Between 1982 and 1999 the six federal assembly plants did not merely decline — they were dismantled, mostly by the same governments that had built them. Three structural shocks did the killing, in this order.
Shock 1 — SAP and the kit price (1986–1989). A complete Peugeot 504 SKD kit that landed at Apapa for ₦4,200 in 1980 cost ₦68,000 by 1989 after the naira devaluation of the Structural Adjustment Programme. The retail price had to triple. New-car sales collapsed from roughly 108,000 units in 1981 to about 6,400 in 1990. PAN, designed for 60,000 units a year, made 913 cars in 1994.
Shock 2 — the 1995 tokunbo liberalisation. General Abacha's 1995 Budget legalised the importation of used cars up to 8 years old at a 25% duty (it had been 100% and effectively banned). The land border at Seme and the Cotonou port did the rest. Used-car imports went from a documented 12,000 in 1995 to over 180,000 by 2000 — and probably 2-3× that smuggled. The federal plants, already on life support, lost the customer at the bottom of the market and the dealer network at the top.
Shock 3 — the BPE privatisations (1999–2007). The Bureau of Public Enterprises sold Leyland Nigeria to Busan Holdings in 2007 for ₦765m (it had cost the federal government over ₦2bn to build). Steyr was sold to Mainstreet Bank consortium in 2007. VWoN had already been mothballed in 1990 and was sold to Stallion Group in 2003 — Stallion converted it to Nissan and Hyundai assembly. ANAMMCO was sold to Anambra Motor Manufacturing Limited (a Mercedes-Stallion joint venture) in 2010 for ₦4.07bn. NTM Kano never reopened after 1998. Only PAN Kaduna survived as a recognisable Peugeot plant, kept alive by federal procurement contracts that bought Peugeot 406s for senators and 504 estate wagons for governors.
What collapsed was not just an industry but a technical training pipeline. ANAMMCO at peak ran the largest fitter-and-machinist apprenticeship outside the Nigerian Railway Corporation; the welders, painters and electricians it produced in the 1980s became the founding workforce of Innocent Chukwuma's Innoson in Nnewi twenty years later. The plants died; the skill they had built did not, quite. Act IV is what filled the showroom in the meantime.
Figure 1
Cars supplied to the Nigerian market, 1960–2024 (thousands of units)
The assembly economy of Peugeot Kaduna and VW Lagos collapsed with SAP. By 2000 nine out of ten cars sold were used imports from Cotonou and Antwerp.