SON plans to increase monitoring exercise, market surveillance in 2019
The Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON) is perfecting plans to increase its monitoring exercise and market surveillance in order to reduce the rate of influx of fake and substandard products into the country.
Speaking at a maritime stakeholders’ awareness forum held in Lagos recently, Obiora Manafa, director, Inspectorate and Compliance Directorate (ICD) of SON, who said that there are many sub-standard products coming into the country, stated that it has become challenging in terms of cost for SON to destroy the impounded substandard goods.
According to Manafa, dubious importers that escape with fake and substandard products from the port would be restricted from selling the products in Nigerian market as the organisation will concentrate in taking samples of suspected products from the sellers for laboratory testing.
“And if found with low quality, the seller of product must be forced to disclose the source, distributor or supplier of the products before he or she would be released,” Manafa said.
Manafa, who noted that SON’s invitation to partake in cargo examination at the port was stalling its effective operations curbing influx of fake products, said that SON in 2019 hopes to reduce the importation of substandard products by 75 percent, if permitted to stay in the ports.
Manafa, who said that the Organisation has many seized items that are awaiting court order before they would be destroyed, noted that people spend billions of Naira on importation of substandard goods.
Alternatively, Manafa said that instead of destroying some of the impounded products, the SON also force the importers to do the right thing by writing the correct capacity of the product, and to also pay penalty to cover for the cost of making the correction.
“For instance, an importer of 40 watts of electric bulbs that came in with an inscription that says the product is 60 watts, would after the test be forced to do the right thing. Importing used cylinder is a time bomb that is waiting to explode. Importation of used cylinder is prohibited because cylinder has 15 years life span,” he said.
Manafa, who pointed the challenges facing importation of products into the country to include false declaration and over rating of product capacity, said that the essence of the forum was to educate the agents and freight forwarders, who stand as middlemen to the importers.
He cited instances, where importer of a container carrying used tyres- a life endangering product, were declared as a paper, with the intention of short-changing the government of its revenue and to also smuggle in prohibited items into the country.
According to him, to ease demurrage paid on impounded goods, SON escort suspected containers of substandard products to the importers’ warehouses to enable SON to get samples of the products for laboratory testing to assess the quality of the products.
He however urged importers and their agents to do the right thing by adhering to the rule guiding quality assurance for product importation.
Yahya Bukar, head, Ports and Borders of SON, who reaffirmed that SON is being invited by Nigeria Customs to participate in cargo clearance at the ports, acknowledged that being on Nigerian Single Window platform enables the organisation to see importers’ declarations.
He pointed at false declaration, inconsistent and incomplete declaration in Single Goods Declaration (SGD) form and Form ‘M’, done with the intention of shortchanging government of it revenue, as the major challenges facing SON.
“Some of the SONCAP certificates in circulation are fake that is why SON picks up product sample for testing during physical examination of consignment and market monitoring exercises,” he explained.
Bukar identified increased creation of unemployment for Nigerian youths especially on goods that can be manufactured locally as well as loss of lives and property as the major dangers of importing substandard goods.
Uzoamaka Anagor-Ewuzie