The National Automotive Council (NAC) has disclosed that 66 per cent of road accidents in Nigeria are caused by substandard auto parts.
Engineer Aminu Jalal, director general of NAC, while presenting his paper at a one-day seminar organised by the  Guild of Motoring Correspondents on Fake auto Parts recently, attributed most road accidents to either tyre or component failure.  
Jalal, represented by Mrs. Joke Onireti, a director in the agency, lamented that road transportation is the major means of transport in Nigeria, but unfortunately, Nigeria ranks among those with the largest rate of road accidents in the world.
“In Nigeria, road transportation is easily the major means of transport as the other modes of transport are underdeveloped,” she said. “Statistics from Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC) have shown that 66 per cent of these road accidents are usually caused by either tyre or component failure. This is mainly due to use of substandard parts.”
Continuing, Jalal said fake automotive parts have been endemic in Nigeria since the late 1970s and can sometimes be identified by the low price compared to genuine ones. According to her in 1997, the American Federal Trade Commission estimated that auto parts counterfeiting is a $12 billion business every year.
She identified the major parts faked as oil, fuel and air filter, shock absorber, fan belts, brake pads, and shoes, air conditioning compressors and starters. Others include valve lifters, distributor caps, rocker arms and camshafts, transmission fluids, engine oil and other lubricants, bearing, alternators/generators and oxygen sensors.
As a way of curbing this menace which has caused the average Nigerian unquantifiable damage, Jalal stated that there is a need to sharpen our knowledge of what constitutes fake parts with a view to ensuring that only those that conform to the required standard are allowed in the country.
She disclosed that the council is collaborating with the Standard Organisation of Nigeria (Son) to establish an Automotive Test Centre to realise its statutory responsibility of ensuring the incorporation of local content in locally assembled vehicles and compliance of automotive products with environmental and technical safety regulations.
The test centre, according to her, will have capabilities to meet present as well as future automotive testing needs in the country.