The Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON) has tasked stakeholders in the auto industry to take advantage of standards to remain competitive and relevant especially as the Africa Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) is on the cards.
The Director General, SON, Mallam Farouk Salim, at a sensitisation programme for Auto Spare Parts and Machineries Dealers Association (ASPAMDA) in Badagry area of Lagos, said the operationalisation of AfCFTA would turn Nigeria and indeed the entire African continent to one huge market, he said AfCFTA would provide for Nigeria the competitive edge in trading with other neighboring countries’ auto and machineries dealers.
He advised the need to take optimum advantage of the emerging huge African market while also urging the market to always ensure that they are strictly into marketing and selling of high quality and standards.
“It is truly a delight to be part of this event and once again demonstrate the importance of this market to the overall economic and industrial revitalization of our country,” he stressed.
He noted that just like other big markets across the country, the market has become a household name, adding that the Standards body acknowledges the importance of the market and would continuously seek out ways to collaborate and carry along all the stakeholders of the very vital market in the business of standardisation.
“We need your continuous support to discharge our mandate of ensuring that only products and services that are of high standard and quality are in circulation. We need to involve all of you towards ensuring strict adherence to the requirements of applicable standards in line with international best practices,” he urged.
In his words: “We all must ensure that only products that comply with laid down Nigeria Industrial Standards are available for sale in this market. SON frowns at the practice of cloning successful brands by unscrupulous businessmen to make quick gains, depriving the trade mark owners of their benefits.”
According to him, the SON Act 2015 empowers the agency to arrest and prosecute offenders, stressing that it would step up its ante to make it impossible for fakers to thrive.
He noted that SON has been working in every sector to bring sanity and raise the confidence of manufacturers, importers and consumers, maintaining standards are improved and reviewed regularly to meet up with current realities.
“SON will continue to seek greater collaboration with the private sector, especially the ASPAMDA, to sanitize the market, expose and prosecute those engaging in illegal activities such as relabeling and cloning of popular brands with low quality varieties,” he assured.
Farouk urged the auto dealers to bridge the gap between the available vehicle and the required need for standard auto parts for maintenance. He said that the dealers should do more by assembling their brands to meet the huge market for auto spare parts and machineries in the country.
The SON boss stated that there is no reason to import fake and substandard products into the country, especially when the agency has provided the guidelines for importers and indigenous manufacturers on standardisation.
“We have the SON Conformity Assessment Programme (SONCAP) for importers to ensure that whatever they import is in conformity with the nation’s standards from the country of origin.
“While the MANCAP scheme is a detailed guideline for local manufacturers to ensure quality and standard in the production process,” he said.
“Let us all join hands with SON to make ASPAMDA market the destination point where people from within Nigeria, ECOWAS countries and beyond converge and rush in order to purchase quality machinery and spare parts. “This is possible. Yes, we can, if we make standards our way of life and business,” he affirmed.
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The SON boss also said the operationalisation of AfCFTA would turn Nigeria and indeed the entire African continent to one huge market.
According to him, AfCFTA will provide for Nigeria the competitive edge in trading with other neighboring countries’ auto and machineries dealers.
He stressed the need to take optimum advantage of the emerging huge African market, urging ASPAMDA to always ensure that they are strictly into marketing and selling of high quality and standards.
“We need your continuous support to discharge our mandate of ensuring that only products and services that are of high standard and quality are in circulation.
“We need to involve all of you towards ensuring strict adherence to the requirements of applicable standards in line with international best practices,” the SON boss said.
According to him, the law empowers the agency to arrest and prosecute offenders, stressing that it would step up its ante to make it impossible for fakers to thrive.
He noted that SON has been working in every sector to bring sanity and raise the confidence of manufacturers, importers and consumers, maintaining that standards are improved and reviewed regularly to meet up with current realities.
He reiterated that the auto spare sector has a critical role in the nation’s economic development, adding that the sector has high potential to create large employment and a wide range of technological advance manufacturing opportunities.
“Therefore, you can imagine that if we fix the auto market properly by ensuring standards, it will become one of the biggest contributors to Nigeria’s gross domestic products (GDP),” he stated.
He also urged ASPAMDA to set up a committee saddled with the responsibilities of adhering to standardisation, manufacturing and importation of fake products into the country by traders.
Salim said to curb this menace, son and the association together have agreed to create various committees; the substandard committee and the industrialisation committee to work together, because most of these importers, where they import their products from, the factories are nothing to write home about, that the importer could do the same factory in Nigeria and make more money.
“We are going to walk around to sensitise people telling them what the right things are, and also for those people who are breaking the rules, with the help of ASPAMDA, we will be able to take away their products and teach them how to make their products better,” he assured.
“Also because we are recently having this AfCFTA in the country, African Free Trade means, if you have the products here in ASPAMDA with SON certification, you can take that product all the way from Niger to Algeria, go back down South to Kenya, to South Africa and nobody will question you.
“On the other way, if your product is not up to standard, people from those countries can bring their own substandard products in to our country and spoil our market for us, so it is very important that we understand keeping to standards and following quality is our friend, it’s not our enemy,” he said.
The SON boss told them that even if they are importing from whichever country, the best thing to do is to look for the organisation’s office and take that product to them to get the SON Conformity Assessment Programme (SONCAP) certificate as there is this in place.
The same advice he gave to those manufacturing locally too, that they should endeavour to get the Mandatory Conformity Assessment Programme (MANCAP), that when all these are done, nobody would harass them.
“When you are importing your products from wherever it is you are importing, we have a conformity assessment programme where in any part of the world, you can take that product to our offices there, people represent us, and they will give you the SONCAP certificate, “ he said.
Emeka Duru, Senior Special Adviser to the DG, SON earlier in his opening speech, said the purpose of the event was to sensitise the auto dealers, according to him, “We have been going round the country to conduct sensitisation programme to get both the importer and manufacturers to be abreast with standards.
“The job of SON is to ensure that only standard and quality products are imported into this country, and this we can achieve through the instrumentality of standadisation and quality assurance. “I know that after today most of you will find SON more accessible Duru emphasised that SON organised the firm to enlightened and empowered the Stakeholders’ on import guidelines.”
Equally on his part, Ngozi Emechebe, ASPAMDA President in his speech commended Mallam Farouk Salim style of management for identifying with small business.
He noted that small businesses are the engine room for economic growth.
“The man we have been waiting for, he is here with a very loaded message to his people, he is not for locking up your warehouses, harassing you in the market, but he has come here to interact with us, to hear our plights, to see how he can assist us better, if others are doing this way, I believe there shall be no problems anywhere.
“He is here on ground to educate us more about SON, and I believe at the end of this programme we shall all be happy and do business through Standardisation.”
As for Engineer Felix Nyado, SON Director Marketing, who spoke on the theme: “Expanding Frontiers of Auto Spare Parts Sector Via Standardisation ‘’.
Engineer Felix Nyado, Director Marketing, who spoke in a slide show presentation with topic ‘Expanding Frontiers of Auto Parts and Machinery Sector Via Standardisation said the synergy will boost the agency efforts in sanitizing the market.
“The effort will help in carrying out enforcement, making seizure and correction on products when need arises.”
Engineer Olakekan Omoniyi, Deputy Director, SONCAP, SON who equally shed light on ‘Import, Conformity Assessment Requirements to Ensure Conformance to Standards.’
Engineer Ugbaja, spoke on Role of Stakeholders’ Collaboration Against Products Cloning and Counterfeiting.’
Most of the participants urged DON to replicate the awareness in major markets across the country.
The highlight of the event was the presentation of certificates of participation to over 630 participants that attended the programme.
