by our correspondent.
The Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON) has asked traders in Nigeria to uphold the highest quality standards to enable them benefit from the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA).
The Director-General, SON, Farouk Salim, gave the advice recently at a sensitisation workshop for Electrical Dealers Association of Nigeria (EDAN) at the Alaba International Market, Lagos.
Salim said he was eager to ensure that the Alaba market took its rightful place in the Free Trade Area, as the largest in West Africa, to attract customers globally.
In his words; “In other for the market to have a good reputation and to have more customers across the world especially with this open border policy in the AfCFTA, it is very important for them to police themselves, find out those people with bad products and report them to us so that we can take them out of the market.
“I commend the association for serving Nigerians with quality products, because if not for you, the country would have been dominated by foreign goods. Anybody here with certification or who has genuine products does not have a problem with SON,” he said.
The SON DG advised the association to always insist on quality products, warning that substandard electronics and electrical products were life endangering products capable of causing destruction.
“You are dealing with electronics and electrical products and these goods can cause fire explosion that would destroy lives and property and it is not discriminatory. Once you introduce a bad product into the market, you are exposing not just consumers to danger, but also your families. Let’s join hands to ensure no bad products is imported to Nigeria. We would not allow people to bring their problems down to the country and still get away with it,” he said.
For his part, the Executive Chairman, EDAN, Fabian Ezeorjika, said the market authority, in complementing the efforts of SON, has put in place internal mechanism to check those indulging in manufacturing, importation or exportation of sub-standard products.
He said the association had also constituted an adhoc committee, called Standard and Anti-Adulteration Committees, vested with the responsibilities of standardising and regulating the quality of products in the electrical section, adding that the association will continue to work with SON to arrest and sanction defaulters according to the constitution.
“We made it very clear during our inauguration in 2016, that we will continue to partner with governmental agencies to eradicate sub-standard products out of the market. We shall uphold and implement government policies formulated to keep sub-standard products totally out of our markets,” he stated.
Ezeorjika assured SON that the Association will abide by its establishment Act and Regulations to complement existing cordial relationship between them.
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