Nigerian Customs Officers Are Not Trained For Standards, SON DG Says

…As Agency Schemes To Return To Port

By DAPO OLAWUNI

Director General of Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON) Mr Farouk Salim has said that the officers of Nigeria Customs Service are not trained to look out for standards of imported goods, rather, it is the work of the SON to check for standards at the port.

DAILY TREND NEWS recalls that former Minister of Finance and Cordinator of the Economy under President Goodluck Jonathan, Ngozi Okonjo Iweala had in 2011 sacked SON and other agencies from the port.

The government directed that Nigeria Customs Service should be able to perform the roles of these agencies to a large extent, and that the representatives of the agencies can only be invited intermittently and as may be required by Customs.

But speaking with journalists recently, the SON DG said the action of the former minister was illegal.

He lamented that the agency’s officials are being subjected to great danger and risk by chasing containers only after they have been released by the customs at the port.

Salim revealed that he is already working with some senior officials in government to ensure that SON takes its rightful position at Nigerian ports. He said if the agency can be present at Lagos Ports, eighty five percent of substandard products in Nigeria would be curtailed.

According to him “The Standards Organisation Act of 2015, section 30, subsection 2, clearly stated that SON must be at the port”

“Unfortunately the previous government by fiat of the Minister of Finance who was at that time the head of the economic team, asked us out of the port, the whole act is illegal, but, currently I am working with very senior officials in the government, they are investigating and we are trying to explain to them the danger of keeping us out of the ports”

“Essentially, there are millions of warehouses outside the ports, eighty five percent of the goods coming to this country comes through Lagos, so if we are able to work in Lagos, the tendency is that we would minimise these problems, We should not have to run after containers after they are cleared”

“The Nigeria Customs Service to be fair to them, it is not their responsibility and they are not trained to check for standards, it is our own responsibility”

“I am not happy, not just because we are not in the port, but because I am exposing a lot of brilliant Nigerians to danger, the SON has a lot of professionals, engineers and others working with us, but now, we are making them do police work outside the port, and this is risky for their lives”

“These are young people, and we don’t have enough police to follow us. There are some markets in this country, even of you have a battalion, you cannot physically go inside safely and come out safely”

“We are addressing this with market organisations and they are cooperating with us”

“However the point is that there is no reason why we should be exposed to these dangers, instead of us just doing our job professionally and efficiently at the port” he said