The Standard Organization of Nigeria (SON), has shut down a plaza in Lagos at the Trade Fair complex for manufacturing various brand of substandard lubricants.
Speaking after the closure, the Director-General, Standard Organization of Nigeria, Mallam Farouk Salim said the closure which was carried out last week was to guide against prevalence of motor accidents and machine breakdown particularly during the Yuletide resulting from the use of the adulterated lubricants.
Mallam Salim, who was represented by the Head, Surveillance, intelligence and monitoring unit (SIM), Mallam Isa Sulieman expressed shock at what he called the total absence of process and quality control facilities in the production line.
He said lubricants and packaging materials worth millions of naira were seized during the operation, adding that two suspects were arrested in the act, while others took to their heal while sighting the enforcement officers.
According to him, other locations where adulterated lubricants were being carried out would be fished out and duly addressed, noting that the organization would leave no stone unturned at achieving sanity in the nation’s lubricants market.
“In his words,”What we have seen so far is that there are quite a lot of locations where this activity is going on and we have seize the products we saw and have also made some arrests”.
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“This is a big problem and SON is very interested. We have also been directed to bring this act to the barest minimum.what they do is adulterated the established brand in a bid to deceive the unsuspecting consumers,but based on intelligence reports,we got here and cought them in the act,”
“These are lubricants used for machinery not only for vehicles. So many companies have stopped operations because of the nefarious activities of these unscrupulous dealers in fake and substandard goods”, he said.
The SON boss assured that the enforcement would be a continuous process, with the agency working relentlessly to ensure that local manufacturers are protected to provide job opportunities for the nation’s teeming unemployed youths.
He further explained that from experience, most of the perpetrators of the act were dealers who had been previously prosecuted.
The SON head of Surveillance, intelligence and monitoring unit, expressed his organization readiness to rid the Nigeria markets of substandard and fake products and called on Nigerians to come forward with useful information to enable SON track down manufacturers and importers of substandard and unwholesome products.
