The Director-General of Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON), Dr Joseph Odumodu, has said the agency has seized substandard products worth four billion naira since the beginning of the year.
Odumodu said the prevalence of sub-standard goods had reduced from 85 to 40 per cent with the launch of the National Coalition on the Zero Tolerance Campaign.
He said when he assumed office, he was confronted with an organisation lacking in capacity and a market that was saturated with fake and sub-standard goods.
He commissioned a baseline study, which showed that the prevalence of sub-standard goods was as high as 85 per cent while the level of awareness about their hazards was almost zero per cent.
Through a six-point agenda, including consumer protection and engagement, improving the competitiveness of local products, aggressive conformity assessment, global relevance and capacity building, improvements have been made.
Following the amendment of the SON Act, the agency now has powers to arrest, prosecute and jail purveyors of fake and sub-standard products.
SON, in a statement by its Director/Head of laboratory Services, Mr. Louis Njoku, said the six-point agenda was designed to help industries build their quality assurance infrastructure while complying with SON’s zero tolerance against fake and sub-standard goods.
“These and other measures stabilised the market and reduced the prevalence of sub-standard goods from an initial level of 85 to less than 40 per cent in less than three years, and raised the level of consumer awareness from almost 0 to as high as 65 per cent.
“Now, the agency’s ‘operation flush’ promises to reduce the level of sub-standard products to one per cent by the end of 2015,” the statement said.
Under Odumodu, SON has granted country-wide ISO certifications, the ISO 9000, to several firms and public institutions and has enumerated many more standards in the market, especially for local produce.
SON is spearheading the formulation of a National Quality Policy and is also fast-tracking the establishment of National Quality Infrastructure.
“In line with this objective, SON midwifed the inauguration of a committee on establishing a National Accreditation Body. This was done in May 2013 in Lagos. The agency secured international accreditation of its food technology test laboratories in Nigeria. The set objective of all these efforts is for Nigerian-made products to meet global competitiveness,” the agency said.
It added that an aggressive enforcement regime has curtailed the negative activities of importers and manufacturers of fake and sub-standard goods.
The statement added: “SON offers free certification for SMEs in the country in order to prepare them for export and put an end to Nigerian goods being rejected in the international market.
“Now, Nigeria’s local products would henceforth enjoy high patronage at the global market, following the recent accreditation by International Laboratory Accreditation Co-operation (ILAC)’s unprecedented testing and certification of SON food laboratories.”
It said a new ultra-modern, world class laboratory facility is nearing completion in Ogba; Lagos, which was inaugurated on October 3.
It also embarked on standardisation of cement as a means to stop building collapse. “The inclusion of labeling, date of manufacture, expiration and other measures will enable SON’s officials towards effective monitoring, enforcement and flushing out of all quacks in the sector.
“However, one of the multi-national cement companies operating in Nigeria obtained a Court order restraining SON from enforcing the new cement grade standards.
“Standardisation exercises in the cable sector have promoted at least N20 billion worth of investment in cable manufacturing in the country.”
SON said it also pioneered a National Quality Policy aimed at establishing the appropriate framework for the development and publication of national standards and to reposition the country among the top 20 industrialised nations of the world.
SON has also integrated its e-Certificates with Nigeria Integrated Customs Information System (NICIS) for processing Form ‘M’ and Pre-Arrival Assessment Report (PAAR). The essence, it said, is to facilitate trade by eliminating direct contact or visits to SON office for certification processing.
It constructed the National Metrology Institute (NMI) in Enugu. “The NMI is one of the missing quality control links required to house the national primary standards for Nigeria and regulate the operations of enterprises and corporations so that measurement systems used for commerce in Nigeria are not subject to abuses and exploitation.
“After several laboratory analyses, the agency’s enforcement unit has made a public evacuation and destruction of several products ranging from tyres, electrical equipment, diapers, phones, shaving sticks, cables and bulbs, among others.
“Following SON’s Operation flush drive to ensure substandard, fake, adulterated and counterfeit products are completely flushed out of the nation’s economy and markets across the country, the impact of SON’s activities under the leadership and watch of Dr. Odumodu is positively felt in the nation,” the statement added.
