholders called for a review of Finance Act making it difficult for for local auto assemblers to compete with sellers of fully built imported vehicles.
They spoke at Auto CEOs Forum, an interactive session involving major players, Ministry of Industry Trade and Investment, heads of relevant government agencies such as Nigeria Customs Service, Bureau of Public Procurement and National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, National Bureau of Statistics and National Automotive Design and Development Council.
Mamudu said the FG invested billions of naira to acquire the huge land and import needed equipment for industrial clusters in six major cities across the country to give the auto policy a sound footing.
For instance, he said in Ikorodu, Lagos State, while about N1bn was spent to bring in test equipment for a facility to test vehicles emission level, the government paid N300m for the land housing the test centre.
