Reps Make Case For SON’s Return To Ports
Federal lawmakers have said the absence of the Standard Organisation of Nigeria (SON) is paving way for free entry of substandard goods, urging the federal government to allow the organisation return to check influx of poor quality items into the country
SON alongside other agencies were asked to exit the nation’s seaports 2011 to ease and reduce the time line for clearance of goods.
Enitan Dolapo-Badru, chairman House committee on industry however said the absence of SON officials who are legally and professionally disposed to conducting test and physical examination of imported goods, has caused havoc to the economy and the loss of lives of innocent Nigerians who use such poor quality products.
Dolapo – Badru, during an overnight function of his Committee Members to SON laboratory in Lagos said the members are resolute at ensuring that the identified challenges are resolved soonest in order to expedite the return of SON back to the ports.
“A lot of deaths from substandard products are recorded on a daily basis in the country. Tanker explosions, building collapses, fire resulting from poor electrical and electronics products, to mention a few” noted the committee chairman who insisted that the organisation’s Act of 2015 makes it mandatory for it to be at the ports.
“It is unthinkable that iron rods, vehicular tyres, gas cylinders, generators, etc are being imported into the country and SON is being prevented from entering the Ports to certify the goods before they enter the markets. This is so sad, he stressed.
He promised that his 18-Member Committee will do everything within their legislative powers to ensure that this anomaly is corrected, saying that; “We cannot substitute ease of doing business with quality or standards of products imported into the country”
Director General of SON, Farouk Salim stated that despite the many challenges of the agency, SON is doing everything to ensure goods consumed in the country are of international standards
This according to him explains why SON is entering into strategic partnership with state governments to broaden the reach of its services through the establishment of more laboratories nationwide.
Salim disclosed that majority of the state governors are very keen at the partnership as about eight of them have allocated land and properties to SON in the last one month.
It could be recalled that the minister of industry, trade and investment Otunba Adeniyi Adebayo, while commissioning SON office complex and laboratory in Ekiti State recently, lamented that Federal Government (FG) was pained by the death of over hundreds of thousands of Nigerian from the use of substandard and life threatening products peddled around the country.
Nigerians have been at the mercy of substandard products like low quality steel and roofing sheets, adulterated lubricants, explosion from continuous usage of old and expired Lignified Petroleum Gas (LPG) cylinders, fire hazards from substandard electrical cables and retreaded vehicular tyres that are imported with fake import certificates.
Consequent upon this was the launch of a sophisticated technology to address the import certificate forgery and combat the preponderance of fake and substandard goods which accounts for 85 per cent of imports through the ports.
In view of this, Salim rallied the lawmakers to support SON’s quest to establish more laboratories in the country to be able to certify, monitor and test imported goods
“It is a great pleasure to welcome you to the only laboratory in the country that serves about 200 million people. The significance of your presence is the fact that you would see for yourself the amount of work we are doing and the amount of work we need to do to make this country safer, to make our industries competitive and to protect our people from substandard goods,” he said.
He added that the oversight function cannot be overemphasized at a time when the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) is in full force, stating the need to develop the nation’s testing capacity to address unscrupulous elements who would want to use the trade pact to make Nigeria a dumping ground.
“Presently, our industries are at a disadvantaged position because they cannot expand export because we need to have enough capacity to test, monitor and certify local products, we need even more capacity to make sure that we train the small scale industries in the country.
“ In that light, we have signed lots of Memorandum of Understandings (MoUs) with several Governors and ministries in various states to help SMEs package, label and manufacture their products and certified for exports.
“We have potentials to do even more and we have lots of responsibilities but little tools to work with,” he said.
He added that SON would be increasing its collaboration with the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) especially in the nation’s oil and gas sector, adding that SON recently just launched a more secured certification process to address issues of faking and forging of SON certificate.
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