Maritime
SON Restates Mandate To Check Fake Products
The Standards Organiza
tion of Nigeria (SON) says it has a mandate to enforce and checkmate the influx of sub-standard products into the country.
Addressing newsmen in Lagos last Tuesday, the Director of Enforcement at the Port Operations, Engineer Bede Obayi said since importers have devised new methods of bringing in substandard products into the country, they are also developing new strategies to checkmate them.
Obayi said the assignment given to his Director General, Dr Joseph Odumudu by the Federal Government of Nigeria is to ride the country of fake, adulterated and sub-standard products and that the organization has been doing so with vigor.
He said looking at the SON Act, the organization has not even effected all the powers given to it and that more strategies are coming, to make sure Nigeria and Nigerians are not consumed by fake and sub-standard products.
Engineer Obayi, who was reacting to the allegation of arresting containers on Lagos city roads by the SON’s Enforcement Unit leveled against them by the Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFFF) said, neither him nor his Director General will carry out duties to impede on rights of importers, but that SON must do its job.
“How can you have container that is moving by night, when you know it is carrying sub-standard goods or did not even register such product with SON?
They said, we should go to their warehouses, as you know some Nigerians who are bent on not doing the right thing, if we allow such goods to get to their warehouses by night, by morning the goods are no more and as you know the goods will be sold to Nigerians whom we are to protect. My brother, as a patrioctic Nigerian, if we allow such, then we are not carrying out our mandate.” Obayi said.
On why the SON cannot hook-up to the Nigeria Customs portal, the Nigeria Trade Hub (NTH) to profile its products, Obayi said his organization was working with Niciss to develop its platform so as to be fully operational online, and then they will have something to take to the stakeholders and sensitize them, but for now they have to safeguard Nigerians.
Speaking further, he said that because the Standards Organizations of Nigeria Conformity Assessment Programme (SONCAP) certificate were being faked by Nigerians in collaboration with manufacturers outside Nigeria, the organization decided to issue SONCAP in Nigeria whenever an importer presents his products manufacturing certificate to them.
All these strategies, the SON official said are to checkmate sub-standard products.
There has been a cool war going on between SON and the Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF) over illegal arrests of containers along Lagos roads and the Western zone.
According to the founder of NAGAFF, Dr Boniface Aniebonam, the SON Act does not give the organization any power to arrest containers along the road, but to follow up to owner warehouses to effect such arrest.
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