'Evading duty' Finance minister, Ahmed Zainab, tags Nigeria as hub of stolen cars

The Minister of Finance, Budget, and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, has said that majority of vehicles imported into Nigeria were stolen.

The Minister said this while delivering a keynote address at the zonal sensitisation seminar on the National Vehicle Registry (VREG) policy in Abuja on Thursday, August 12.

The minster was quoted as saying;

”The National Bureau of Statistics confirmed that between 2015 and 2019, Nigeria imported an average of 300,000 vehicles with an average of 48 per cent increase in import annually, while an additional 45 per cent of vehicles are smuggled into the country annually, thus evading duty payment of which 40 per cent of these vehicles are stolen.

A case study also revealed that between October 2018 to September 2019 the country recorded over N1.8 trillion value of used vehicle importation.

It was further revealed that Nigeria was the hub of stolen vehicles as Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) of vehicles in the country were usually unregistered. Consequently, vehicles within the shores of Nigeria cannot be traced.”