Eromosele Abiodun
The Standard Organisation of Nigeria (SON), Thursday raised the alarm over increasing importation of foreign cables labelled as ‘made in Nigeria’.
The Director-General of SON, Dr Osita Aboloma disclosed this at a one day stakeholders’ forum on Ease of Doing Business for operators in the South-West held in Lagos.
The Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), Federal Operations Unit (FOU) had last month intercepted two containers loaded with imported cables declared as made in Nigeria and already cleared from the seaport.
The DG however warned Nigerians to stay away from the products saying they have not been tested and validated for use.
But, he complained that cable manufacturers travel abroad to clone their products and bringing it to Nigeria markets as Made – in- Nigeria.
The SON boss, who was represented by the Director, Compliance and Monitoring, Bede Obayi said importing products and tagging it made in Nigeria won’t drive the FG campaign on patronising made in Nigeria products.
According to him, “Today, due to the effort of SON with Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN), especially in the area of cable manufacturer in Nigeria we have identified that made in Nigeria cables are almost the best in the world and because of that, people are cloning ‎imported products as made in Nigeria.
“Made in Nigeria Cables have NIS certification and you see people cloning their brands and bring it back into the country as if they are made in Nigeria and already certified by SON, it is not true because imported goods cannot be brand as made in Nigeria.
The DG said SON is proud of cables made I Nigeria and would want it to be imported.
“We are proud of these products and we want to sell and export as made in Nigeria so if you bring these products as made in Nigeria.â€
He continued, “They have not been tested, they have not been validated in terms of their characteristics and that is why SON says we won’t allow non compliance in Nigeria and anyone who want to import must do that in line with our conformity assessment programme.â€
He warned importers against cloning Nigerian made products or risk jail adding that the agency had noticed that importers were now cloning imported particularly Nigerian cables and present them as made in Nigeria
