Wale Jagun
The Governor of Lagos State, Mr Babajide Sanwo – Olu, has assured that a vehicle assembly plant being jointly set up by Lagos State Government and CIG Motor will produce 5,000 units of new vehicles when it commences operations.
The plant, which is expected to be completed by the end of this year, will have a jointly-run factory for the production of different classes of brand new cars.
The Chief Press Secretary to the Governor, in a statement on Thursday, said that the establishment of the vehicle assembly plant in Lagos was part of the bilateral agreements reached by the State Government and Chinese Investors’ Community in November 2019 during Sanwo-Olu’s business trip to China.
IBILE Holdings Limited, a State-owned corporation, is supervising the investment on behalf of the Lagos State Government.
The Governor inspected the fully equipped assembly halls already constructed in the assembly yard. The plant is expected to produce 5,000 units of new vehicles when it becomes operational.
Other ancillary facilities already in place in the yard include wheel balancing chamber, spraying booths, maintenance hall, noise testing chambers, sprinkling arena to test for roof leakage, staff lounge and auto parts warehouse.
“This is one of the things we promised Lagosians. Apart from our relationship with CIG Motors, there is a partnership in which we are setting up a vehicle assembly plant. This is becoming a reality, as the site is live with structures and assembly equipment”, Gov. Sanwo – Olu said.
“The place has been well prepared for the production of vehicles. We initially agreed it would be SKD (Semi Knocked Down) but now the facility has moved to CKD (Completely Knocked Down).
“We are hoping that their first plan is to have a production capacity of 5,000 vehicles, after which it will be pushed to 10,000 vehicles per year.
“We are happy with the level of work at the site and the commitment of our partner to this project. The plan is that we want to stop buying fully built vehicles from abroad; we want to be able to have an assembly line where we can employ our citizens in an automobile production chain”, the Governor revealed.
The Governor said the automobile assembly plant would create employment opportunities for local skilled workers, as 95 per cent of the workforce would be sourced locally.
Also, some of the parts used in the assembly plant would be sourced locally, including air conditioning system, valves, ball joints, bolts and nuts, and batteries.
