By Frank Eleanya
When President Bola Tinubu announced the removal of Nigeria’s decades-old fuel subsidy in May 2023, the shockwaves were immediate and severe. Overnight, petrol prices surged from ₦185 ($0.36) to above ₦500 ($0.96) per litre, later climbing past ₦600 ($1.15). As households and businesses struggled with the inflationary fallout, the policy shift also reshaped the economics of transportation, creating an unexpected opening for alternatives to petrol-powered vehicles.
That was the beginning for SAGLEV, a company positioning itself as Nigeria’s first electric-only vehicle manufacturer. While existing local automakers such as NORD and Innoson Motors have introduced electric models, the bulk of their production remains focused on internal combustion engine vehicles.
For Sam Faleye, a U.S.-trained physician-turned-tech investor who had spent nearly three decades building a dual career in internal medicine and clinical informatics, the moment confirmed what he had been preparing for since the early 2010s: that Nigeria would eventually be forced into the age of electric mobility. And when the tipping point finally arrived, it was pivotal.
The 5,000-square-metre facility in Imota, Ikorodu, officially began operations in June 2025 after a three-year buildout, just as fuel prices made electric mobility more economically viable in Nigeria than at any point in the country’s history.
“We knew the subsidy would go,” Faleye says. “Our models said electric vehicles would make economic sense at ₦400 ($0.77) per litre. It hit over ₦500 ($0.96) on day one. For us, it was a no-brainer.”
A doctor who fell in love with electric cars
Faleye’s journey into Nigeria’s automotive sector began long before the subsidy disappeared. After graduating from the University of Illinois in 1991 and specialising in internal medicine in the U.S., he stumbled onto the emerging field of clinical informatics—technology and data systems for healthcare. That dual background shaped the rest of his life.
He bought his first Tesla in 2012, the same year the Model S launched and was selling at $57,400. The experience of driving an electric vehicle convinced him that the internal combustion engine was nearing its end. EVs had roughly 20-30 moving parts compared to over 2,000 in petrol cars. There were no oil changes, no transmission failures, no exhaust systems, and maintenance costs were slashed by more than half.
“Once I drove that first EV, it was obvious to me these things would change the world. And Elon Musk wasn’t crazy,” Faleye recalls.
He also recognised something many global automakers ignored: Africa was an EV market waiting for ignition. Yet scaling EVs across the continent runs into hard structural limits. Electricity grids are weak and unreliable, public charging remains scarce outside a handful of major cities, and installation costs often exceed early commercial demand. In many markets, power systems struggle to keep homes and businesses running, let alone support new charging loads.
Outside urban centres, limited grid connections and poor road networks make fast-charging corridors commercially unrealistic. The only viable path in much of the continent is off-grid or solar-powered charging, solutions that are still emerging and have yet to scale.
In Lagos, he watched ride-hailing drivers burn between ₦30,000 ($57.69) and ₦40,000 ($76.92) worth of petrol daily. In an EV, charging an entire vehicle costs roughly ₦6,000 ($11.54). That 80% cost difference represented profit margins, job creation, and demand.
“The EV play in Africa is an employment opportunity play,” he says. “The economics are too compelling to ignore.”
Why the first EV assembly plant started in Ghana
SAGLEV was founded in 2017 and originally planned to launch in Ghana. At the time, the country had a more predictable business environment, and early indicators suggested the market was ready to embrace electric mobility. Before the country’s used-car lobby pushed back, Ghana’s EV thesis was rooted in economics: an unusual power surplus—nearly 50% excess generation—created pressure to absorb expensive “take-or-pay” electricity contracts, making EVs a rational outlet. With 80% national electrification and early players such as Kantanka and SolarTaxi showing that electric power could be five times cheaper than petrol, the 2019 “Drive Electric Initiative” became less a political gesture and more a cost-recovery mechanism. It aimed to leverage existing infrastructure to relieve mounting fuel pressures.
Yet SAGLEV’s long-term calculus always led back to Nigeria. The real question was timing, specifically, when the fuel subsidy would fall away. In 2019, while participating in a U.S. Department of Commerce export programme, Faleye reviewed more than 250 Nigerian companies. His conclusion was blunt: Nigeria was insolvent, external creditors were demanding structural adjustment, and the petrol subsidy was financially untenable. His modelling suggested that once pump prices crossed ₦400 (about $0.77) per litre, EV economics would overtake petrol for ride-hailing, logistics operators, and fleet managers.
When Ghana delayed clarifying its automotive assembly rules primarily due to intense political pressure from the used-car lobby, and Nigeria abruptly removed the subsidy, Faleye moved quickly. Equipment originally destined for Accra was redirected to Lagos. Regulators such as Nigeria’s National Automotive Design and Development Council (NADDC) encouraged the shift to building a plant in Nigeria.
“Jelani Aliyu (former Director General of NADDC) kept asking, ‘Why are you not doing this in Nigeria?’” Faleye says. “They saw before most people did that we would actually pull this off.”
SAGLEV’s breakthrough came when it discovered an abandoned beverage factory in Imota and acquired it. Instead of spending billions building from scratch or renting expensive industrial property in the city, the company retrofitted the structure, saving what could have amounted to several hundred million naira in additional capital expenditure.
“You can build an EV plant in Nigeria for under ₦10 billion ($19.23 million),” Faleye says. “If you’re smart, even under ₦6 billion ($11.54 million).”
An assembly, not import, play
SAGLEV intentionally positioned itself as an assembly plant, not a dealer importing finished EVs. The company’s strategy was shaped by several forces.
First, importing used EVs would soon become difficult because new Chinese export regulations require OEM-backed after-sales support, limiting what can leave their ports. Second, Nigeria’s Green Mobility Bill, a legislation modelled partly after the National Automotive Industry Development Plan (NAIDP), is expected to heavily favour local assembly and penalise reliance on fully built imported vehicles. Finally, intra-African logistics are prohibitively expensive; shipping a car from Ghana to Nigeria costs more than importing the same vehicle from China.
By assembling locally from semi-knocked-down kits, SAGLEV avoids inflated resale prices and can sell vehicles for around ₦80 million ($153,846), whereas comparable imported luxury models cost between ₦120 million ($230,769) and ₦140 million ($269,231) in the local market.
The company now assembles 17 different EV models, ranging from compact sedans suitable for ride-hailing to pickups, delivery vans, luxury SUVs like the Voyah Free, and even BRT-sized electric buses. Its current installed capacity is 2,500 vehicles annually, but the facility can scale to 10,000 per year simply by adopting multi-shift production.
Originally Posted on techcabal
