Automobile dealers have called for the reopening of the borders even as they pledged collaboration with the federal government to ensure that vehicles coming into the country through the land borders pay their full duty.
Speaking in an interview with Shipping Position Daily, the Chairman Dealers Association of the United Berger Automobile Dealers, Mr. James Brown Nwakwuoke, said that already the association has started ensuring that all dealers in Berger paid their full duty on all their vehicles adding that defaulters are compelled to pay the sum of N500, 000 and their vehicle taken away.
“If the federal government can open an avenue for dealers to work with them under that land border we will ensure that no vehicle gets to where we are without payment of duty and you must pay to the government through the customs. Our work will be to ensure that vehicles that are leaving that land border to our market here is duty cleared. Here also in Berger we have stopped vehicles that didn’t pay their complete duty to enter the park. We have started that already by checking your document and at the end of the day if we found out that your vehicle was not properly registered, you will pay a fine of N500, 000 and we will still send the vehicle out of the park. Because we don’t want anything that will take us to the government we have pledged our support to the government. This year I would say has been next to nothing in the history of car transaction in Nigeria due to so many factors like the closure of vehicle importation through land borders. That made our business to come do zero. We are hoping that the government will have a listening ear and listen to the Lagos state car dealers association. When we started buying vehicles from that place you will see that their government is working with those in that business”
He also lamented that though the land borders have been closed by government, Nigerian millionaires still use the land borders to bring in vehicles even as he said that the closure has affected their business a lot.
“That land border they said that is closed is still being used by our millionaires so transaction here is very poor. This year I would say has been next to nothing in the history of car transaction in Nigeria due to so many factors like the closure of vehicle importation through land borders. That made our business to come do zero. We are hoping that the government will have a listening ear and listen to the Lagos state car dealers association. When we were buying vehicles from that place you will see that there government is working with those in that business. The industry this year has been very poor. If I want to assess the year I will start from my office here and things have been very slow and poor this year. It is no longer business as usual because when you say somebody cannot bring his vehicle because he has not paid duty, you send him parking. He has to leave the market” he concluded.
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