Yemisi Izuora
The Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON) appear to be ready to deal with dealers and importers of fake tyres and has vowed to charge them with murder.
The agency said it is ready to put an end to importation of used and sub-standard tyre into the country.
Acting Director General of SON, Paul Angya who gave the warning in Lagos said SON mandate is known to everybody who is aware of standardization but as acting director general he would apply serious sanctions on culprits.
He stated that, SON is going to go along with the Federal Government change mantra which does not give room for corruption.
He revealed that 8,986 accidents were recorded in 2015, while 4,100 were killed and 732 people died as a result of tyre bust.
He urged tyre dealers to cooperate with the organization to put an end to importation of sub-standard tyre into the country.
“We are ready to eliminate importation of sub-standard products into Nigeria, because of this we have reached out to other government agencies to ensure that we work together and stop smugglers of fake products into the country, he said.
Angya described dealers in fake tyre in the country as a killers, saying henceforth the agency will treat perpetrators as a murderers.
“Our Act empowered us to jail promoters of sub-standard product up to 10 years and we will not relent to jail any culprit.
To eliminate corruption from SON, we are going to introduce e-payment, e-invoice and e-receipt to stamp out corruption from the system,” he said.
Speaking on improving locally manufactured goods, Angya said the organizations vision is to get closer to the people so that their goods and farm products will be up to global standard.
“To ease our work and improve quality of goods and other products in Nigeria, we are working to improve expansion of SON facilities across the country so that people in Sokoto will not travel to Maiduguri to test their products”
He said the agency is doing its best to strengthen its laboratories system to ensure that Nigerian products will not be rejected abroad.