ONE HUNDRED MILLION NAIRA TO OWN A CAR

The title of today’s episode seems outrageous and unbelievable, but not to a vehicle owner in Singapore. Before I go any further, I would first of all like to apologize to my TurboNerdz for not releasing a blogpost last week, especially without any prior heads-up. I wish that I had a tangible excuse as to why I did so, but I honestly have non. Now, back to the topic for today. As a resident of Singapore, in order to own a vehicle, one has to first obtain a Certificate of Entitlement, otherwise known as a C.O.E which has a price tag of $106,000.

Converting one hundred and six thousand dollars to naira, with the current exchange rate gives you well over a hundred million naira. This means that only a handful of Nigerians would have been able to own a car. The craziest part about the whole Certificate of Entitlement (C.O.E) thing is that it is not for a lifetime. A C.O.E in Singapore is renewed every ten years and failure to do so means that ones car is seized and confiscated by the Singaporean Government.

Also, a C.O.E does not cover all the cars an individual has, rather each car requires it's own C.O.E, meaning it would cost about 300 million naira for an average family in Nigeria with 3 cars which is not an unusual site. Asides the C.O.E, registration fees and taxes are also really expensive and this makes owning a car in Singapore near impossible. With all these points, one would think car enthusiasts have no place in such a country but it would shock you to know that people work hard, saving all their money just to afford a C.O.E, so as to keep their most prices possessions.

The first time I came across the whole C.O.E thing was on an episode of one of my favorite YouTube car channels called Hagerty. This particular episode was by Larry Chen, a photographer and Automotive Journalist who travels around the World, photographing and documenting car culture. The image below is from that episode and as you can see, the image contains Japanese Domestic Market (JDM) legends that cost a fortune in Singapore. This goes further to prove that Singaporean car enthusiasts literally risk it all for the love of their cars.  

Singapore Car Scene

This episode is meant to serve as a preliminary to our next week topic of discussion which will entail the beauty and diversity of Nigerian car culture, letting us see how lucky we are to have such relaxed automotive import laws. You think white people just love importing sick sport cars into Nigeria, so they can tear up the streets of Lagos and Abuja for fun? Well, yes but it is all part of a strategy to enjoy car culture at its cheapest and best. Thank you for reading and always remember to Turbo that engine!