The Standard Organisation of Nigeria (SON) has warned individuals and organisations whose stock in trade is to use the country as a dumping ground for all types of substandard goods.
The SON’s Director-General, Mallam Farouk Salim, gave the warning during an enforcement exercise last Friday, in Obafemi Owode area of Ogun State, where illegally stuffed tyres worth about N600 million were discovered and confiscated.
The Director General said the tyres, stuffed in 100 containers, passed through the ports unnoticed, stressing the need for the SON to be present at the nation’s points of entry.
He alleged that many importers took advantage of the vastness of the country to warehouse substandard products at different hideouts across the country, assuring however, that there would no longer be hiding place for importers of such products again.
“Our message to importers is that we are coming for unscrupulous importers and we are not ready for compromise; we will prosecute. There is no way we can salvage these tyres, so we are going to destroy them.
‘‘We have arrested the manager of the warehouse, but the owner of the product is a foreigner and happens to be outside the country and we are sure he would come to explain himself. And if he does not, we will just prosecute the manager and anybody involved in this property”, he said.
Salim said the seizure was to ensure that those tyres stuffed in over 100 containers did not find their ways into the nation’s markets, as their integrity had been lost.
“This is a very dangerous situation because people’s lives are at stake and our roads are not safe because of something like this.
“We have no idea how these tyres got into this country. We are not at the ports and it did not come through us and they do not have papers with us that the goods have been cleared.
“We do not also have access to the port because if we were at the ports, there is no way we would allow about 100 containers; and you can imagine if another 15 warehouses around the country, we are looking at about 2000 containers slipping through unnoticed.
“It is a very dangerous trend and this is why we are still emphasising that the best way to enforce is to be at the point of entry. This is why about 100 containers slipped through the ports and ended up in the warehouse,’’ he said.
He stated that before declaring a tyre substandard, it would have been tested in the laboratory and found short of the requirements of the NIS 252 2017 standards.
“If the tyres are used and expired, the tyres are substandard, if the tyres are stuffed, the tyres are substandard”, he said.
He explained further that, “Stuffing means putting a smaller tyre into bigger ones and another bigger one into the biggest one by way of dodging duties and shipping cost to make too much profits, but in the act of making too much profits, they do not look at the quality implication of these tyres”.
According to him, the physical structures of tyres are readily affected once exposed to stuffing.
“Anybody buying a tyre should do physical examination and visual examination,” he advised.
The Manager of the warehouse, Emmanuel Ogbagu, fielding questions from the Director General, said the warehouse employed outside manpower to un-stuff the tyres to be taken to markets across the country.
He said all efforts to reach the owner of the warehouse had proved abortive, saying that he was quite aware of the implications of stuffing tyres.