The Standards Organisation of Nigeria, (SON) has said the Organisation works assiduously to ensure that manufacturers, importers and exporters operate according to laid down standards as ordained by law.
SON’s Director of Standards, Mr. Dauda Yakubu made this known while speaking on the Organisation’s modus operandi in an exclusive chat with TheFact Nigeria in Abuja.
TheFact Nigeria reports that the SON’s mandate includes preparation of Standards relating products, measurements, materials, processes and services amongst others and their promotion at National, Regional and International levels.
SON’s duties also includes certification of products, assistance in the production of quality goods and services; improvement of measurement accuracies and circulation of information relating to standards.
Mr. Yakubu said that all these products have standards and the process of making these standards for the relevant stakeholders in each of the products, they are invited and they have inputs there.
He said when these standards are deliberated, they now pass through the SON’s Standards Council.
Yakubu said: “Once it is approved, it becomes a legal document for the relevant product to comply with. So the standards set is the minimum. You can aspire to the higher.
“So if the product fail the standard that means its bad, because the standard is the minimum everybody in that sector must comply with. So if we are having substandard products in the market like the LPG gas cylinders, the electrical cables and other products, that means they did not meet the minimum requirement of the standard. They are bad and in fact, the law says we should evacuate such products.
“So in SON, what we normally do, we have our market surveillance team that normally goes out every day together with Surveillance Intelligence Monitoring, (SIM). In the process, we test-purchase. Once we test-purchase a product we suspect is substandard, we test in the lab. Once it fails, the next thing is to mop up such products.
“Then we also have products that they may not be total failure. These products we may say, they are defective products. Defective products are different from substandard products.
“Substandard products are products that fail in the quality parameters that have direct implication on usage. Defective products are products that have, maybe inherent defects, mostly labelling. There are information they are supposed to give as a guide for the users to follow and such information are not there. Definitely, we have to mop up.
“Like the electric cables, if you take any electrical cable, it is required it is embossed with a written, that is the type of current that will pass through it. It is determined, is it for service wire? That’s why the service wires are of categories. The ones that are meant for lightening are specified.
“The ones that are meant for even the sockets, they are specified. You cannot use the lightening cable for the socket. Once you put anything in it, it will be burnt. So all those labelling informations are also very important.
“They have quality implications so if you don’t put those informations, definitely the product have issues too. So that’s why when we get to manufacturers that do not indicate those information on the cable to guide those electric technicians, we will put those ones on hold till it is rectified and the proper information on the usage and the size of that cable is supplied.
“But when it fail the critical parameters like resistance of conductor, we can not allow it because it is a failure.
“So we have all those parameters that determine whether it is failure or it is defective type of marking but they are all quality issues because if you don’t get the right informations, there are possibility of wrong application and we’ll also not allow that.
“So that’s why when it comes to that sort of thing, we will now work on it then we penalize the company based on the law as stated in the Act of SON”.
