The Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN) says it will continue to support the Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON)’s fight against fake and sub-standard products.
Similarly, the SON has read riot act on adulterators of lubricants, warning them to desist from such unscrupulous activity to avoid prosecution.
Speaking at a sensitisation workshop organised by SON in Yola, Adamawa State capital recently, Ahmed Jarma, chairman, North- East zone of MAN, said there was a need for collaboration between MAN and SON to tackle the influx of substandard products into the country.
According to Jarma, the effects of substandard products in the country could be so devastating that only mutual collaborations could stop it.
“Substandard products are everybody’s enemy, yet people engage in peddling them for selfish economic gains at the expense of national and individual economic interest.
“It is only all of us as patriotic Nigerians that can collectively put a halt to this trend on both domestic and imported substandard products,” he said.
Jarma noted that the objectives of MAN and the functions of SON indicated that both had the common goal of formulating and promoting policies that specifically promoted a healthy industrial development in the country for stable economic growth.
Commending SON ACT 2015, the manufacturer said: “The Act sets out to sanitise the nation’s industrial, commercial, business and market place of substandard products. It is in tandem with the economic diversification, economic growth and recovery, industrial and agricultural revolution programme of the federal government. Therefore, using the instrumentality of the ACT,
Nigeria could attain economic development via standardisation, quality assurance and control as well as monitoring and compliance”.
Speaking earlier at the forum, Osita Aboloma, SON’s director-general, represented by Sunday Galadima, Adamawa State’s coordinator of SON, assured stakeholders that the regulatory agency remained unrelenting in the anti-substandard products battle.
“Within the last few months, we have confiscated fake and substandard products worth over N300 billion across the country. We have since embarked on arraignment and trial at the various courts- of some of the suspects linked with the impounded goods”.
Meanwhile at another meeting with the Lubricant Producers Association of Nigeria last Wednesday in Lagos, Aboloma charged lubricant dealers to leverage the growing auto industry, pointing out that the industry was critical to Nigeria’s industrialisation drive.
He read riot act to unscrupulous dealers faking genuine products and deceiving unsuspecting consumers to desist from that, as the SON had given the agency prosecutorial powers.
“SON will not sit back and watch some unscrupulous people threaten the life of the industry. We will not sit back and watch these people pull down the investment of established brands. As long as you are law abiding, we will be there to protect you,” he said.
He urged all stakeholders to always consult SON for minimum requirements of the Nigerian Industrial Standards (NIS) in order to produce in line with global standards.
“We cannot do it alone and we need your assistance. The standards are there and they have been brought at par with international best practice. We will sit down and critically look at challenges you have now and fashion out a way to deal with them collectively and decisively,” Aboloma told lubricant makers.
Mustapha Ado, chairman/CEO of Ammasco International Limited, said the industry was faced with a number of challenges, ranging from adulteration to faking of established brands, tasking SON to address the issue head-on.
Odinaka Anudu
