By Franklin Alli

STANDARDS Organisation of  Nigeria (SON) says it has captured 6,899 products from 927 companies under its electronic -registrations scheme.

The essence of the scheme which was introduced early last year by the agency is to sanitise the country of substandard products, help genuine manufacturers and dealers to stay in business; protect the consumers and also boost the economy in terms of employment creation and income generation.

The scheme covers new products and those that are already in circulation in the market such as electric bulbs, stabilizers, tyres, electric fittings, generators, building materials, cable, television sets, IT equipment, keys, security doors, computers, phones, cement, paint, agro-allied products and toys to mention  a few.

In a presentation tagged ‘ Global Standards in Local Production’, delivered recently in Abuja,  he disclosed that many consumer products are being captured on the SON website, adding that the registered products are 6899 while registered companies totalled 927 manufacturing firms including importers from different sectors of the economy.

“Dr. Joseph Odumodu, SON Director General, said that before now, registration of products by the Agency was carried out manually.
“At that time a lot of challenges were met, thus making the process cumbersome and inefficient. To address these challenges, we introduced the e-product scheme.”
Odumodu further disclosed that the e- product platform was necessitated by the fact that there are only 1,500 people in SON.

“We can’t chase around every product in Nigeria but with the e- product system, we need to know what product is out there in the market. And the only way to know what’s out there in the market is to create a database for it. With the e-products system, I’ll be able to know the country of origin and the importer who brought the product to Nigeria.

“In our efforts to sanitise the Nigerian economy of substandard products, some measures are crucial and some steps are just necessary; and the electronic platform is one of such key steps.
Even in the average corporate environment, electronically- driven platforms have become commonplace, embraced by all for its obvious advantages, including ease and convenience of doing business.

“As a standards body, we cannot close our eyes to important realities in the business sphere, we cannot ignore necessary changes in the fields we regulate and still aspire to get to achieve our set targets,” said the director general.

According to him, for duly registered products, the SON issues products certificate. The implication is that after a while any product that is not registered cannot be on the shelves for sale in the country. We are going to take such products out of circulation in our markets. Every day, people are dying, because some unscrupulous people bring products into the country that are not supposed to be consumed by humans.