Jonathan Eze
The Senate Committee on Industry has
urged the Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON) to continue its drive
in campaigning for patronage of Made-in-Nigeria items and products
always.
Chairman of the Committee, Senator Sam
Egwu, expressed that SON remained vital to achieving the
present
administration’s Executive Order 003 aimed at providing support for
local content in public procurement by Ministries, Departments and
Agencies, [MDAs] as well as increasing the demand for locally made goods
and services in the country.
Egwu at an oversight function at SON’s
laboratory complex in Ogba, Ikeja, Lagos, yesterday said promoting
Made-in-Nigeria goods could only be achieved through SON’s quality
assurance programmes and activities across the country, restating the
committee’s commitment to support SON to achieve its mandate of
safeguarding lives through standards.
In his words, “We have visited other
laboratories outside this country and compared to what we have seen
outside the country I will say that SON has come to stay. A lot of
mileage has been achieved since our last visit in 2018. Within a period
of seven months it is good to see that staff have moved into the
laboratory and almost all the laboratories are in operation which is a
good development. This feat could not have been achieved without the
Director General, the management and staff of SON. We just wish you
maintain the standards. We need to maintain these standards so that
others will also emulate what you are doing, so please keep it up.”
He added: “Apart from maintaining the
standards, you must also ensure that the staff are properly equipped to
carry out their operations and they should also be trained on the job to
be abreast of global trend of standardisation. Standards need to be
up-scaled at every time, so they need to be very versatile and
proactive.”
Earlier, the Director General, SON,
Osita Aboloma, said plans were underway to establish 13 laboratories
with focus mainly on live endangering items, agric and agro-allied
products, adding that the move would come on the heels of the present
administration’s effort to diversify the nation’s economy away from oil.
He however commended the Senate
Committee for their unwavering support to SON in its bid to rid Nigeria
of sub-standard products while also safeguarding the lives of Nigerians
through quality assurance.
“This is the first arm of your oversight
function of your activities of SON in 2019. We are always pleased to
have you here to acquaint you with the level of progress made so far
with the fund appropriated to SON in 2018 so that you will be properly
guided to see how we can be well empowered for effective service
delivery in our bid to rid Nigeria of substandard products and our
continuous battle for quality assurance thereby safeguarding the lives
of Nigerians through quality assurance. Since your last visit, we have
achieved many milestones so that was why we were very happy when you
chose to visit the Ogba laboratory which would give us the opportunity
to display what we have been able to attain in the past one year,’’ he
said.
Aboloma added: The Ogba laboratory
complex is the biggest single laboratory complex in sub-Saharan Africa.
We have about 35 laboratories with 28 of it installed. Some of our
laboratories have international accreditation to ISO 17025 which is to
show competence for laboratories in order to position us for other
activities in conformity assessment programmes.”
He disclosed that the federal government
recently made it compulsory that all MDAs must look inwards to certify
their processes, patronizing SON’s certification processes, saying that
this was in line with the Executive Order 003 of 2018 to patronize local
content as well as conserving hard earned foreign exchange spent on
achieving global certifications abroad.
“This achievement would not have been
possible without the support of the Senate committee appropriating funds
as and when due. Each of our operations in the laboratory is being done
in accordance to global best practices. Our laboratories here are
equipped to test products that will be acceptable anywhere in the world.
We believe that with the accreditation of these laboratories, the
rejection of our products at the international markets will be a thing
of the past,” he stated.
No comments :
Post a Comment