RT Briscoe, UNILAG in JV automobile workshop

Corporate fleet owners, institutional and individual vehicles owners can now avail themselves of quality auto repair and services with the opening of automobile workshop at the University Of Lagos following collaboration between RT Briscoe plc, franchise owners of the Toyota and Ford brands in Nigeria.

The historic opening of the ultra-modern workshop facility followed years of discussions between the University authorities and the publicly quoted company; RT Briscoe. The workshop is a 10 work bay facility, refurbished to ensure that at least more than 15 vehicles can be worked upon simultaneously. RT Briscoe will stock it with modern equipment and also ensure that original spare parts are made available.

Giving a remark at the official opening ceremony, Seyi Onajide, managing director and chief executive of RT Briscoe plc disclosed that, the automobile garage is a joint venture between the University of Lagos and RT Briscoe put into place for two major reasons. He said as it was coined, the joint venture partnership intends to bring the ‘gawn and town’ together.

And what that meant is in the words of Sofoluwe, the former Vice chancellor of University Of Lagos in one of their meetings, the vice chancellor said that in most institutions all over the world, there is no wall between the town and the academic environment.

One of his the vice chancellor’s visions was that, he wants to see the walls of the town and academic community broken down, not necessarily physically, but interacting the academic world with the outside world and I took that to be very strong, and that to me align with the vision and mission of RT Briscoe plc.

The CEO of RT Briscoe noted that the duo can never go wrong in a situation where the business conglomerate is bringing its almost 60 years of automotive engineering to bear with so many decades of academic experience and excellence of University Of Lagos. This he said was the rationale for these two coming together to have a joint venture like this.

As Onajide put it, “We have our expertise in different areas, but with a synergy of bringing those two together, you can be rest assured that what we are going to get from this joint venture is a combination of academic excellence, professional competences and value driven to our discerning customers.”

The venture is not only for the University environment, it is also for the whole community of Akoka, the whole community of Yaba and its environs are invited to come and patronise this facility. And I think with that, we have achieved one of the visions and aims of the joint venture.

In Seyi Onajide’s comments, he said, “In our usual tradition, the same quality of service in all RT Briscoe facilities across Nigeria will be replicated at the workshop.” Many objectives is to ensure that the dealership will bring its Nigerian engineers to manage the facility, thereby saving the company its hard earned foreign currency to hire expatriates.

The RT Briscoe CEO maintained that, there are graduates of mechanical engineering from so many institutions. He identified a missing link which he said, there is no institution today until recently that specialises in automobile engineering. The country he regretted has always been latching on, on mechanical engineering.

In future, authorities of the University of Lagos will explore ways of identifying students of mechanical engineering to specialise in automobile engineering adding that the new refurbished workshop when fully operational will have all the needed tools and equipments to meet these practical experiences.

It is in the fulfilment of this, that both parties will combine vocational services, practical experiences and training for all students of mechanical engineering that chose to specialise in automobile engineering.

Onajide disclosed that the new partnership is the just the beginning of what lies ahead, as the collaboration will be expanded to other parts of Nigeria, adding that it is his vision that the workshop will be a major and improved facility for training that will be second to none in the country in the near future.

In his response, Duro Oni, a professor and deputy vice chancellor of the institution while commending the new marriage of convenience between the University and RT Briscoe corroborated Seyi Onajide’s statement that the partnership is the result of a long journey with lots of ups and downs, with series of meetings spanning almost a period of almost three years.