Since coming to office, Dr Joseph Ikemefuna Odumodu, Director-General, Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON), has been waging war against substandard products. His trips to China, where most of these products come from, he says, have been eye-openers to him because of what some Nigerians do to their compatriots in the name of business. Odumodu told Group Business Editor AYODELE AMINU in Beijing, China, about SON’s efforts to tackle fake products through the introduction of e-products registration.
We are here in China to attract investments into Nigeria. What is SON doing to ensure that goods imported from China are regulated to meet standard?
This is a very loaded question. I can answer it in two hours, but I will be as brief as possible. When I started on this job, the first thing I did was to benchmark, actually to understand the environment. The findings through a survey were very worrying because we found out that over 80 per cent of products then were substandard and that most of them were from here (China). Hence, the first thing I did was to come here (China) and meet with the equivalent of SON, called AQSIQ. We have had several meetings since then. We may not have made much progress in the past, but I must say that on this trip, we have made substantial progress.
Maybe the strategy I adopted was aggressive by laying blames on their doorsteps. This time around, I noticed that their response was that “your people come here and ask us to make a particular quality, and that is what we make for them and we are businessmen.” They said our people are at fault because they made bad products for Nigerians. But we have closed ranks and there will be an agreement before the end of this year regarding certain requirement. One is that any Chinese product imported into Nigeria should have a certificate of free sale. It is a condition that comes with products manufactured and used in country of origin. There are countries that have export only market.
At SON, we are not at the ports. But we have started with e-products registration. What we are doing is that every product that is offered for sale must be registered in Nigeria. The first deadline has expired. We are going to start enforcement any time from now. The registration will show who the importer and manufacture is. We are capturing the kind of agreement the Nigerian importer has with the manufacturer. And after that, we will start an enforcement regime.
SON will capture data about what that company is doing and data of the Nigerian importer with the manufacturer. After that, we will start enforcement regime. Anytime we see a product that did not comply, all we need to do is to trace it back to who brought, and also find out who made it. We will give the details of who made it to my colleagues, so that they can be blacklisted from exporting to Nigeria. And it does not matter whether I am at the ports, or I am not at the border or they smuggled the goods. Wherever the products come from, there must be a place where they will be sold.
What we are saying is that there will be a visual code, ABC 123. But there will also be a non-visual code subsequently on that product. And that code is only known to a few people in the company that manufacture it. The idea here is that some people can look at your product and manufacture it, but they will not be able to see the non-visual code.
The other level is that if you register your product, then you are responsible for your brand. You need to protect your brand. So, once you do your registration you will be able to import products. We will use the rest of this year to sort out registration of products. I understand that some of the importers are resisting the registration of their products because they do not want SON to know too much about such products. For me, they are doing that because they know that they are breaking the law and taking consumers for granted. We will collaborate with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
With the registration, you are talking about collaborating with the CBN. Have you taken into cognisance the Customs because that is where the goods will pass through at the border?
The SON and Customs are all government agencies. By law, we are supposed to work together. The Customs, the Police, even Immigration. We are working with them. But the system is foolproof. It doesn’t matter whether SON, Customs and any other person have done their work.
The point is that every product in the market must have visual and non-visual codes. It does not even matter where the products are coming from. The products have codes, if they don’t have codes, we will impound them and destroy them. What I am seeking, is power to destroy the goods without going to court because that takes some time to be achieved. For us, to show how serious we are, we have to act with a lot of precision.
Which sector has been the major challenge to you?
What we have done is that we have been able to categorise sectors. If, for example, we see that tyres can lead to death, then we focus on that. We focus on life-endangering index. We can also focus on iron rods, because buildings can come down. There are lots of other issues involved. Buildings can come down because the contractor did not apply the right concrete mixture. If I walk into a site and see a rod, I will know who made it because there is an identity mark on it. We are also focusing on roofing sheets. What we do is focus on issues that are life-endangering than those ones that do not endanger life.
When we started, even half of the rods in the market are substandard. Today, I make bold to tell people, go to the market, and tell me which of them is substandard. Every month we do testing and all that. As for cement, we no longer import it. All I do is go to the manufacturers. We are building a new lab to ensure we test cement more regularly. There are challenges, but I don’t want a situation whereby somebody dies an avoidable death.
There are challenges in areas of cables. These cables enter Alaba and we don’t even know how they came in. I tell people, if you want to buy cable, why not go directly to companies that make cables in Nigeria? Because they are making good cables, better than anyone imported into the country. The challenge is in our ability to build infrastructure for testing. We also have accreditation and funding challenges. In the new e-products registration regime, we will need people to move round major markets in Nigeria and funding is important.
How can you quantify the success you have achieved so far?
I have always run away from accessing myself. Nigerians should say that. We have people who bought generators, cars and when they are substandard, we intervene.
How much is Nigeria losing to substandard goods?
A lot, it cannot be quantified. I can give you an example. Today, there is no company that makes tyres in Nigeria. So, we used to have the capacity, but we have thrown it away. We import tooth picks, that is where we have degraded. I have made statements about de-industrialisation. The point is that the value of what we have lost is not quantifiable. For example, you will be amazed, HP products, people go and fake them. Many of them, especially printer inks, are most affected. I want to deal with multinationals that want to protect their brands before we go to small players. Some major dealers sell fake products. There are so many wrongs we are doing to consumers in Nigeria.
What are the challenges facing tyre manufacturing?
In the last one year, we have impounded over five million tyres and we have to destroy them somehow. We realised that we need to ensure that the right infrastructure is in place. Right now, we have had some discussions with some investors from South Korea and Taiwan, and some Indians who are working on bringing in tyre shredding plants. First, they ask how they can make their money. They are asking for tax holiday and a moratorium.
The challenge is in our ability to build infrastructure for testing. Another challenge is in accreditation because if you test a product and you say this product is not good, if you are not accredited, the person who made the product outside of Nigeria can challenge you. But if your lab is not accredited, you cannot win that case anywhere in the world. We will pursue a little tax on tyres. Talking about tyres, I want to say that even if a tyre is new and unused, it can expire.
