Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON), has promised to protect indigenous manufacturers and consumers through more robust and effective market surveillance.
Mr Olanrewaju Onipede, Coordinator of SON in Anambra State gave the assurance in Awka on Monday.
Onikpede who assumed office as coordinator in the state recently described Anambra as a big industrial hub with a huge market that is strategic in Nigeria and in the West African sub-region.
He said SON would ensure that local manufacturers were regulated to conform to world best practices and protected from activities of counterfeit peddlers and importers of substandard products.
“The Anambra commercial and business environment are interesting, the people are industrious and they really want to help the economy but the aspect we want them to pay more attention to is quality and conformity. I and members of my team are working out effective modalities for that and I believe that by God’s grace, we will be able to achieve the great feat in that direction.
My strategy is to empower the market survey team to enable it to go to manufacturers and markets and get products, so they could be subjected to laboratory analysis on a regular basis.
We will be having unannounced visits to these companies to see their manufacturing processes and samples of finished products to ascertain that they conform to standards.
Normally, within the state office, we carry out quarterly inspection and as we are talking, my teams are in the field on surveillance and we will try within our reach to carry out training for manpower to boost their capacity.”
Onikpede said SON took the protection of consumers seriously and would ensure that they got the full value of their money when they purchase any product under the organization’s regulation.
He said beyond enforcement, SON would adopt advocacy and collaboration with associations to ensure sanity in the market.
“We have a committee which will be facilitating periodic interface between SON and market or manufacturing associations, we are going to change the orientation so that they too can see the need for a quality market.
My message is that they should check out for MANCAP and SON logo, which is the mark for assurance of quality.
We have a consumer complaint desk here in Awka, so we encourage those who have issues to report such issues, provided they have the receipt.”
