SON partners ANLCA, electronic dealers
The Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON) has partnered with the Association of Nigerian licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA) and Electronic Dealers on effective and quality service delivery.
Speaking on this development on Thursday in Lagos, the National President of the Association of Nigerian licensed Customs Agents ( ANLCA), Iju Tony Nwabunike said; “we want to partner with SON in the area of ease of doing business, making things work seemlessly in the port.”
According to him, “the federal government through the vice president of Nigeria, Yomi Osibajo is championing a campaign on the ease of doing business, and what we want is a situation where all the agencies in the port and stakeholders like us will be working in tenderm to achieve that result.”
“therefore, we seek to draw the attention of the federal government through SON to some areas of our members on clearification of issue related to border line products between SON/NAFDAC on products such as: diaper, engine oil, packaging product, cotton buds, etc.” He added
While commenting on automation, he pointed out that, SON have upgraded their standards, and they are doing wonderfully well. So, it’s about getting patience with what they are doing, because it’s all about automation and increasing the capacity and the standards of what they are doing.”
Also Speaking, the Director general of SON, Osita Aboloma said, the partnership is a welcome development as one of their madates is to facilitate trade at the port. The partnership will benefit both parties as far as all of them remain within the limit of law.
On automation, he disclosed that, “our automation is flawless, it reduces the turnaround time for clearing. By the way, I will let you know this, we have automation in respect to products registration, and we also have automation in respect to pre-shipment document, that’s SONCAP.”
According to him, “this is what you do first. You get our documents certifications before you ship goods to Nigeria. It’s a clearing documents per say.
So, when somebody deliberately misinformed the public that he incurred demorage because of SONCAP, that amount to false claim.
Because you cannot ship in your goods into Nigeria without some form of qualify certifications. It makes our job easier without compromising the quality of goods that comes into Nigeria.
While reacting to questions from press on the agency’s partnership with electronic dealers, the DG maintained that, “we will give them benefit of doubt that, they will do the right thing.
READ ALSO: SEC may announce new recapitalisation programme for operators
But, basically, coming under association does exonorate people from a deliberate attempt to to reduce the quality of the products that are being sold to Nigerian consumers.” He added
According to him, we will continue to hold them collectively and individually liable for nonconformity to our standards. We have raised the bar, and informed them accordingly.
Because, we have discovered that, most of the products that are sold in Alaba market are life threatening to the health of consumers. And anything that is not up to international best practice or Nigerian minimum standards, will be seriously frawned at.
