By Providence Adeyinka

 The Standards Organisation of Nigeria, SON has said that plans are underway to train Journalists on International Organisation for Standardisation, ISO so as to help media industry understand it benefits to the national economy in developing standards to ensure quality, safety and efficiency of products, services and systems.

Director General, SON, Mallam Farouk Salim, stated this at a capacity building workshop for journalists in Lagos recently, while urging the media to practice investigative journalism, taking into cognizance creativity and authenticity to write stories that would change the narratives of the country.

Salim who said that the agency was committed to strengthening its partnership with the media, urged media to always act as vanguards in the fight against fake and substandard goods.

To this end, he added that SON has signed a Memorandum of Understanding, MoU with Katsina State government to develop the Small and Medium Enterprises, SMEs in the State, stressing that discussions are also ongoing to take the message of standardisation to Jigawa, Kano, Bauchi and Sokoto to make SMEs competitive.

He also urged Nigerian manufacturers to ensure that they produce good products and follow it up with good packaging, as the SON would not allow substandard goods to either leave the country or exist here, as this would enable them to compete favourably with other manufacturers from any part of the world.

He added that the SON had done enough sensitisation and had carried out enforcements to nip sub-standard goods in the bud.

He said: “Efforts are being made to improve standard of products and eliminate substandard goods in the country. We have done enough enforcement, discussed about how to stop all these things that are entering our country. We are working tirelessly both within, outside and underground, to improve activities of the organisation so that it can serve the country better.

“This is very important, because we have the new African free trade, where goods will be crossing borders without too much hindrance.

“So what that means for our country is, if our manufacturers are not producing standard goods, they will not cross over to the other countries, because other countries will set standards too and they will expect goods coming to their countries to be up to standard,” he said.

Also speaking, the Director, Standards Development, Mrs. Chinyere Egwuonwu, said the Nigeria National Standardisation Strategy, NNSS introduced last year with a 3 year implementation plan had so far identified 658 standardisation projects to be developed before the end of 2023.

She said the NNSS aims to support the federal government’s Economic Recovery Growth Plan and Nigeria Industrial Revolution Plan, NIRP.