#SON : We need court to fight sub-standard products – Odumodu

The Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON) ‘s Director General, SON, Dr. Joseph Odumodu, says the fight against sub-standard and fake products in the country will be tackled with the creation of a special high court in that it will try importers engaged in such activities. ..


He said though the country has lots of laws meant to deal with those who bring in fake and sub-standard products, he said a special court will be of great help in the fight against fake products in the country.

Odumodu disclosed this recently in Lagos while announcing that it has taken additional measures to combat the influx of fake and substandard goodsý into the country by introducing a reference code on products in 2016. He noted that going forward next year, every SONCAP certificate issued on products must have reference code to ease traceability of substandard products in the country.

Speaking with journalists during a review meeting for 2015 with International Accredited Firms (IAFs), the SON boss said “We have enough laws to jail those importers, what I am also lobbying for now is to have a special court, a federal high court that will handle these cases expeditiously, because when people see that it is not going to take five years , but two months to get cases done with, they will have to think twice.”

While revealing that SON is working with the Chinese government on how to reduce importation of fake products into the country, Odumodu said they are working on product liability and repatriation. He said “in the last four years, SON has entered into agreementý with the Chinese government, which never happened but there is a renewed commitment coming from the Chinese government, but we need to see this in action.”

He stressed that without that agreement that the initiatives they have also put in place at SON will also actually help them to clean up the market of fake products. ”If I walk into a shop to get a product and it is substandard, it is the person who sold that product that has the liability ýand until we are able to trace the product to the original owner, the seller of that products will be in our custody. What we are also saying is that we are putting some responsibility on the retailers and wholesalers.

We have told them to ask for documentation before buying a product because they need to protect themselves,” he said. He said: “Our system going forward ýmust be evidence-driven. If you sell a product to someone and it does not work, you will pay. People should demand their rights. If you buy a product and it does not work, you must return the product and get your full value and if you do not get it, you have a right to respond to.ý If you have a product in the market, it must be registered to enable us capture it into our database so that when the product fail to conform to standards, we will know where to trace it to.”

Odumodu said what they are insisting on now is that one product cannot have more than one agents , “because if you have more than one agent, we will not know who brought in what. So every product that comes to Nigeria must have one primary agent. It is that primary agent that will be held responsible for anything in Nigeria. So those are some of the things that are in place.”