ABUJA – Dr Ezekiel Izuogu, the inventor of Africa’s first indigenous car, Z-600, on Friday tasked the Federal Government to encourage local manufacturers to use indigenous technology to produce made-in-Nigeria products.
Izuogu told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja that Nigeria would have been an exporter of cars if the country had mass-produced the prototype of his first ever African car.
The inventor, who is a member of the National Conference Committee on Science, Technology and Development, said that Nigeria had the capacity to become self-sufficient, adding that 90 per cent of the parts of the Z-600 was sourced locally.
He said: “Nigerians want to do things with their hands but the facilities are not there and I keep giving myself as an example. I say 17 years ago (1997), I did the first car in Africa.
“The Managing Director of Peugeot, the Executive Director of Peugeot and the other Executive Director, three French, they chartered a plane to fly down to Port Harcourt and then to Owerri just to come and see what we did.
“And they made us wonderful promises that we should produce parts of Peugeot for them and they would pay us heavily.
“I said ‘no’. I am not interested in doing anything for Peugeot, I want to do something that will benefit Nigeria; something that is done by Nigeria, things that are around in Nigeria.
“They were there for two hours, they did everything to entice us, I said ‘no’. Thereafter, I took eight years to build a Nigerian car and we didn’t talk to anybody (about it); nobody knew what we were doing until we finished.
“Then we invited (the late General Sani) Abacha; Abacha sent his deputy to come to Owerri. More than 50,000 people including, diplomats, five governors, saw what we did. And the whole world was celebrating. Thereafter, no support.
“Government probed the car; it sent a 12-man probe team and it probed the car and found it worthy. The team said everything was ‘well done.’
“Now give them support so that they can mass-produce it, no support. Instead, people are making efforts to blackmail us. They said this is Igbo man.
“Nigerians are good people, every Nigerian will want to use his hands to manufacture things but a few policy makers who are seated up there are ready to sabotage everything to make sure that we don’t really have anything.
“There is nothing we use in this car (Z-600) that cannot be sourced locally. I want to tell you as an engineer, there is nothing we use including planes that we cannot produce here if we have the necessary support and resources.“
Izuogu, also said that he had invented power machines to provide the nation and the world with clean, cheap and environment-friendly energy source after 33 years of intense research.
He said the machines named M-1000 and M-6000, respectively, could drive 100 KVA and 5 megawatt electric power generators with no noise, no pollution, and zero energy input.
“There is one invention now that is being patented in 139 countries. We have worked on this for 36 years and the government of Nigeria has patented it; South Africa has patented it; many other countries have already patented it.
“But the rest of the countries are working on it. It is an alternative source of energy which is going to make life easy for everybody; life will be easy for everybody – Emagnetodynamics.
“In all, the patents we have now should be up to 50. Up to 50 patents and about a hundred more are coming and one thing about world economics, it depends on intellectual property.
“It is no longer question of drums of oil. It is what you have in terms of intellectual property; that is what rules the world,“ he said. (NAN)