SON Says Nigeria Loses Billions Annually From Exportation Of Sub-standard Commodities

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• The Director General of Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON), Dr Joseph Odumodu has said that Nigeria loses huge revenue from the exportation of non-standardised agricultural products.
• Odumodu made the disclosure in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Monday.
• He said if the country wanted to promote non-oil export, it could not achieve the target by selling sub-standard commodities.
• Odumodu said while Nigeria like other countries was focusing on agro-business to earn revenue, its main challenge in the exportation of produce was that exporters never followed the law on standardisation.

“Lots of Nigerians are now exporting agricultural products but one of the challenges we have seen is that most of our commodities are not easily accepted in Europe. The challenge we have is that people try not to do what the law says.’’

Exporters send goods without testing them and once they get there and are tested, if the goods do not comply with the standard, it will be destroyed or sent back to Nigeria.’’

So such act gives the country bad image because it is negative news yet it is one person who tries to smuggle the product into that country,’’ he said”.

• Odumodu said Nigeria must clearly define the process for exporting agricultural products and put sanctions in place for defaulters.

“I think what we need to do going forward is to create sanctions, there must be a clearly defined process for export of agricultural products.’’

• Once those processes are defined, then the onus will now be on us to ensure that before you send any procedure out of Nigeria, it must be tested and certified by an accredited lab. It doesn’t have to be owned by SON.’’
• There is no other agency or any lab that has that level of scope for agricultural products and we test something as complex as metal in food up to fungi contamination,’’ Odumodu added.