Nigeria’s standards organization promises to rid market of sub-standard lubricants

The Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON) is embarking on a nationwide drive to rid the market of sub-standard lubricants.

The agency has been empowered by the new 2015 SON Act to remove all non-compliant products from the marketplace.

“We do not want these unscrupulous importers to flood this country with substandard products. We want the capacity utilization of Nigerian companies to improve so as to employ the teeming unemployed Nigerian youths. This can only happen when these substandard products are removed from the nation’s market,” said SON Compliance Director, Bede Obayi, on behalf of SON Director-General Osita Aboloma.

‘’This is just the starting point and we have not reached where we want to be. This is a fight that we are not going to stop until we finish removing most of the substandard products in circulation. It is the mandate of the organization to ensure that Nigerians enjoy safe and nonhazardous products whenever they buy products.”

“Today, you have seen that made-in-Nigeria products, especially cables, have become the order of the day where these importers go abroad to buy imported products and clone them as if they are made in this country and this is what we cannot allow continuing to happen in this country.”

Aboloma said that the practice discouraged genuine businessmen from investing in the country and posed a danger to Nigeria’s economy.

“Once we remove these substandard products, the Nigerian products would take over and that is when we will be talking of made-in-Nigeria products for the world. We want Nigerians to enjoy made-in-Nigeria products so that once they see made-in-Nigeria products, they will be proud of them.  We do not want other countries to dump substandard products on us.”