The Director-General, Standards Organization of Nigeria, Mr. Osita Aboloma, has warned manufacturers against cutting corners to produce substandard products in order to beat the economic recession.
Aboloma said this in Osogbo, the Osun State capital, at the launching of Standards Club in primary and secondary schools in the state on Thursday last week.
He explained that producing substandard products would lead to the collapse of such companies because consumers would eventually shun such products.
The director-general, who was represented by Mrs. Oluremi Ayeni, said the best to go was to ensure quality in whatever they produced.
Ayeni said, “Cutting corners is a sign of lack of integrity; we want intelligent people with integrity. The benefit of the Standards Club is to call the youths to begin to recognise and demand quality and part of it is that when you make purchase, ask for the receipt of purchase and so that when people cut corners and the products are bad they can be sanctioned.
“We need to educate people that there is no space for product that is not standard in the market. The only way upward is the way of quality. Our trading nations and partners made a demand of us which we must step up to achieve in any area of our endowment. We must ensure that whatever we are sending out of this country is up to standard so that when people cut corners they will see that there is no place for them again in the market.”
Ayeni urged Nigerians to shun sub-standard products in order to drive out producers of fake or substandard products out of the market, while also calling on Nigerians to lodge complaints of any substandard products they purchased in order to arrest the manufacturers.
The Regional Coordinator, SON, Mrs. Oyenike Omoyele, said showing commitment to quality would make local products acceptable in the international market.
She said the main interest of SON was the safety of the consumers, adding that low quality products had contributed to the rejection of some Nigerian goods in the international market.
The Coordinator of SON in Osun State, Mr. Sunday Badewole, said the agency decided to launch Standards Club in schools in the state in order to introduce the culture of quality to sustain it.
The Commissioner for Commerce, Industry, Cooperatives and Empowerment, Mr. Jayeoba Alagbada, said the state government was serious about standards, saying this was why it introduced the use of scale in the sale of goods.
He urged the people of the state to embrace the policy which according to him has the potentials to boost the state’s economy.
