He said the vehicles ranged from fairly used cars, to brand new cars, excluding tractors and military vehicles.
Jalal, who led an eight-member Board of the NAC to the Peugeot Automobile of Nigeria in Kaduna, noted that the vehicles were imported by the three tiers of government, private corporate organisations as well as individuals.
According to the DG, the breakdown shows that N550bn worth of vehicles; N500bn spare parts and N150bn worth of tyres were brought into the country.
This, he added, had over the years stifled the economy as the country’s vehicle assembly plants lost patronage.
Jalal said, “I want to tell you that last year alone, this country spent N550bn on the importation of cars, buses and trucks. But that does not include tractors and military vehicles. Again, we also spent around N500bn on spare parts. In fact, on tyres alone, we spent N150bn. And this year, the same trend is showing.
“This is not good for our country. With the new policy, we are going to support our car plants to produce very standard cars at globally competitive prices. This is going to greatly add to our local content. For example, to assemble a car here, you need about 2,500 parts.
“If many cars are produced and sold here, then it would encourage the local manufacturing of these parts, creating more wealth here and driving down the cost of the vehicles. By the time we start implementing this policy, you will see a very impressive positive change in just six months.”
The Chairman, NAC, Alhaji Abdulkadir Saleh, gave an assurance that the new board would strictly implement the new automobile policy to ensure that locally assembled vehicles were patronised.
He said the government had no option than to fully implement the new policy and ensure that all tiers of government patronised locally assembled vehicles.
Saleh added that under the new policy, Toyota and Nissan would build plants in Nigeria.
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