The Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN) has commended the Standards Organisation of Nigeria(SON’s) quest to promote made-in-Nigeria products in the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) through calibration efforts to address market penetration, declining foreign exchange and closure of factories.
The director general, MAN, Segun Ajayi-Kadir, stated this on the sidelines of the inauguration of SON’s mobile calibration vehicles and measurement equipment in Lagos.
According to him, market penetration is key, saying, without market penetration, Nigeria will only gaze at all the 1.4 billion people’s market in Africa.
“One thing all over the world that has been acknowledged is that what we cannot measure, we cannot value. So for us, today marks a milestone in our quality infrastructure programme in Nigeria. SON is blazing the trail in ensuring that not only our big companies that are located in centers that we can access, but where vehicles can move to remote areas in Nigeria to deliver the measurement service.”
He however, called on the federal government to support with the allocation of right level of funding while also tasking the private sector to support SON in order for Nigeria not to lose its competitiveness in the African market.
Also speaking, the director general, SON, Mallam Farouk Salim said, going forward, the agency would be engaging in public awareness to promote and protect safety, stressing that, public awareness will also highlight the importance of calibration to improving the quality of lives in general.
To address this challenge, the SON boss said, his administration has set out to strengthen available measures to fight substandard products across the country.
He also announced plans that the standards body would be unleashing a massive calibration service campaign across the country in its bid to drive industrialisation as well Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) development in Nigeria.
Salim, at the inauguration of mobile calibrate vehicles and measurement equipment in Lagos, said, under his leadership to achieve its calibration exercise, the standards body would be expanding its services through mobile laboratory facilities, explaining that, imbibing the culture of regular calibration of equipment, operators in the industry would get it right, lives would be saved while economic development is assured.
On his part, the director, Nigeria Metrology Institute (NMI), SON, Engr. Bede Obayi, said the journey to take calibration services to MSMEs and other valuable stakeholders in their locations, has been a long but continual one starting from 2008 to date in SON’s quest to enhance the metrology value chain in Nigeria.
He said the NMI has been established for the dissemination of measurement standards and providing traceability and accuracy of measurements to the industries, laboratories, trade and commerce, aviation, oil and gas, agriculture, health, education, automotive, mining, power and others.
