Standard Organisation(SON) calls for jail sentence for peddlers of life threatening materials.

By Afolabi Oyekunle

The Standard Organization of Nigeria, SON, is seeking jailed term rather than payment of fines for paddlers of life threatening materials.
To this end, the Organization is pushing for the review of its establishing law.
Disclosing this in Lagos, the Director General of SON, Mallam Farouk Salim, during the destruction of materials seized by the organisation, said peddlers of these items are economic saboteurs and their activities sabotage the nation’s industry, people and cause loss for individuals who are innocently buying these products.

He said, “This is one of the reasons why in the last National Assembly, we went to them to review our Act to make sure that peddlers of life threatening materials are jailed, not just fined.

“Thankfully, they have passed the law but unfortunately when government was settling down, they did not get the opportunity for Mr. President to sign the law.

“So it is back in the National Assembly for concurrence and hopefully very soon it will be with the President and I am sure Mr. President will sign that amendment and those individuals selling threatening items will be jailed immediately they are caught,” he said.

The SON boss also said that the Organization has gotten court orders for the destruction some of the products. He said though some of the seized tyres are new but unfortunately when the importer brought them in, other tyres were stuffed inside them.

“Due to this, these tyres lose their integrity and they become dangerous to the society, the ones looking new are used tyres, they are pressed and polished to look new.

“The fakers of the motor oil lubricants intercepted in Calabar, use popular products so our Nigerian lubricant manufacturers that are successful have to contain with individuals trying to copy their product.

“Nobody copies a product that is not successful, the only problem is the copying is a bad one.

“The products you are seeing behind does not belong to that popular company. It was being copied and they have been taken to court, convicted and the court gave us the permission to confiscate the product and destroy them,” he said.

Salim pointed out that the Nigeria cable manufacturers have formed association to help identify these fake ones to ensure the standard that they have achieved, noting that they are collaborating with these associations.

He noted that the organization some times used these associations intelligence to fish these people out because their activities were affecting the economy of the country.

“Due to the policy on local content, we need to make sure that our indigenous companies are protected.

“These cables are supposed to be copper but they are either iron or copper coated, when used in building, it gets hot and this leads to fire,” he said.

“To your eyes, these products don’t look nice but an unscrupulous person can take these, clean it up and send to the market and make billions of naira from it.

“As regards this environment, the seized items are safe here as the place is twenty-four hours monitored by police, civil defence,” he said.