Salim Farouk, the Director General of the Standards Organization of Nigeria (SON), has accused importers of substandard items in Nigeria of funding unrest in the nation.
Farouk stated this on Tuesday while destroying some confiscated substandard items at the SON’s warehouse in Amuwo Odofin, Lagos, promising that the agency will continue to deal with imports despite inadequate resources.
He stated that the agency has made some arrests in this respect, and that some of the imported inferior items may be legitimately manufactured in Nigeria.
“We have secret information that some of these activities are financing a lot of insecurity in Nigeria. Don’t forget these products you are seeing could have been genuinely manufactured in Nigeria and some Nigerians will make money, make a living, pay taxes and all that. We have the ability to produce these things.
“It is a very disappointing issue and these criminals are sponsoring terrorism, separatism and banditry in this country. They are now encouraging bad people to use the money and the profit to attack us and destroy our country.”
According to him, “It is a very serious issue and I want people to see this is just a small percentage of what is out there, and SON will continue working very hard to make sure that these bad products are dealt with properly. We made a lot of arrests.
“The person in Aspanda producing fake lubrication oil is right now in jail. So, a lot of people are already in the process of being jailed. There are lots of people out there doing these businesses and we are working with the limited resources to deal with them.”
On the cost of the destroyed goods, he said, “All these goods run into millions of naira. Anybody who has gone to the market to buy a gallon of engine oil knows how expensive that is and if you want to buy a roll of cable, you know how expensive it is.
“If you also want to buy a gas cylinder, you know how expensive that is. So, imagine we have thousands of all these products here. So, it runs into millions of products that we are going to destroy.”
