VICTORIA ONU, ABUJA
THE Standards Organisation of Nigeria has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with five state governments to improve standardisation of goods produced in the states.
The states are Cross River, Jigawa, Kano, Katsina and Lagos.
The Director-General of SON, Farouk Salim, made this known at a one-day Capacity Building Workshop organised for Journalists by the Organisation in Abuja.
Salim said the MOU would go a long way in strengthening the activities of SON with the states towards improving Small and Medium Enterprises.
He added that SON, over the past nine months, had arrested about 10 fake manufacturers in Kano, Ibadan and Lagos, who were currently being prosecuted.
According to him, sub-standard tyres and other products worth hundreds of millions of naira have been confiscated by the Agency over the last nine months across the country.
Salim explained that SON had been engaging Steel Industries as part of measures to ensure standardization and towards putting an end to building collapse in the country.
The Director-General pointed out that the enforcement activities of the Organization had been increased to prevent the import of substandard goods into the country.
He said efforts were also being made to boost and protect the production of local industries through appropriate monitoring and standard regulations to enable them to take advantage of the African Free Continental Trade Agreement.
Salim noted that plans were on ground to improve the salary structure and condition of service of SON’s workforce towards boosting standardization of products and protect Nigerian consumers from substandard goods.
He noted that in the last nine months, several state governments in Nigeria had made lands available to the organization to enable it to ensure that products in the states were well suited for local and international markets.
On the issue of SON returning to the nation’s ports for operations, Salim said the organization was already working to return to the ports.
“We are working on it for quick return to the ports, it is not a priority for us, over the last eleven months, we’ve been working outside the ports and doing well,” he said.
Salim also gave the assurance that the Nigerian government, industries and manufacturers were well prepared to gain more from the African Continental Free Trade Area because of all the measures being put in place.
He said the Nigerian government signed to the trade agreement early this year based on this overall preparedness.
