SON confiscates, destroys fake tyres worth N20bn in three years

Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON) has said that they confiscated and destroyed fake tyres worth N20 billion within the last three years in the country.

Acting Director General of SON, Dr. Paul Angya revealed this during an engagement with tyre dealers in Lagos yesterday.

Angya said that SON successfully   removed about 10 million fake tyres within 6 months in Nigeria and records shown that seized expired or bad tyres constituted almost the biggest howl in the agency’s warehouse where confiscated products are subjected to the laboraty tests and analysis before public destruction of them as fake and substandard products.

He noted that there used to be an estimated 40 million used tyres across the country.

Angya further said SON mandate is known to everybody who is aware of standardization but as acting director general he would enforced serious sanction on culpable.

He stated that, SON is going to play along with Federal Government change mantra which does not give room for corruption.

He further noted that 8,986 accidents were recorded in 2015, while 4,100 were killed and 732 people died as a result of tyre bust.

He urged the tyre dealers to corporate with the organization by put an end to importation of sub-standard tyre into the country.

“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 the smuggler of fake products into the country, he said.

Angya described seller of fake tyre in the country as a killer, saying henceforth the agency will treat perpetrator as a murderer.

“Our Act is empowered us to jail promoter of sub-standard product up to 10 year and we will not relent to jail any culprit.

“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.

Speaking on improving local producing goods, Angya said the organization vision is to get closer to the people so that their goods and farm products will be up to global standard.

“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”

SON boss said the agency is doing is best to strengthen its laboratories system to ensure that Nigeria products will not be rejected in oversea.

“What many of our farmers does 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.”

He affirmed that the practice of taking Nigeria products to another country and label them another country name is over.