Have you ever wondered why many second-hand car buyers refuse to purchase Nigerian-used cars? It doesn’t even matter if the vehicle was first purchased new, so long as it’s been driven around Nigeria for a long period, automatically, its value declines compared to its Tokunbo counterparts.
This is also the reason why Nigerian-used cars are the cheapest in the used car market.
What could be the cause? In this article, we’ll be looking at how our cars suffer from the mere fact that they are being driven in Nigeria daily.
5 Ways Nigeria Ruins the Future of Our Cars
There are 5 major ways Nigeria contributes to ruining the future of our cars on a daily basis in many ways we will be talking about in this article.
- Every Car Goes Off-road Due to Bad Roads
Do you know how shocked the manufacturers of Toyota cars get when they see a Corolla driving on one rough Iyana-Ipaja street in Lagos?. These cars are not built for roads like that and this is why you keep hearing weird displeasing sounds all the time when you drive. There are no perfect cars for Nigerian roads.
Remember the Honda sickness that makes it oversteer and embarrass its owner on every Nigerian road? It is mostly caused by rough driving on bad roads. The manufacturers took very long to correct this issue because it normally won’t happen on good roads. If it was an issue that happened on good roads, then Honda would have recalled the cars and fixed the problem since the 2006 Honda Accord.
For this reason, our cars age untimely and make the value drop quickly. Bad roads destroy the lower parts of our cars. Scratches and bruises everywhere.
- Recalled Cars Can’t Go Back to the Manufacturers
People lost their cars to fire in Nigeria, and the general consensus is that it could be their village people but that was not the case at all.
Sometimes, these are vehicles that have been recalled by the manufacturer due to some issues that have been reported. However because recalls don’t cover cars in Nigeria, owners of such cars in Nigeria don’t benefit from the recall and are left to deal with their cars themselves.
It is almost impossible to ship a recalled car back to the manufacturer once it gets to Nigeria and this is a big problem for the future of our cars.
The Nigerian ports are one of the most complex ports to bring in a car through. We can’t even think of how crazy it would be to send a car out of the country. It will probably cost more than times two of the cars because we don’t produce and export anything apart from crude oil. The shippers would charge very high to take anything across the shores of Nigeria because they rarely ever do.
- Super and High-end Luxury Cars Lose Value
The way supercars and high-end luxury cars lose value in Nigeria will make you reconsider all your dreams of owning a Bugatti or even a Lamborghini or Ferrari. The first thing wrong is that you never get to maximize the benefits of having a supercar except for the ‘show car’ aspect.
Of course, you will turn heads when you drive on roads but it is very hard to give these cars premium maintenance within the country. This is why you buy a supercar at 120 million. After 2 years, you are begging people to pay you 30 million for the car because nobody is ready to put so much money in a money pit all in the name of having a passion for cars.
This is not the fault of Nigeria but we can tell you that every passionate potential supercar technician has migrated to Canada for better opportunities.
The way the government ignores raw talent is the major cause of this. Every year, we see young Nigerian engineers make it to the news for building a car and still, we never see the government put this talent to good use.
- Import Duty can Buy a New Car
The import duty and customs fee on foreign used cars should be one of the things every Nigerian car dealer or buyer worries about. You could buy a car for ₦1,500,000, and ship it for ₦500,000 and then you have to pay about ₦1,500,000 to clear the car before use within the country.
The price for the duty and customs is meant to be 75% of the car’s worth but there are fixed rates for the cars based on the average prices of the car. This means that even when you get a car cheaper abroad or even free, you still have to pay money that buy another car as customs and clearing duties.
- Heavy Traffic Pushes Cars to Limits
The traffic in cities like Lagos ruins the future of most cars. The average driver does not switch off a car while in Lagos traffic and this traffic can last between 1 hour and 7 hours. While you are in traffic for a long time, have you noticed that even while the A/C is on, the car starts to get hot? This is because there are a lot of cars heating up at the same time and making the environment heat up.
Conclusion
Most of these issues are not a result of the car owner’s fault. Rather, they are resulting issues that come with living in Nigeria. As such, many cars in Nigeria don’t age well, and quickly develop issues compared to their Tokunbo counterparts.
