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SON to penalise sellers of substandard products

By on December 20, 2015

The Standards Organisation of Nigeria says it will by the first quarter of 2016 begin to penalise retailers and wholesalers of substandard products in the country.

The Director-General, SON, Dr. Joseph Odumodu, said this at the SON-China Forum aimed at promoting anti-dumping of substandard products in Lagos.

He said, “We are going to start enforcing the primary liability for trading in substandard products on wholesalers and retailers.

“They will take responsibility for substandard products in their possession until SON is able to trace the importer. So, retailers and wholesalers should verify that they only buy goods that have Standards Organisation of Nigeria’s Conformity Assessment Programme Certification.”

Odumodu said the organisation was also working on a system, which could enable the traceability of imported products, adding that every SONCAP certificate issued had reference codes, which would be replicated on the products.

He added, “Through these codes, one should be able to tell who brought the product into Nigeria and where it was manufactured. Once we are able to do this, we would blacklist manufacturers and send people who produce substandard goods to jail.

“We have a brand new Act, SON Act 2015, which gives us that legislative backing and I look forward to enforcing it.”

He added that SON was making efforts to reach an agreement with supplier-nations to ensure that substandard goods could be repatriated back to the places of manufacture if found in Nigeria.

That way, Odumodu said, “Nigeria gets the Free on Board value of the goods and the importer only loses the shipping costs.

“We will be increasing market surveillance activities in the first half of 2016. By June, every product in the market without a reference code will be investigated painstakingly. By September, we will not accept any imported product without those codes. Such products will be removed from circulation and destroyed.”

Odumodu said a new SONCAP logo had been made, which would be carried on every product in the country. He said efforts were being made to ensure that every country that exports its products to Nigeria, exports only products of good standards.

He said, “We will be insisting on those markings showing that the imported products were produced to the standard of their source countries. This will have to be done with some legislation.”

“There is also the issue of product liability insurance.
[Punch]