Product rejection is a pain in the neck for manufacturers. Local products and services are denied access to international markets because they lack quality certification, which experts blame on inadequate accredited metrology and test laboratories. Assistant Editor CHIKODI OKEREOCHA writes on how the establishment of more internationally accredited laboratories can spur industrialisation.
It’s a paradox. Nigeria, Africa’s biggest economy, with Gross Domestic Product (GDP) estimated at $509.9 billion (about N80.3 trillion), has only 84 accredited laboratories to test locally manufactured products or services for international standards.
South Africa with a GDP of $370.3 billion has 340 accredited labs. China the world’s second largest economy, boasts of 337, 033 labs, according to the ‘2013 International Standards Organisation (ISO) report on the distribution of management system certification’. The United States has 13,000 accredited labs. South Korea has over 7,000 labs.
Germany, India, Brazil, Egypt have thousands of accredited laboratories each, while Tunisia, Morocco, Kenya and Algeria have hundreds of laboratories each. Other prosperous countries have vibrant, fully accredited and certified laboratories to give their locally manufactured products and services the required competitive edge in international trade. But this is not so in Nigeria where manufacturers, especially as those in the export business continue to agonise over recurring issues of product rejection due to lack of global quality certification caused by inadequate test and metrology labs.
While certification from internationally accredited labs builds integrity in manufactured products by ensuring that they are tested just once and accepted sequentially anywhere in the world, metrology, which is the science of measurement, determines the right calibration, which is accepted all around the world.
According to a Quality Management Practitioner and National President of Association of Systems Management Consultants, Mazi Colman Obasi, the need for a metrology lab cannot be over-emphasised. He said such a lab would obtain, conserve, develop, and disseminate the basic requirements and the highest level of calibration standards.
Obasi told The Nation that it would also provide traceability to the national system and ensure that international technical guidelines are followed for the metrological performance and testing procedures of measuring instruments subject to legal controls. He added that from the point of view of manufacturers, it ensures that their products meet international specifications. He said once a functional metrological lab is established, it is easier for companies, research institutes, testing labs, and institutions of higher learning to interact and collaborate, and find more efficient production processes and new products for the markets. The quality of goods produced will also be more consistent with international standards, hence facilitating commercial transactions, he added.
Although Nigeria, through the Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON) recently recorded a feat when she got the approval of the International Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation (ILAC) for her Food Laboratory, stakeholders consider it a drop in the oceanconsidering that the approval covered only Nigeria’s food export commodities, which can be tested at the SON’s laboratory in Lekki, Lagos. For instance, stakeholders in the minerals and mining sector whose activities also form part of the new strategic emphasis on growing the non-oil sector are agonising over the rejection of their mined products.
They blamed poor quality control, poor regulations and the high rate of illegal/informal mining in the sector as reasons for the rejection of mined products in the international market. To them, the absence of internationally accredited test laboratories and metrology labs constitutes a major technical hurdle for their participation in international trade, so the establishment of more labs to cover the mining sector, for instance, is urgently required.
Indeed, experts have identified the existence of few laboratories, which have been accredited in line with the requirements of ILAC as one of the major challenges to Nigeria’s quest to participate in international trade. For instance, the President, Champions of Development Nigeria (CDN), Mr. Jonas Yomi, in a recent statement, lamented the non-existence or insignificant number of accredited labs in Nigeria. He noted that accredited labs are the backbone of valid testing results without which products or services cannot be said to be certified or conforming to requirements.
According to an expert, the benefits of having such internationally accredited labs are numerous and cannot be ignored if Nigeria must take its pride of place in the global market. For one, local products will be standardised and certified, thereby reducing substantially the preponderance of fake and substandard goods. Besides, access to certification will also drive down costs based on the fact that Nigerian officials will no longer need to travel abroad to get samples of products tested. The reduction in the cost and, indeed, the time taken for certification will be reflected in the economy through a reduction in the prices of goods and services. Cost of output will drastically reduce for the manufacturers through the SON’s intervention.
That is not all. If Nigeria has her own accredited lab, it will save the nation from the situation whereby multiple testing of product samples are carried out in various countries where they are taken to for marketing and sales. With her accredited lab, products from Nigeria will not be tested more than once, and this will be done here instead of at the convenience of other countries, when they choose to.
