Govt directs SON to reduce fake products to 15%



The Federal Government has ordered the Standard Organisation of Nigeria (SON) to reduce substandard products to 15 per cent by next year .

Speaking during the donation of gifts to SON by Intertek Limited to mark the 10th year anniversary of SON Conformity Assessment Programme (SONCAP) in Lagos, the Director-General of SON, Dr Joseph Odumodu said importers of sub-standard products will henceforth be sent to jail, adding that SON has been empowered by the Federal Government.

Odumodu said the new SON Act of 2015, that gave agency the power to prosecute offenders can be effective if importers of harmful sub-standard products are prosecuted and jailed for sabotaging the economy.

Odumodu said the Act also gives the agency the power to force importers and manufacturers to create a database of every products in the market, which would be helped by the Electronic Products Registration (EPR) that has been embarked upon by the agency. He said: ‘’It is not enough to say we have destroyed goods worth billions of naira; we also want to know who brought them into the country hence we are keeping a database.

‘’We are also building a new laboratory that would have sample reference offices and all it does is to keep pictures of bad products sample and when President Muhammadu Buhari goes to China and other countries within the area in the first quarter of next year, we would show the government there, present them that this are companies that we want to blacklist, they should not bring their products into the country and also for our own people bringing in the products into Nigeria,we now want to send them to jail,’’he said.


He said by 2016, inferior goods would have fallen under 15 per cent as the standards body is doing a lot to nip it in the bud, with the active collaboration of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS). ‘’Our collaboration is beautiful, yielding results as what I see today is a massive reduction in corruption as we make sure we reduce the human element in the interaction we have with the public. By 2016,people would rejoice with SON,’’ he said.

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