Economy bleeding from importation of substandard goods — SON

Nigeria’s economy is suffering from high levels of importation of substandard goods, Director-General of the Standards Organisation of Nigeria, Farouk Salim, has said.

He said this at a stakeholders’ sensitisation forum held in Lagos under the theme ‘Standards Save Lives, Grow Economy’.

Salim noted that the country would not survive if importers continued with the level of substandard goods being shipped into the country.

According to him, when SON impounds such substandard goods, it is the importer that the organisation is helping, stressing that at the end, such imports will not only affect local industries, but the citizenry and infrastructure.

He said every time an importer ships in such goods which affects about a 100 people, even when the importer reaches out to 10 persons; the 90 others will still suffer the consequences.

He lamented that in Nigeria, nobody tracks the sellers of such goods or arrests such importers and drags them to court.

He urged the stakeholders to engage genuine businessmen to bring quality products into the country, noting that if sub-standard goods continue to come into the country, the local manufacturers and industries would be destroyed.

Vice President of the Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents, Kayode Farint, said that if the country must win the war against the importation of substandard goods, there is a need to return SON to the seaports