By IGHO OYOYO, Abuja
Members of the House of Representatives Committee on Public Accounts and management of National Automotive Design and Development Council (NADDC) have unveiled the first 100 percent locally assembled electric car at the National Assembly complex, Abuja.
Chairman, House Committee on Public Accounts, Hon Busayo Oluwole Oke (PDP-OSUN), while speaking at the ceremony expressed satisfaction over the development.
Oke explained that the vehicle was brought sequel to the audit query raised by the office of the auditor general of the federation on the activities of the council, specifically on the utilisation of the 2 per cent and 35 per cent levies on imported vehicles.
“It is a pleasurable drive, no noise, calm and for some of us who have had the privilege of schooling and living abroad, we know that it’s not a new thing, it’s something we’ve seen but very new in Nigeria and we want to commend the effort of the DG and then the agency.
“But you need to ask what led to the DG bringing the vehicle here. The DG brought this vehicle as evidence. He appeared before the Committee on Public Accounts, because the Auditor General raised a query on the activities of the agency and then one thing led to the other,” Oke noted.
In remarks earlier, NADDC director-general, Mr Jelani Aliyu explained that the electric car could travel for 482km and that it does not use premium motor spirit nor diesel.
According to him, “You don’t need to line up at the filling station
waiting for fuel, once you charge it you have about 482km of electric
charge, no emission, no smoke, very quiet and the electric car has
very far less power than the traditional petrol engine.
“ In our culture where we don’t like maintenance, this will go a long
way for hundred of thousands of miles without problem.”
On the charging points, the NADDC boss explained
that the beauty of the car is that it charges through any outlet
used for AC or refrigerator, at 220watts or 230watts in any normal
outlet.
According to him, “it takes about 8 to 10 hours to charge overnight,
while there’s a fast charger that cuts it by 50 percent of about 4 to
5 hours, and there’s a super-super charger that bring it down to 1
hour or less.”
He assured that the council is working on building charging stations
along the federal highway, “We are working on building three charging
stations along the way. Right now we are doing three pilot programmes
with three universities.”
“University of Lagos, University of Nigeria Nsukka, and Usman DanFodio
University, we hope to expand it to the private sector to build in all
localities in Nigeria. This we believe will slowly begin to take over
from petrol stations because Nigeria is a signatory to the 2016 Paris
Accord,” he said.
