Before you buy that car, visit LegitCar

The start-up is set help Nigerians overcome the challenge of knowing the ownership of the cars they are buying.

By ADEBAYO OBAJEMU

Are you about to buy a car? Before you put your hard-earned money into the purchase of that car, it is advisable to verify the status of the car hence you end up with a stolen product; you wouldn’t want that would you. Hundreds of innocent Nigerians have fallen victims innocently of theft without their knowing about it. Most Nigerians are so besotted with owning a car that they care less about doing enough background check on the vehicles they are buying and the identity of the sellers.

According to the police, most citizens arrested for accessory after theft were not actually aware that the cars they have bought were stolen from the original owners. Police records show that after being stolen , the robbers often take them to mechanic’s shop for disposal at a cheap price. These mechanics, most often, are  not aware that the vehicles were stolen. It is to address the challenge of incessant theft of cars that Legitcar was set up according to the founders.

LegitCar is an online platform that allows users to verify the status of vehicles before purchase. It is naive to say that it is only in Nigeria that we have high incidence of missing cars. Globally, cars get missing on a daily basis; Nigeria is not exempted.

Most times, victims are forced to hand over their vehicles at gunpoint. Others are stolen from parking lots. Many have lost their lives in the process and unfortunately, most of these stolen cars are resold to people who do not know they are stolen and could fall victim of the same cycle.

Okeke Vincent, Ogbujimma Samuel and Ukpong Inimfon (Founders) saw a critical problem and decided to solve it. They built LegitCar, in the bid to curb this menace (and probably save lives).

“LegitCar is being developed to prevent this resale from happening. We sincerely believe that if we make it quite difficult for stolen cars to be resold, with time we will be making that line of business unattractive for car thieves, and as such make our world a little bit safer.

“Starting with Nigeria we are building a database of all missing cars and are enabling car buyers search the database for a small fee to ensure that the cars that they are about to purchase are not listed as one. These searches can be made online on our web or mobile apps, or can be made offline via SMS. If a match is made, they get to see the information of the original owner and get cash reward if they give information that will help reunite the owner with the car. We intend to extend this service to other parts of West Africa with time” Imimfon said.

He continued: “The potentials inherent in having such a service available to all Nigerians cannot be overemphasised. Apart from its ability to reduce car theft to the barest minimum by blocking the resale of stolen vehicles to unsuspecting members of the public, it also has the potentials to create the much needed employment to youths, and make future entrepreneurs He emphasized that once armed robbers are aware of the difficulty involved in disposing their stolen cars, they will find the job of car theft unattractive. He stated that their application is a disincentive and deterrent to robbers who specialize in dispossessing Nigerians of their car.

James Adebanjo, a software developer said ” the applications has a lot of potential to reduce incidence of car theft. But it is important that Nigerians , especially those who want to buy  vehicles consult the application .”

Akoyejo Soboyejo, a car dealer along Iju Ishaga road  praised ” the trio for their ingenuity, saying with the application, potential buyers of cars will no longer fall into the temptation of  buying stolen vehicles. According to him, no genuine car dealer will go for stolen cars . “From our independent findings, we the association of car dealers , have discovered that because Nigerians always prefer cheap goods, they often patronize roadside mechanics who sell second hand cars on behalf of somebody.” The problem, he stated is that “somebody” may be an armed robber.

These roadside mechanics that have become emergency cars sellers do not care to verify about the cars they are selling, he said, since they are only after their own cut. In the process, he stated , many of them have gone to prison.

He urged mechanics to get the application installed in their smartphones so that whenever they are given vehicles to sell, they can easily detect any irregularities.