SON ups surveillance, impounds N200 million fake cables, bulbs, mulls pact with Police
The Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON) has Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON) has intercepted two 40-feet containers and another 20-feet container loaded with fake cables and electric bulbs on a federal highway.
Director-General of the agency, Ostia Aboloma explained during the inspection exercise that the agency would continue to hit back at importers of fake and substandard products until they stop Represented by agency’s Director, Compliance, Bede Obayi, the DG noted that the move by the agency was to restate the commitment to zero tolerance for substandard goods while also complementing the present administration’s quest to provide the enabling environment for businesses to support local production.
Giving the graphic detail of the arrest, Aboloma said “We intercepted these two 40-feet containers containing fake electricity bulbs released from the ports. We have tested them in our laboratory and the result we got shows that these bulbs are far below the requirement of the standards and we cannot allow that.”
“The packs of these bulbs indicate that each bulb is 105 watts, but when tested, it was not up to 50 watts and this is not even up to 50 per cent of the rated capacity. The importer will sell to the public as 105 watts, short-changing the unsuspecting Nigerian end-users. If you know you have the capacity to do 50 watts, why not indicate 50 watts instead of making the consumers to pay twice the amount of the price. This is not acceptable and we will not allow this to continue. We must destroy these bulbs. We have tested them and they failed the requirements of the standards”.
He said on conclusion of investigations, they will hand over suspects to the Police for further investigations and persecution.
On the new partnership with the Nigeria Police, Aboloma said more terms and conditions will be drawn up so that better results will be achieved in course of our duties.
