Casio Calculator and its distributing partner, SKLD Integrated Services Limited, have called on the government at all levels, agencies, and stakeholders in the education sector to join efforts in advancing education and also stamping out counterfeit products within the Nigerian market.
This was the outcome at the Casio distributors conference, with the overarching goal of combating counterfeit products and ensuring the authenticity of calculators circulated on the market.
According to Casio’s research, on the usage of scientific calculators among senior secondary school students, 60 per cent do not use calculators, 33 per cent use counterfeit ones while only seven per cent of them use authentic Casio calculators.
The Managing Director of SKLD Integrated Services Limited, Temilola Adepetun, expressed her concern over the rate of fake products in the country.
According to the MD, over time it looks as if different countries have used our country as a dumping ground for counterfeit products, and we have also not been forthcoming enough. When we travel outside the country, we ask these people to produce lookalike products and not genuine ones, whereas, in other countries, you do not just bring in anything because there are rules.
She said we have the Standard Organisation of Nigeria (SON), the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), and other authorities. I am not sure how far they are enforcing this thing to make sure we get only the authentic product, and also, with the examination bodies, are they adopting the authentic calculator or allowing students to use any calculator?
“There are hardly any science subjects in which you will not do the calculation. Mathematics is an important subject for which you need a minimum of credit to get admission into a university.
“We know that the counterfeit ones are cheaper but have caused injuries. It delays answering when you use it and does not always give the correct answer, and here we are mourning exam results.
“It is time to clean up our society from the top and bottom, and in doing this, we will appreciate our dealers, distributors, and resellers and also reward them for their loyalty because when you have fake products in the market, they sell for less, and you have to be a trader of integrity to want to sell the original thing,” she concluded.
On his part, Education Specialist, Casio Japan, Koichi Danjo, said they are happy to be in Nigeria not just to do business and go back but to also enhance the education sector.
Danjo said they have taken part in activities to realise a better way of teaching mathematics by supporting teachers and students.
“We have trained over 3,000 teachers in Lagos in different kinds of skills, donated seminar materials and teaching materials, and donated a Casio lab to the Lagos State Enterprise Resource Centre.
“We have carried out a pilot project where a group of students who use genuine scientific calculators in the same subject were compared to a non-user group, and the score of students using scientific calculators was dramatically higher than that of those who did not use them, and we are trying to expand this all over Lagos and, by extension, to the whole country,” he said.
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