15 October 2015, Abuja – The Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON) has vowed to apprehend and prosecute producers and sellers of fake vehicle lubricants across the country.
Director General, SON, Dr. Joseph Odumodu, said this in Abuja at a meeting with members of Lubricant Producers Association of Nigeria (LUBAN).
Odumodu, who expressed the regret over huge economic losses associated with peddling substandard lubricants, said that the agency would work hand in hand with the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) to increase the level of surveillance in the sector.
According to him, numerous enforcement collaborative actions and raids had been conducted in the past across the federation with very good results.
In furtherance of its efforts to ride the country of adulterated products, Odumodu said in line with its mandate, SON would ensure that all lubricant products were registered to ensure they met the required standards.
He said: “One of the reasons we have engine problem is because we feed the engines with adulterated lubricants. We have done some surveillance of the market and we saw that some members of LUPAN are in this kind of wrong business for survival.
“People bring in a lot of used oil into the country and we know what happened to the viscosity of this oil and a lot of them come in from Dubai. We must have a strong collaboration with the DPR and we will have a meeting with department of government with a view to having a meeting point on how to address the drift.”
Speaking on the steps to be taken to address the menace of adulterated lubricants, the SON boss advocated, monitoring of the quality of lubricants produced in Nigeria, eradicating the sales of base oil as blended oil and other sharp practices associated with the sales of lubricants in Nigeria.
Other measures he also put forward included, checking the influx of imported substandard lubricants into the market, profiling base oil import per consigned as against co its utilisation to determine actual consumption to deal with cases of diversion.
Also speaking at the event, the Chairman of LUPAN, Mr. Anthony Obi said the meeting with the DG was convened to address some of the challenges affecting the sector.
He promised to cooperate with SON to address the entrenched anomalies in the sector to enable it contribute meaningfully to the economic development of Nigeria.