SON destroys fake, expired products worth N4.5m in Ekiti

Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON) on Sunday, destroyed N4.5 million worth of fake and expired products in Ekiti, for want of quality assurance and other factors.

Among the products burnt were fake and substandard tyres, expired cereals, expired snacks, detergents, soaps, wine, soft drinks and fruit juices.

Also burnt were electric and electronic items such as television sets and cables, as well as substandard LPG cylinders.

Newly appointed SON Coordinator in Ekiti, Mr Ayeni Oyebola, while supervising the exercise in Ado Ekiti, said the items destroyed were seized from distributors and sellers in different parts of the state after they failed quality assurance test.

He said the products were seized after SON staff, in conjunction with security agencies raided more than 100 outlets at one time or the other at different locations across the state following tip-offs by patrotic members of the public.

He added that most of the seized items had fake company name, fake brand name, fake country of origin and imaginary expiry date embossed on them at the expense of people’s safety.

Oyebola noted that apart from blacklisting distributors of such items, SON was also on the trail of the real manufacturers and their other collaborators, as they would be made to face the law.

He said such distributors would be made to pay penalties ranging between N500,000 and N3 million, depending on the volume of their committal, including cost of destruction as well as risk arrest and prosecution.

The SON Coordinator described the burnt items as “life threatening products,” saying most of them expired more than three years ago or were entirely fake, while they were fraudulently labelled as being newly made and kept on shelves of supermarket for unsuspecting residents to buy and consume.

He noted that perpetrators of substandard and fake products and their collaborators were worse than terrorists, stressing that no efforts would be spared in unravelling the true identities of the manufactures.