•Promises to reduce fake products by 15% next year
By Goddie Ofose
Senior Correspondent
Importers of sub-standard products are to be prosecuted and sent to jail, the Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON) has warned.
SON Director General, Joseph Odumodu, said the new SON Act of 2015 which empowers it to prosecute offenders ensures that importers of harmful sub-standard products will be prosecuted and jailed for sabotaging the economy.
He spoke in Lagos during the donation of gifts to SON by Intertek Limited to mark the 10th year anniversary of SON Conformity Assessment Programme (SONCAP).
The Act also empowers SON to force importers and manufacturers to create a database of every product in the market, which would be helped by the Electronic Products Registration (EPR) initiated by SON.
Odumodu explained that “it is not enough to say we have destroyed goods worth billions of naira, we also want to know who brought them into the country, hence we are keeping a database.
“We are also building a new laboratory that would have sample reference offices and all it does is keep pictures of bad products sample.
“When President Muhammadu Buhari goes to China and other countries [in Asia] in the first quarter of next year, we would show the government there these are companies we want to blacklist, they should not bring their products into the country.
“Also for our own people bringing the products into Nigeria, we now want to send them to jail.”
He said by 2016, inferior goods would have fallen below 15 per cent as SON is doing a lot to nip it in the bud in collaboration of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS).
“Our collaboration is beautiful, yielding results. What I see today is a massive reduction in corruption as we make sure we reduce the human elements in the interaction we have with the public, and by 2016 people would rejoice with SON.”
He said the equipment donated by Intertek – Flammability Chamber Tester, Haver Airflow Tester, and High Performance liquid Chromatography (HPLC) – fight against imported sub-standard products.
SON has three major labs, one in Kaduna for textile and leather, one in Lagos, and the last in Enugu.
According to Odumodu, equipment donated for textile, Flammability Chamber Tester and Haver Airflow Tester, will fit into SON’s refurbished laboratory, especially as the government is doing Demand Driven Standardisation (DDS).
“SON is in alignment with what the government is doing as we are in government, and the government is focusing on textile, agriculture, local manufacture of products. We are also building capacity against sub-standard products.”
Interlek Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Victor Faleye, said the donation is to support SON and congratulate it on the impact of SONCAP in its 10th year of operation.
Faleye said as a partner in the operations of SONCAP, the equipment will help SON combat imports of sub-standard and counterfeit goods which will in turn protect citizens from the negative effects of such goods.
