SON seals plaza used for adulterating lubricants

The Standards Organisation of Nigeria has sealed a plaza in Auto Spare Parts and Machinery Dealers Association adulterating established lubricants.

The Director General, SON, Mallam Farouk Salim, explained that the move aimed to guard against the prevalence of motor accidents and machine breakdown, especially during the Yuletide season, a statement issued by the agency said.

The SON boss represented by the Coordinator, Surveillance, Intelligence and Monitoring unit, SON, Issa Sulaimon, at an enforcement exercise in ASPMDA market in Lagos on Wednesday, said SON was locating places where adulteration of lubricants was being carried out.

He stressed that the standards body would leave no stone unturned till it brings sanity into the nation’s lubricant market.

“What we have seen so far is that there are quite a lot of locations where this activity is going on and we have seized the products that we saw and have also made some arrests. This is a very big problem and the director-general is very interested and we have also been directed to bring this act to the barest minimum,” he said.

He added, “What they do is adulterate the established brands in a bid to deceive the unsuspecting consumers, but based on intelligent reports, we got here and caught them in the act.”

He assured that the enforcement would be continuous as the agency was working relentlessly to ensure that local manufacturers were protected to provide job opportunities for the nation’s teeming unemployed youths.

“This is an area of the economy where the management is highly interested in. There are lots of complaints and we also know the effects of substandard goods in the country. These are lubricants used for machinery not only for vehicles and so many companies have stopped operations because of the nefarious activities of these unscrupulous dealers in fake and substandard goods,” he added.

He said plans were ongoing to work with the association to arrest other perpetrators of the act as the ones arrested would be taken up for prosecution.

He noted that the director-general had been part of the enforcement for the past three days, visiting local manufacturers while also restating his commitment to supporting only genuine local manufacturers.

The Chief Security Officer, ASPMDA Market and Trade Fair Complex, Onyeka Ozorkwalu, said the association had made several efforts to stop the illicit trade, but all to no avail.

“We all know that there are people faking products and we are not in support of this trade. We have reported to the police to deter them from this kind of business. We have also called on the people in question educating them on the negative effect of this act and they promised to stop,” he said.