Tag Archives: Verified

90% of imported products not verified – SON

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The Standards Organisation of Nigeria has disclosed that it had no opportunity to verify 90 per cent of the products imported into the country between September and December 2015.

The Acting Director-General, SON, Dr. Paul Angya, disclosed this during a two- day capacity building workshop organised by the SON for media executives in Lagos recently.

Angya said September to December 2015 was a-three-month window that was provided for importers to be able to register on the Nigeria Customs electronic platform, Nigeria Integrated Customs Information System.

He said, “The NICIS platform allowed all stakeholders in the maritime sector to view data on shipment. But because the World Trade Organisation required that we should allow time for importers to register on the NICIS platform, we left a window of three months between September and December and issued them Electronic Provisional Clearance Certificate as an alternative.

“EPCC permitted importers to bring in their goods without the mandatory SON Conformity Assessment Programme certificates.

“But when this window of opportunity was created, criminal-minded importers took advantage of the situation and brought in substandard products which they were able to take out of the Nigerian seaports without the SON’s verification. So, between the periods of September and December 2015, 90 per cent of the goods imported into this country had no SON verification.”

Angya disclosed that after observing how importers had taken advantage of the EPCC platform to bring harmful products into the country, the agency had gone ahead to close it and as a result, the management and staff of SON are now facing threats and blackmail from importers.

“When we tried to communicate this fact, they resorted to blackmail, threatening that if we close down the EPCC platform, they will react. So we shut down the platform in July and directed that whatever they were bringing into Nigeria should go through the SONCAP regime.

“So they have now gone to the Internet to vilify SON. My staff and I have also been threatened by some of them, violently.”

Angya added that the major challenge the agency faced was being able to intercept containers right from the arrival point noting that since 90 per cent of substandard products come into Nigeria through the seaports, the absence of the SON’s agents at the ports had made the job more difficult.

He said since they were not allowed at the ports, they resolved to chase containers on the highway any time they received information that the container carried harmful goods.

“My officers who are all graduates and engineers chase trailers on the highway like touts, risking their lives to jump on trailers to try and catch them,” he stated.

Bukola Saraki’s Assets Form Not Verified By EFCC- Witness

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As the trial of Senate President Bukola Saraki continued yesterday, the first prosecution witness (PW1) admitted before the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT) that some of the exhibits he tendered earlier were not investigated by his team.

Mr. Micheal Wetkas, an investigator with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), during a cross-examination by the lead defence counsel, Chief Kanu Agabi (SAN), admitted that he did not investigate the petitions in Exhibits 11, 12 and 13.

Exhibit 11, dated May 22, 2012, was a petition written by Kwara Freedom Network, inviting EFCC to investigate Kwara State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB).

Wetkas had earlier in his evidence in-chief informed the tribunal of the petition by the Kwara Freedom Network. But yesterday, he said that his team did not investigate the petition.

He in fact declined virtually every question put to him by the defence counsel on most of the documents he tendered, stressing that he did not participate in the investigations.

When asked to produce the petitions, Wetkas quickly told the tribunal most of them were oral and intelligence reports from sources who pleaded anonymity . He also admitted most of the intelligence reports he based his investigations on emanated from ‘whistle blowers’.

“Most times to the best of my knowledge, people who bring information prefer anonymity. If it was not in anonymity, it would be called a petition,” he said.

Also, Exhibit 12, which was dated May 7, 2011, was addressed to the chairman of the EFCC asking the anti-graft agency to investigate the Kwara State government on borrowings for projects described as phoney . Exhibit 13 was a petition dated June 7, 2012,? which was about the mismanagement of local government revenue in Kwara State between 2003 and 2011.

When asked if in the course of his investigations he had audience with the accountant general of Kwara State, the witness said he did not as that was not part of his assignment. When also asked whether he invited any official of the Kwara State government in the course of investigation, the witness said he did not. On whether he got another written document to buttress the petition written by Kwara Freedom Network, the witness also said he did not.

During further examination, the witness was asked why he tendered documents he did not investigate and for which he could not answer questions . He told the tribunal that he did not tender the exhibits on his own but that they were tendered through him by the prosecution.

Credit: Guardian