Chairman, Innoson Vehicle Manufacturing Company (IVM), Chief Dr Innocent Ifediaso Chukwuma tells journalists his company has capacity to produce gas-powered and electric vehicles for use in Nigeria. He says it’s counterproductive to waste scarce foreign exchange on importing buses. Bennett Oghifo reports
There is a huge challenge in the transportation industry as it concerns the subsidy removal. To what extent will Innoson Vehicle Manufacturing Company address some of these challenges?
I don’t think that there are challenges. This is because the solution is available. The petrol price has gone up. People will reduce their expenses by using buses for their various jobs. Natural Gas is there to power the vehicles. All these buses you are seeing (in IVM’s factory) can use natural gas or normal gas, depending on the one you want. Even though you want electric, to be charging it, we can produce for you to be charging the vehicles with electric. Our factory here can produce any type you need. So the government already has a solution.
Do you really have the capacity to sell to the Nigerian public and how many of these vehicles, big or small, do you manufacture monthly?
We manufacture according to demand. We started these vehicles you are seeing because there is demand now. If you watch, what we did mostly were ambulances during the COVID-19 period. The ambulances took our production space that time. We are on ground here. Any one that is in demand, we face that particular one and produce them. Now we are doing mass production of buses because Nigerians need them to ensure that they are able to go to work conveniently.
Most of the small buses operated in Lagos are imported. Are you making any effort to build a relationship with the State Government to ensure that your buses are brought to Lagos instead of importation by the state?
I am an industrialist. I don’t know how the states are managing their affairs. If any state needs vehicles from me, I am ready to supply them. Even Lagos State bought some vehicles from me. So I don’t think there is anything. Maybe those buses you are seeing are my vehicles.
Do you think CNG vehicles are fuel efficient?
CNG vehicles are the solution, and that is why we produce them. We also make space for CNG, natural gas and for fuel powered vehicles. This is to enable owners to use the one that is available in their areas to drive their vehicles. We have CNG, LNG, petrol, ordinary gas (diesel) and also the electric version. It depends on what you want. We are here to produce. We don’t produce engines. What we do is to produce the body and buy the system from any company that has a good engine that the system wants. We buy it and put it. The body is the same thing. You have a choice of what powers your vehicle and that is what we will produce for you. If you want the electric type, we power it with electricity, if you want the one that runs on CNG, LNG or ordinary fuel, we produce it for you. But I have the space, such that we produce what you want and we have the capacity. If you watch now, it was recently we started producing these buses (pointing at a large number of various bus types in the premises produced in the past few days). This is because of the increase in the pump prices of fuel. In our production line, at least 20 units come out on daily bases.
In the past, the government always claimed that resorting to importation of mass transit buses was because auto plants in Nigeria did not have the capacity to produce a large number of vehicles within a reasonable time. If challenged with a large order, do you have the capacity to deliver a large number of vehicles without taking too long?
My own case is different. It is a different issue. If I get demand, I will even increase the quantity produced in a day. My factory has the capacity of producing 200 units of these buses in one month. So what I need is to employ more people.
How many units do you have now on ground?
I have materials on ground to produce up to 500 units immediately and in a very short period. We can produce 20 units daily. The factory has been set up even before the present challenges came up. We did not set up the factory because of today. We set it up to serve Nigerians from any tribe. I told you that when there was COVID-19 in 2020, most of the ambulances used in this country were produced here. Today, it is obvious that it is buses that they need and we will produce for them and we are assuring them that the materials to be used will not be an issue. We are going to satisfy them. The important thing is for people to make orders. Let all the states give us orders, we are ready to supply and satisfy them at very good prices. Anybody who goes overseas to import buses is wasting foreign exchange for this country. Everybody must work together to move this country forward. How can anybody go overseas to buy buses while we at Innoson are here producing and exporting to other countries. It is very wrong. So, I feel that anybody who is thinking of importing buses into the country is wasting our foreign exchange. We have to hold that person accountable.
