The public affairs analyst also identified lack of conviction by the judiciary as another factor. According to him, in China, offences relating to dealing in substandard products carry life sentences or even death penalty. “Ask any of the agencies to give you statistics or data on conviction of offenders, you will be disappointed they don’t have any,” he said.
For Omotoso, SON appears to be overwhelmed.
“Maybe because the scope SON is covering is so wide, from table, pin, electrical cables, bulbs, all sort of things; the scope they have to police is so wide, maybe that’s part of the problem of their inability to do all that they need to do,” he said, noting that this perhaps explains why the war against substandard products is not being won, and is not limited to paint manufacturing alone.
“Put your mind to tyres. Till date, I don’t think we have fought the battle of preventing fake tyres from coming into this country. Fake tyres are as dangerous and life threatening as fake malaria products,” he said.
In fairness to SON, however, the nation’s porous borders through which most of the suspected substandard products find their way into the country, are not helping the fight.
The Comptroller General of the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS), David Parradang, recently revealed that there are over 1, 400 illegal routes into Nigeria – 1,316 more than the approved number of border control posts. He said the 84 approved border controls cover 4, 047 kilometres, the total length of Nigeria’s land border. Ogun and Adamawa states, for example, have 83 and 80 illegal posts. To make matters worse, those entrusted with the task of securing the borders are ill-equipped to effectively monitor the 84 regular routes let alone the 1,400 illegal ones.
The threat posed by illegal borders to the fight against substandard products is not lost on the agencies.
“We are not at the borders; the CPC is not allowed to be at the borders, and there are substandard products that come in from the borders, its difficult for us to know,” Tamunokonbia said.
He explained that once the substandard products are in the country, they are taken to warehouses from where they are moved into the various markets and unless the agency knows, they cannot arrest the perpetrators.
“We think that if we arrest them from the border, it will make more sense. In fact, what you will be doing is that you will have a large cache of those products because they will come in their trailers. But in the market place, we are only seizing drops of the products,” he stated, adding however, that he recently paid a courtesy call on the Lagos Zonal Comptroller of Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) to solicit his assistance since CPC is not at the borders.
Tamunokonbia expressed optimism that his approach will work, as the Zonal Comptroller admitted that the Customs too also needs information “because as customs they do not necessarily know which product is fake and substandard. Their duty is just to collect tax. Their training does not allow them to know which one is fake and which is not, but if NAFDAC is there and it is a product of food and drugs they should be able to know. Also, if SON is there they will also know, same CPC. So, we want to partner with them, we want to work with them.”
The need to work with relevant agencies is underscored by the perceived lack of coordination and sometimes, overlap of interests and activities, which sometimes result to disagreements amongst the agencies. Dr. Odumodu admits that Nigeria’s standard operation was faced with many challenges arising partly from the lack of NQP to hold the system and make it functional and efficient enough to earn global confidence.
Indeed, over time, operations of government agencies set up to regulate and ensure good standards, such as SON, NAFDAC, Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), National Universities Commission (NUC), National Judicial Council (NJC), Police, and Public Service Commission, among others, have been uncoordinated because of the lack of a framework. Each of the agencies operates independently and, in some cases, on ad hoc basis, diminishing the fighting spirit of the agencies.
If the war must be won
To begin with, Akabogu suggests that the fight against substandard products must be inculcated into the national ideology and included in the school curricula from primary to university level. He said that way, enough awareness would be created. He also said the hands of the regulatory agencies, including SON, NAFDAC, CPC, and NCC, among others, must be immediately strengthened through adequate staffing and funding. He added that there is need to weed out bad elements within the agencies and allow only people willing to leave a legacy remain. Besides, laws against the business must be made punitive to serve as deterrent.
Omotoso could not agrees. He insisted that punitive measures should be enforced.
His words: “The laws are there, but somehow there is a lot of compromise. Who are those people that compromise? Those that are supposed to be enforcing the law. When they are taking to court, somehow the process is slow and those that are perpetrating this evils know that the courts won’t get round to them even before they pass on so, they just do the most havoc they could. I don’t want to say the courts are corrupt. No. But the process of justice is too slow to make the enforcement of the laws effective.”
The industrialist is not done. He said civil servants who are employees of SON should also be a little bit more aggressive in pursuing the culprits, while their facility for detection must be upped. He added that staff of the agencies should be encouraged by way of some forms of motivations for them to be able to do their job such that they will even want to say no to any offer of bribe from any of the perpetrators of the evil. “I am passionate about this because I know they do a lot of damage to the economy of this country, he concluded.
Oladipo aligns with Bassey who earlier noted that standards is not a one man job, so everybody must come on board. “SON cannot go it alone,” Oladipo told The Nation, arguing that since manufacturers are more spread “they should go all out to look for those who clone their products.” He admonished manufacturers to rise up to the fight.
For Champions of Development Nigeria (CDN), an integrated approach to quality management in Nigeria is required. The group’s President, Mr. Jonas Yomi, stated that the harmonisation of regulatory agencies and quality policies was overdue if Nigeria was determined to establish a national quality infrastructure, which is an important tool for implementing NQP. The group also lamented the non-existence or insignificant number of accredited laboratories in Nigeria, noting 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. He added that there is need to reach out across the whole spectrum of stakeholders through road shows as well as sustained mass media campaign.
Sound and far-reaching recommendations, no doubt. But again their implementation, to a very large extent, depends on how far government musters the political will to prosecute the war, and of course, how far Nigerians and concerned stakeholders put their hand on deck to contain the upsurge. But until and unless this is done, unscrupulous businessmen importing substandard products will continue to smile to the bank while local manufacturers groan under the stiff competition from imports.
