‘Quality Infrastructure, Key For Diversifying Non-Oil Sector’

Scene of fire incident at Mile 12 Market, Ketu, Lagos State, last Friday.

The United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) has in Abuja said the National Quality Infrastructure Project (NQIP) would assist Nigeria to diversify its economy to non-oil sector.
The Project Coordinator with UNIDO, Mr Charles Malata, told newsmen that the project would be useful to Nigeria as it had several commodities across the country.
He said the four years NQIP signed in 2013 had begun operation in May 2014 and was being sponsored by EU with 12 million Euros committed to cover its five components.
Malata said the components included development of functional and internationally recognised National Accreditation Body (NAB).
Others are National Metrological Institute (NMI), National Quality Policy (NQP), consumer protection and creating linkages for private sector.
He said once the avenue for the products to get to international market opened up with all the resources in the country, it would enable it to compete and become economically viable, compared to oil.
He added that if Nigerian products must be found in EU market, it had to meet the quality and safety requirement to compete with the oil sector.
The coordinator also said the project would assist in implementing strategic framework for vision 20:2020.
The framework is aimed at developing policies and measures to improve competitiveness and diversification to non-oil sector.
Matala said Nigeria lacked an internationally recognised quality infrastructure bodies with the capacity to ensure safety, integrity, marketability of goods and services.
He said NQIP would support the improvement and establishment of missing quality standards control bodies needed to improve the quality of products and services for exchange locally and internationally.
He said NQIP was an institutional framework required to establish and implement standardisation, metrology, accreditation and conformity assessment services.
The coordinator said the idea of the project was to facilitate the commodities to find market at the international level.
“We are still progressing in all these areas to establish the missing infrastructure and the policies. So far, we are making positive progress in all the areas.”
Malata said NAB would enable certificates issued on quality control products in Nigeria to be recognised internationally.
He said the body would be driven by the international best practices and had been at the final stage of its registration while the targeted date for its operation was June 2015.
The Project Co-ordinator said UNIDO and the Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON) had been working together to prepare the relevant construction plans for the building which would house the institute.
He said SON would construct the building to house the institute while UNIDO would provide the necessary support of international best practices.
Matala said the SON had sent some of its personnel, whose fields were related to metrology, to study while others had gone to the international training workshop to prepare toward the project.
“We are not going to impose the concepts on the stakeholders but we have to get to a point where they will be able to understand the need to partake in the new principles.
“Worldwide, the issue of quality is paramount because if there is no quality, it is very unlikely there wouldn’t be an exchange of products. We will want to buy products that meet our needs,” he said.
He urged people to support the project as it would bear fruit in the long run for Nigerians, adding that this was the programme the country had been looking for.