The auto spare parts’ market in Nigeria, like many other sectorial markets in this jurisdiction, is all noise and little substance. The market is simply an aberration from the orthodoxy that some of us who have worked abroad are familiar with.
All the parties involved, from the Standards Organisation of Nigeria to the importers/retailers and the mechanics/technicians including the motorists, are literally guilty of sustaining the absurdity that prevails as normalcy. It is a known fact that the SON is practically playing catch-up with unpatriotic importers who generally bring in sub-standard goods into the country. The situation of the auto spare parts’ sector is the vilest of the bad circumstance that generally prevails in most of the industries where imported products are used.
The ‘inmates,’ in this specific case- the importers- are functionally in charge of the asylum in this market; a sizeable percentage of what our importers bring from far eastern countries (China and Taiwan) are sub-standard and not fit for purpose. The irony is that most of the new Original Equipment Manufacturers’ parts brought in from the US and Europe, which are usually very good, were manufactured in China. It is our importers who usually request for the rehashed version of the genuine OEM parts!
On a number of times that I have interviewed some of our brothers who import these sub-standard parts, I was told (and they may have a case, however weak, in some respects) that the main culprits are actually the majority of the Nigerian motorists. They claim that an average Nigeria motorist does not seem to have any modicum of respect for his life.
When pressed further on one occasion, an importer rhetorically asked me, “Oga Kunle, why person go buy N1m to N2m naira motor and e go wan make the brake pads wey den go put for am no pass five hundred naira? Na the cheap things wey the people dey ask for na im we go give them now.”
Inasmuch as this perverted rationalisation is disturbing and the fact that the responsibility to regulate the quality of goods coming into the country lies with our failing SON, it is a fact too that many motorists tend to believe that they are doing their vehicles a favour if they keep it in proper working condition.
This unfortunate scenario has turned our mechanics and auto technicians to the world’s leading canvassers for used auto spare parts. They practically believe that cannibalised parts from Dubai, Europe and the US are far more reliable than the supposedly new parts in our market. In fact, this reverse logic has made the average prices of used auto parts in our market to be relatively costlier than the “new” ones. Many conscientious mechanics and auto technicians have been unnecessarily humiliated because of the funny spare parts’ market’s situation.
In the Automedics family, we are resolved to change this perverted tradition and we will start by running an enlightenment campaign through this column to change bad habits that have been long formed across the auto market’s major segments.