BY Udeme Clement

Due to poor capacity utilisation in the steel industry and incessant cases of buildings collapse in the country, the Federal Government, through Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON), is to adopt the British standard of steel manufacturing (BSI) for local manufacturers  to expand their capacity and boost income flow in the economy through steel export.

In the same vein, Statistics from African Steel Association revealed that the steel industry alone has the capacity to employ over 10,000 workers in the plant, create more than 20,000 jobs in the raw materials industries providing feed_stock to the plant and create jobs for over 30,000 Nigerians in the industries using the products of the plant.

Sunday Business spoke with stakeholders on the economic benefits  the British steel standard would bring to Nigeria ’s economy now and in  the long_run.

British standard for steel manufacturing in Nigeria would boost revenue generation, says the Director of Standards, Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON), Engineer John Achukwu.

The weldable type of reinforcement bars are not sufficiently produced in Nigeria now, whereas some  firms here have the infrastructure and technical know_how to manufacture them locally.

For this reason, government has decided to adopt the  BSI standard to enhance revenue generation in the economy through steel export. For instance, Nigeria stands to benefit from foreign exchange conservation and export of this product to neighbouring countries because some of the countries do not have the facilities to produce this special type of reinforcement bars, which are in high demand in the market now.

Government also considers the fact that the British Standard Institute is one of best standard bodies in the world. The particular standard we want  has also been adopted by other European countries.

The world is now a global village and if you want your products to stand the test of time, you have to go for the best quality and that is why we want to adopt the British standard for steel industry in the country.  The unique thing is that when you want to develop a standard for a particular product, you either start from the scratch or look at other existing international standards.

British standard will curtail buildings collapse, says Bede Obayi, Group Head, Mechanical Standards, Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON).

We are all aware of numerous cases of collapse buildings in the country where SON had been called upon to investigate, find out the reason and proffer solution to prevent future reoccurrence.

In such cases, we often look at different components of the building and the characteristics of these components and not just cement. There are various components involved in making structures. One of them is reinforcement steel bar and this is exactly what government is looking at.

We already have what is called non_weldable reinforcement steel bars that are made in this country and we have a standard known as NIS 117 of 2004, which covers this product.  But now we have high demand for weldable reinforcement steel bars for bigger structures. For us to achieve this, we must have a relevant standard in place to guide the manufacturers in producing according to the requirement of that standard.

We want local manufacturers to produce according to that standard to reduce the influx of imported reinforcement steel bars into the country. In that capacity, the multinational companies operating in Nigeria would patronise local producers because the product would be readily available and conformed to the quality required for operations.

Once this is achieved, we would be able to say that we are putting a stop to excessive importation of reinforcement steel bars because government is spending a whooping sum annually to import weldable reinforcement steel bars into the country and this is not helping our economy in terms of revenue drive and employment creation.

Local manufacturers have the man-power and infrastructure  to produce weldable reinforcement steel bars  to meet the demand of consumers, Head of Enforcement,Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON),  Mr Adebayo Adegun The business is capital intensive and people should live up to their responsibilities. We cannot quantify it by simply staying here to give an estimate.

It has to do with aggregate study of the sector. For instance, the Delta Steel Company is of high quality in terms of facilities, structures and the level of technology needed to produce this new product. We need to harness the resources and put the right things in place to function optimally.

SON has enforcement experts  to monitor compliance- director general, Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON), Dr. John Akanya.  SON has efficient enforcement team to monitor compliance with the BSI to ensure quality reinforcement bars are manufactured locally.

The first thing now is to adopt the  BSI and the next thing is to monitor compliance to prevent production of low quality weldable reinforcement steel bars. The mechanism to monitor compliance is already in place because we would frequently embark on unscheduled visits to the manufacturers to have first hand information on the production processes.