Meet Jerry Mallo, Who Built Nigeria's First Supercar In Jos

Jerry Mallo was born in 1994 to Nigerian parents in Plateau State, Nigeria. He is the CEO of Bennie Technologies, Ltd. He built the country’s first locally manufactured carbon fibre sports car, the Bennie Purrie. According to Jerry Mallo, he was inspired to create the Bennie Purrie because Nigeria and Africa as a whole have a large market for luxury vehicles.

He is a fabrication engineer who became famous for building electricity generators, agricultural equipment and prototype cars. This attracted the attention of Professor Suleiman Elias Bogoro, who sponsored his education at the University of Hertfordshire. Although he did not graduate from the university, he had offers to work in the UK automobile industry, but chose to return to Nigeria to produce farm equipment because his parents were farmers and he wanted to change the way that people worked on the farm in Nigeria.

In a way he reminds me of Ferruccio Lamborghini. Lamborghini started out making tractors for agriculture. He became so rich that he could afford to buy expensive sportscars. He owned Ferraris, Mercedes Benz and Jaguar sportscars.

However, he constantly had clutch problems with his Ferraris. He would often have to take them back to the dealership for repairs. He brought the problems to the attention of Enzo Ferrari (the founder of Ferrari cars), but Enzo Ferrari dismissively asked him what he knew about cars and told him to stick to tractors.

Lamborghini took the car back to his own engineers and they were able to fix the problem and make the car better. That's how Ferruccio Lamborghini got the inspiration to make supercars.

Jerry Mallo makes most of his money from making agricultural and food processing machines. He builds tractors, harvesters, threshers and machines for processing garri, corn and other foodstuff. He builds sportscars on demand and as a side job.