By Moses Akaigwe
The management of Cedric Masters Group has reiterated its commitment to the success of the Federal Government’s initiative on the conversion of internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles to Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) considered cheaper and cleaner to run.
The Chairman/CEO of the Cedric Masters Group, Chief Amselm Ilekuba,who harped on this commitment last week, lauded the Federal Government’s drive in promoting CNG and having vehicles that run on autogas assembled locally.
Ilekuba stated that CNG is new in NIgeria, and that Cedric Masters Group is lucky to be among the first to key into the (CNG) initiative of President Bola qTinubu.
He declared that apart from creating huge employment for Nigerians with other positive spin-off effects and other businesses it will generate, he will in collaboration with his technical team transfer the CNG Conversion skill he acquired at the CNG Centre in Texas, Houston to his technical team.
This, he pointed out, is one of the core areas that will generate a lot of jobs for the people.
The Cedric Masters Group boss spoke while receiving the Director-General of the National Automotive Design and Development Council (NADDC), Joseph Osanipin,and his team during a facility tour of the upcoming local automobile assembler located along the Lekki-Ajah Expressway, Lagos.
Accompanied by Sani Musa, the Director of Policy and Planning and other staff of the agency, the NADDC DG had on Monday last week embarked on a tour of some auto assembly plants in the Southwest.qcq
Cedric Masters Group is a conglomerate that is also into automobile and component parts production. The company manufactures component parts at its facility in the Southeast, while for proximity and business expansion purposes, it is setting up its assembly plant in Lagos.
Cedric Autos got the assembly licence with a clear mandate from the NADDC to start rolling out locally assembled vehicles from the plant within 18 months.
Ilekuba expressed delight over the visit by the auto assembly regulatory government agency, adding that the physical construction of the plant and the cable laying are in progress.
According to him, “I am happy that, they have came today to see how far we have gone with the physical construction, the cable laying, the equipment and every other facility have started coming. What we are waiting for now is the installation of all these equipment by our foreign partners”.
The full set of state-of-the-art automobile assembly equipment to be installed are automatic assembly line, post floor plate car lift with Solemoid unlock, scissor lift, four post flour plate car lift for 4-wheel alignment, semi automatic tyre changer, wheel balancer, air conditioning handling system and screw air compressor complete set-split type.
Others are movable manual hydraulic jack, foldable shop crane, transmission jack, hand hydraulic table truck, mobile pneumatic oil filling machine, paint spray booth, rear axle distribution rack, cargo lift, component of rain test (water nozzle and booster pump) and forklift.
Meanwhile, Cedric Masters has been conducting its staff recruitment and training processes in the past in preparation for the official roll-out of the brand to Nigerians in the near future.