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Nigeria spent about N1.05 trillion last year on importation of vehicles and spare parts, while its local car assembly plants suffered monumental loss in patronage, according to the Director General of the National Automotive Council (NAC), Alhaji Aminu Jalal.

Meanwhile, the Peugeot Automobile of Nigeria (PAN), which produced 90,000 cars in 1985, and had about 4,000 permanent employees, now produces about 3,000 vehicles annually with 250 staff, its Managing Director, Alh. Ibrahim Boyi, said.


However, the Chairman, Board of NAC, Alh. Abdulkadir Saleh has promised that NAC would ensure implementation of the new automotive policy to ensure government’s patronage of locally assembled cars.
These revelations were made, yesterday, when an eight-member Board of NAC toured the 40-year old PAN in Kakuri, Kaduna.

The tour showed PAN has made a lot of remodelling of its old facilities, building the state-of-the-art workshop and importing sundry machines and equipment as its engineers and technicians simultanesuly assembled Peugeot 307 models and Changan Alsvin Sedans.


Fielding questions from reporters after the tour, the DG of NAC, Jalal, said: “I want to tell you that last year alone, this country spent N550 billion on importation of cars, buses and trucks. That does not include tractors, and military vehicles. Again, we also spent around N500 billion on spare parts. In fact, on tyres alone, we spent N150 billion. 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, it would encourage the local manufacturing of these parts, creating more wealth here and driving down the cost of vehicles. By the time we start implementing this policy, you will see a very impressive positive change in just six months.

On his part, MD of PAN said: “In the mid-‘80s and early ‘90s, we were doing very well. In 1985, we produced 90,000n cars. Government policy was very favourable then. But after that the environment became very bad as all kinds of vehicles started coming into the country. Today, we produce between 25 and 30 cars only during working days. Our workforce of 4000 in the ‘80s is just now 250. We are hoping that the situation will change, because we have put in every modern facility, and forged the right international technical partnership to succeed”.

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Russian investigators claim to have found household appliances imported from China which contain hidden microchips that pump spam data and malware into wi-fi networks.

Authorities in St Petersburg allegedly discovered 20 to 30 kettles and irons with ‘spy microchips that send some data to the foreign server’, according to Russian media.

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The revelation comes just as the EU launches an investigation into claims that Russia itself bugged gifts to delegates at last month’s G20 summit in an attempt to retrieve data from computers and telephones.

This has led to speculation that the chips allegedly found in the home appliances may also have the ability to steal data and send it back to Chinese servers.

The allegations against the Chinese were made in St Petersburg news outlet Rosbalt, which quotes a source from customs broker Panimport, but does not detail what data was being sent or to where.

According to The Register, which translated the article, it would be possible to build a malicious microchip – sometimes referred to as a spambot or spybot – small enough to hide in a kettle.

It also believes there are many readily available transformers which could be used to convert Russia’s 220V electricty supply to power the chips without destroying them.

But it casts doubt on the report’s claims that the devices were discovered because they were overweight as it is unlikely that the difference of a few grams would have been enough to raise suspicion.

This might only have happened if the appliances were air-freighted, it said, which was probably not the case because they were cheap items.

It emerged yesterday that the European Union is investigating gifts that visiting delegations received at last month’s summit in St Petersburg of leaders from the world’s 20 top economies after newspaper reports alleged Russia was trying to install spyware on computers to snoop on participants.

European Commission spokesman Frederic Vincent said that experts were looking into the handouts, which included USB sticks and were given out at the Group of 20 summit, but said ‘analysis of hardware and software have not amounted to any serious security concerns.’

He added the investigation had not yet been fully completed.

Italian newspapers reported early this week allegations that Russia tried to spy on participants of the G-20 summit by giving officials free equipment like USB sticks or mobile phone chargers which, once plugged in, would infect computers with spying software.

At the G-20 summit on September 5-6, world leaders from countries including the U.S., China, Germany and Brazil gathered for two days of talks.

Vincent also said the EU delegation would have been well prepared for such attempts, if true. He said it was a routine rule for EU diplomats and leaders to stay away from using handouts or any external equipment during foreign travel.

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