My colleague drove a car for 8 months before the dealer told her the truth

My colleague Amina bought a car from one of those dealers advertising on Instagram. She paid ₦4.2 million, almost everything she had saved. The car looked clean, drove fine, and the dealer even gave her a warranty. She was so happy. Then the overheating started.

Two mechanics later, one of them finally opened the bonnet properly and just shook his head. The engine had been swapped. The chassis number on the papers did not match the one on the car. She had been driving a rebuilt accident car for eight months. The dealer stopped picking her calls. Wallahi, I have never seen a woman cry like that in an office car park.

From where I sit in Abuja, the problem is not even the dealers. It is that we don't have a proper system to verify anything. No reliable database, no enforcement. So everybody is on their own. If you are buying a car in this economy, take a mechanic you trust, not the one the dealer recommends. Has anyone else been through this? Because I am hearing too many of these stories lately...