FG Permits SON To Jail Substandard Product Dealers For A Decade Without Fine As An Option

The Federal Government has given authorization to Standard Organisation of Nigeria (SON) to imprison dealers who sell substandard products. They said SON has the authorization to jail defectors for ten years. SON has since started with Tyre dealers. They have given a 24 hours ultimatum to tyre dealers all over the country to destroy every fake tyre in their stock or face 10 years imprisonment without any option of a fine.
Acting Director General of SON, Dr. Paul Angya, gave the ultimatum at a stakeholder’s forum for tyre dealers in Lagos, stating. He said fake tyres have been the leading cause of several deaths in the country based on a recent report by the Road Safety Commission. Adding that out of 8,986 accidents recorded in 2015, 722 were due to tyre bursts, which has led to the death of 446 persons
He said:

“Our new Act 2015 empowered us to jail promoters of sub-standard product up to 10 years and we will not relent to jail any culprit. ‘’We are going to stamp out corruption among the tyre dealers, “we are going to set up a taskforce and we will not sleep until we confirm that accidents in the country are not traced to substandard tyres again.”

“We are ready to eliminate importation of sub-standard products into Nigeria, because of this we have reached out to other government agencies to ensure that we work together and stop smugglers of fake products into the country.

“If you have fake tyre in your shop make sure you disposed them in the next 24 hours, thereafter our team will visit you and we will charge you for murderer. “To eliminate corruption from SON, we are going to introduce e-payment, e-invoice and e-receipt to stamp out corruption from the system,”

He said the organization is also working on improving the standard of products that are sold to consumers.
Adding:

“To ease our work and improve quality of goods and products in Nigeria, we are working to improve expansion of SON facilities across the country so that people in Sokoto will not travel to Maiduguri to text their products”

“What many of our farmers do before they can take their products to abroad is to first take it to Ghana laboratory for text, once the goods pass through text in Ghana the products will send to abroad in the name of Ghana and Ghana government will take the glory.”