The Director-General, Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON), Mr. Osita Aboloma, has said 60 days will, henceforth, be the deadline for product registration, adding that it aligns with the government policy on ease of doing business.
Speaking during a sensitisation forum between SON and Alaba Electrical Dealers Association of Nigeria (EDAN) in Lagos, he said the standards agency had come out with simplified processes to encourage more businessmen to register their products.
He discouraged them from copying other people’s brands, adding that it was an economic crime to counterfeit genuine products. While urging the traders to desist from cloning successful products and importing counterfeited products into the country, Aboloma promised that SON will automate the process of product registration and reduce human interference.
According to him when the agency destroyed substandard goods, it indirectly affects the economy because it is billions of naira that was destroyed. He warned that any importer that is apprehended will face the full wrath of the law as the Attorney-General’s office is partnering with SON to ensure that such people are prosecuted to serve as example to would-be offenders.
Meanwhile, EDAN has stepped up its game by coming under the Standard Organisation Mandatory Conformity Assessment Programme (MANCAP) for locally manufactured cables and wires and SON Mandatory Assessment Programmes (SONCAP) for imported cables.
A patron of the market, Mr. Okolo Benjamin, said the allegation of the presence of fake and substandard electrical goods in the market was exaggerated.
He appealed to SON to continuously engage the traders on the negative effects of fake and sub-standard goods rather than vilification.
Earlier, EDAN Chairman, Mr. Fabian Ezereadi Ezeorjika, commended the collaborative effort between the association and SON and said before now, many of his members were driven by profit rather than the safety of lives, property and nationalism and imported life threatening products into the country.
He lamented that many EDAN members who refused to do the right things lost millions of naira to either confiscation or outright destruction by SON.
He urged his members to key into the standardisation policy of the Federal Government.
He said to check the infiltration of cloned electrical materials into the market, the association introduced SON market desk while encouraging their members to ensure that all products are properly registered.
“We constituted an ad hoc committee named standard and anti-adulteration committees, vested with the statutory responsibilities of standardising and regulating quality of imported products,’’ he added.