SON reviews lubricants’ standards to curb importation

Expressing concerns over the dominance of imported lubricants in Nigeria’s lubricants market, the Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON) has reviewed the qualiy benchmark for locally produced lubricants, to promote their competitivess in the market.

Indeed, the Director-General, SON, Dr. Joseph Odumodu, stressed the need for Nigeria to up its game in the lubricants’ market, to stave off competition from Asian products.

Odumodu, who made this known during a technical meeting to review the standards of chemical related products, said the situation leaves much to be desired, maintaining that Nigeria being an oil producing nation, must be an active player in the global lubricants market.
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I believe it is critical we begin the process of cleaning up our lubricants businesses, because what we have seen so far in Nigeria is that some Asian countries have taken over the businesses in Nigeria and they are also making it difficult for us to achieve the full benefit of using the best lubricants even when Nigeria is an oil producing nation. So the growing demand for quality products that are safe for use is a compelling reason for our nation to strengthen its competitiveness of this class of product.

Petroleum lubricants are of vital importance in the socio economic needs of this nation as they touch the lives of every Nigerian. In view of the need for us to provide guidance on the specification therefore, the draft standards which your committee would work on were developed to ensure that value is delivered to consumers with safe products.

This meeting will also provide opportunities for us to share experiences so that everybody will leave here with new ideas. As we finalise the standards, I would appreciate it if we begin what I call the technical regulations that would be associated with the standard.

In a lot of countries, people tend to use the standards for regulation‎. What I have observed in ISO meetings I have attended is that, it is through a defined technical regulation which is usually the responsibility of the regulators of that market. I believe that if there are any technical regulation that would emanate from the market, the SON and the DPR would work together to fine tune and ensure they become the implementation spring boards for everybody,” he said.

In a related development, the SON boss who was also part of a technical committee for the consideration of NCP 056 of 2015, code of practice for installation of road vehicles’ speed limiting device, lamented over the rate of motor vehicle accident on the nation’s road, pointing out the urgent need to curb the ugly trend.
‎ “We all know the rate of motor vehicle accidents on our roads today is staggering and there is an urgent need to curb the ugly trend. Urgent and concrete measures are required to address the occurence of avoidable crashes that leads to wanton loss of lives and properties on our roads and most times on account of overspeeding,” he said.

This he said is a trend not peculiar to Nigeria, adding that lots of African countries have pioneered the implementation of speed limiting policies on the continent and have also recorded appreciable reduction in over-speeding related road crashes.