More importantly, with local produce being tested locally and sent all over the world without any hindrance, exports will receive significant boost. This will, in turn, develop the nation’s agricultural sector, as Nigeria has comparative advantage in agricultural products.
Estimates by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the U.S Department of Commerce show that standards and related conformity assessment (checking that products and services measure up to standards) have an impact on 80 per cent of the world’s trade in commodities.The World Trade Organisation (WTO) requires its members to use international standards of the type developed by ISO to avoid the technical barriers to trade owing to differing national or regional standards. What this implies is that the more accredited labs a nation acquires, the more products or services it is able to export with ISO’s authorisation.
Indeed, various studies undertaken by development experts have proven that countries with higher number of accredited labs have higher economic performance and productivity than those with lower accredited laboratories. Because of inadequate accredited test labs and metrology labs in Nigeria, goods produced or originating from the country cannot gain acceptance in any country to which they are sent. The only condition for acceptance will be that such goods are subjected to further scrutiny, inspection and testing before being certified in the countries to which they are being exported to, strictly on the terms and conditions set by those countries.
At moment, Nigeria depends on American standard bodies to get international referencing for its own products, while samples of products to be tested in Nigeria are flown to other foreign countries, such as Ghana and South Africa for testing to occur.
Expectedly, this has not gone down well with operators and stakeholders in the real sector, including the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN), Nigerian Export Promotion Council (NEPC), and Nigerian Association of Chambers of Commerce, Industries, Mines and Agriculture (NACCIMA).
To them, the situation is responsible for why Nigeria remains uncompetitive in global trade, which is why they are calling for the adoption of an integrated quality management approach.
Incidentally, such call is coming at a time the Federal Government is shifting focus to the non-oil sector in the hope of warding off the impending economic crisis arising from the continued plunge in oil prices.The Federal Government through the Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Dr. Olusegun Aganga, recently gave vent to its push for economic diversification when it listed 13 National Strategic Export Products (NSEP) to replace oil.
The Minister, during an unscheduled inspection and a meeting he held with the Executive Director of Nigerian Exports Promotion Council (NEPC), Mr. Olusegun Awolowo, and members of the management team in Abuja, listed the 13 NSEP in three categories, including agro-industrial- palm oil, cocoa, cashew, sugar and rice); mining related- cement, iron ore/metals, auto parts/cars, aluminium and oil and gas industrial products – petroleum products, fertiliser/urea, petrochemical and methanol.
Aganga noted that originally 12 products were identified, but that the number was increased because the Executive Director of NEPC made a strong case for the inclusion of cashew on the list. He, however, charged NEPC to deploy its capacity for kick-starting the diversification of the country’s economy in line with the government’s agenda. He said Nigeria could no longer continue to be an import-dependent country. According to him, the nation is, at moment, wasting its foreign reserves on imported products most of which can be produced locally.
Awolowo agrees with him, noting that NEPC had long recognised the need to develop the non-oil export sub-sector and had in the process held strategic meetings with stakeholders for the development of ideas aimed at improving the foreign exchange earnings by Nigeria through different avenues. These, he said, include the development of a four-year Strategic Plan, One State One Product (OSOP), Nigerian Diaspora Export Programme (NDEX) and the development of new markets for new products.
As highly commendable as moves by the Minister and the NEPC to diversify the economy by riding on the back of non-oil export is, the challenge again remains the insignificant number of accredited labs and metrology labs in Nigeria. While real sector operators, including the President, Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI), Alhaji Remi Bello, have thrown their weight behind the emphasis on non-oil economy, insisting that it is more inclusive, growth-oriented and characterised by high economic linkages and more sustainable, lack of internationally accredited labs to test and ascertain that locally manufactured export products meet international standards, might throw spanner in the works in nothing is done.
SON is aware of this danger, which was why the agency inaugurated a committee to establish the National Accreditation Body in May 2013 to draw the roadmap for the nation’s accreditation and certification schemes. The agency also went a notch higher, inaugurating the National Quality Policy Committee on September 26, 2013. The inter-ministerial committee was given the mandate to streamline the regulatory frameworks, and to institute infrastructure development models and modalities for national total quality concept practices that will form the basis for standards in both the public and private sector.
Although, two of SON’s food technology laboratories were accredited by AALA – ISO/IEC 17025 for chemical and biological testing, while others are said to be at various stages of accreditation, the standard regulatory body is also encouraging private investors to set up laboratory facilities in the country.
