By Theodore Opara

THE Managing Director of Toyota Nigeria Limited, Mr. Kunle Ade Ojo has reiterated the company’s resolve to quality service delivery to its customers in Nigeria. The Managing Director while speaking at the company’s annual award at the Civic Centre recently, said the recent worldwide recall by Toyota corporation is being given the desired attention in Nigeria, as owners of the offered models will soon be called to bring the vehicles for correction of the problem.

Toyota Hilux

“We are determined to maintain our culture of quality product delivery to our numerous customers across the country,” he said, adding that there was no cause for alarm over the recall as Toyota dealers are well prepared to handle the problem. The Managing Director noted that Toyota Nigeria, despite all odds, has maintain the number one position in Nigeria over the last decade.

Toyota recently recalled two of its models, the Yaris and Hilux pickup to address the air bag problem. Ade Ojo had last week briefed the press at the company’s head office in Lekki, Lagos, that the affected models were the Toyota Yaris produced between 2003 to 2005 and Hilux pick-ups produced between 2003 and 2007.

Although Mr. Ade Ojo said Toyota vehicles were not the only models affected by the problem, he noted that they were taking proactive measures to tackle the problem as a market leader and responsible corporate organisation. The problem, according to him, had to do with airbag affecting auto manufactures worldwide, of which Nigeria is one of the countries affected.

Toyota, he said, had discovered that the airbags of some of these two models produced between 2003 and 2007 may not actively deploy in the event of a crash, thereby endangering the lives of the occupants of the vehicles. This, he said, have been traced to defective inflater module that may not activate the safety air-bags due to accumulation of moisture inside the inflator in case of frontal collision, thereby causing abnormal deployment of the airbag.

To this end, he said, Toyota Nigeria Ltd, in conjunction with Toyota Japan, will be taking the bold step to contact owners of the affected models to address the problem. According to him, not all the units of the models are involved but a particular batch of the models of which they are collating the details, adding that as soon as they get the details of the units involved, they will be inviting them for the replacement of the parts.

Asked if the models imported through unauthorised dealers would be handled by his company, the Toyota boss said that Toyota Japan will only give them details of the Hilux and Yaris genuinely imported into the country by Toyota Nigeria Ltd, which makes it difficult for them to know whether the ones imported through other sources were affected.

He said: “As a corporate organisation, we had vigorously advertised on the need for customers to buy their Toyota cars from Toyota Nigeria Ltd and what we have record of are those vehicles we sold. Any vehicle brought through grey market, we hardly have the record” adding that priority will be given to Toyota Nigeria customers.

Already, the Toyota boss said they were working with their dealers to tackle the problem. “We are going to do trainings for our technicians and dealers on how to handle the problem and there is no cause for alarm,” he stated.