The Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON), yesterday, destroyed fake and substandard products worth several billions of naira in Lagos.
Products destroyed are engine oil, electrical cables and substandard tyres.
However, speaking during the destruction of the products seized by the organisation, the director general of SON, Mallam Farouk Salim, disclosed that the organisation was reviewing its Act to ensure importers of life threatening materials are jailed and not fined.
According to Salim, peddlers of these items are economic saboteurs and their activities sabotage our industry, people and cause loss for individuals who are innocently buying these products.
“This is one of the reasons why in the last National Assembly, we went to them to review our act to make sure that importers of life threatening materials are jailed not just fined. Thankfully they passed the law but unfortunately when the government was settling down, they did not get the opportunity for the president to sign the law.”
“So it is back in the national assembly for concurrence and hopefully very soon it will be with the president and I am sure the president will sign that amendment and those individuals selling threatening items will be jailed immediately they are caught,” he said.
The SON boss noted that some of the products to be destroyed today had gotten a court order to that effect.
On the seized tyres, he said that some of them are new tyres but unfortunately when the importer brought them in, other tyres were stuffed inside them.
“Due to this, these tyres lose their integrity and they become dangerous to society. The ones looking new are used tyres, they are pressed and polished to look new.
“The fakers of the motor oil lubricants intercepted in Calabar, use popular products so our Nigerian lubricant manufacturers that are successful have to deal with individuals trying to copy their product.
“Nobody copies a product that is not successful, the only problem is the copying is a bad one. The product you are seeing behind does not belong to that popular company, it was being copied and they have been taken to court, convicted and the court gave us the permission to confiscate the product and destroy them,” he said.
Salim pointed out that the Nigerian cable industry is successful and good and they key into associations to help identify these fake ones.
He noted that SON sometimes used their intelligence to fish these people out because their activities were affecting the economy of the country. Due to the policy on local content, we need to make sure that our indigenous companies are protected.
“These cables are supposed to be copper but they are either iron or copper coated, when used in a building, it gets hot and this leads to fire,” he said.
On the value of these products, the SON director general said that it ran into billions of naira, adding that they would keep seizing the products to force the perpetrators to stop.
“To your eyes these products don’t look nice but an unscrupulous person can take these, clean it up and send it to the market and make billions of naira from it.
“As regards this environment, the seized items are safe here as the place is twenty-four hours monitored by police, civil defence,” he said.
