Lanre Shittu Motors (LSM), one of the frontline auto companies in Nigeria, has supported the National Automotive Design and Development Council (NADDC)’s competition of building 8-seater Electric Campus Shuttle Buses for 12 Nigerian universities cutting across all the geo-political zones of the country.
The company is a major supporter of the competition, which kicked off last week with the commissioning of eight units of EV bus shuttles at the University of Lagos.
The competition is expected to last for six months.
Aside from supporting the event, a technical representative of LSM is also part of the jury of auto industry players, academia, and the NADDC.
Commenting on the development, Taiwo Shittu, managing director of LSM, said the company likes to support and encourage young talents interested in the automotive industry.
“It is also our own way of supporting the NADDC initiative of encouraging young brains in the country.
“Encouraging and training the youths is part of our Corporate Social Responsibility. Before now, every year, we take youths into our facility and train them, even while in training, we give them stipends, and we are still doing this,” Shittu said.
He added that LSM doesn’t stop at training and giving stipends, but provides basic workshop tools to those they train, and employ some of them.
The participating universities in the competition are Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria; Uthman Danfodio University, Sokoto; Modibbo Adama University, Yola; Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, Bauchi; University of Abuja; and University of Ilorin, Kwara State.
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Others are the University of Nigeria, Nsukka; Federal University of Technology, Owerri; University of Benin; Obafemi Awolowo University, Ife; University of Lagos; and University of Port Harcourt.
The event brought together auto industry operators, academia, top NADDC staff, the press, and representatives from different schools.
At the commissioning of the event, which was held at the University of Lagos, Joseph Osanipin, director general of NADDC, stated that the council would give its full support to the competition, tasking the contenders, made up of students and supported by lecturers from the concerned schools, to come up with practical and workable solutions suitable for the Nigerian environment.
He promised that the NADDC would not stop at the design stage at the end of the competition, but take steps to involve auto players to develop the final products after the competition.
“Today, I challenge the Nigerian university community to dream big; I challenge you to do even better than our expectations. Let us have a vehicle of our dreams. We are going to work with universities, polytechnics, and technical schools,” Osanipin said.
Abdullahi Ayinde, NADDC director in charge of vehicle electrification, added that the competition would generate ideas and provide students with the opportunity to embrace global best practices.
The kick-start of the competition was concluded with the inspection of some environment-friendly auto brands such as electric vehicles and compressed natural gas-powered vehicles displayed by LSM.
One of the participants, Adeyemi Adebajo, senior vice president, technical of Oando Clean Energy, stated that Oando is concerned about the environment and reasoned that the environment, economy, and society are key in sustainable transportation.
In his submission, Ozoemena Ania, a lecturer from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, commended the initiative and pledged the collaboration of the academia.
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