By GRACE OBIKE, Abuja

The Federal Government, through the National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure (NASENI), has signed an agreement on spare parts production with Innoson Vehicle Company.

The deal is to commercialise automobile research results and prototypes in NASENI to finished products.

Under the agreement, Innoson Vehicle Manufacturing Company will take-up all automobile research and development(R&D’s) results at NASENI and convert them to automobile products for the markets including getting some of them ready for exports.

Executive Vice-Chairman/Chief Executive Officer (CEO) NASENI, Prof. Mohammed Haruna made this known in Abuja at the signing of Memorandum of Understanding between NASENI and the CEO of Innoson, Chief Innocent Chukwuma.

He said: “On several occasions, Innosen has challenged us on materials that he imports. He promised not to import if we can produce them.

“Today couldn’t have been a happier day, you know 2020 has been a different year all together but for NASENI, this singular event is wiping all the year came with.”

We have been pursuing Innosen motors since 2013 when we first launched our motorcycle and in 2014 when we created the first NASENI tricycle. Anytime we meet, his technical team will advise us to get this thing correct, improve on this, develop this one this way, that is the path we have been all along. It takes believing in Nigeria for him to have waited for us for seven years to develop to maturity to sign an agreement.

“Today we are agreeing to jointly research and develop new solutions on whatever is needed in the industrial, automobile and other sectors currently not manufactured in Nigeria. With this, if we truly want to industrialise, we will need to ban the importation of whatever we can produce

“In the world, no manufacturer can produce everything 100 per cent again across the globe the government stimulates research and development, it is not the private sector that does research for new products, the government does in order to support the takeoff of industries, working with them we can have made-in-Nigeria aircraft and it is the word of the president that if we can convince him that these products can be available locally, he can ban importation.

“We are not mass producing for Innosen motors, they will do it themselves but the collaboration has also started by producing some moulds for the things they need for the components of vehicles they make.

“I am very happy with what is happening because NASENI has been developing a lot of things. We can produce so many things locally here because we know what we need.

“They have a design of cargo tricycle that people are importing, they have a local design that suits what we need, we can use it, develop it and it will look like the one they import and ours will be better, I believe that we can even export it after developing it from the way it is now. They have done their best but we who know about it more because it’s our field will develop it the way it will be accepted in the market and people will prefer it to the imported ones.” (The Nation)

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