The Standards Organization of Nigeria (SON) registered a record seizure of over two million sub-standard tires, for a total amount of ₦5 billion.
Smugglers of illicit merchandise are constantly latching on to new ways of bypassing trade regulations, taking advantage of mandatory Nigerian Industrial Standard (NIS) requirements like, for example, the request for all car owners to purchase new tires.
That was the case at the beginning of this year, when the Standards Organization of Nigeria (SON) registered a record seizure of over two million sub-standard tires, for a total amount of ₦5 billion. Two Chinese smugglers were arrested and accused of illegally introducing post-dated tires into the Nigerian market, storing them in a warehouse near Navy Town, Satellite, Lagos State [1].
On the tires, January 2017 was indicated as date of manufacture, even if at least part of the consignments had already landed in Nigeria in November 2016. Such a maneuver, carried out during a difficult sea journey from China to Lagos in poor storage conditions, seriously compromised the integrity of the tires, endangering the lives of millions of Nigerians.
The two men must now respond to the accusations, among others, of cloning, tampering, relabeling and stuffing several tires into one another in adverse conditions, putting in jeopardy the potential users’ safety. SON promised to prosecute everybody involved with the utmost stringency and to make a deterrent example out of them.
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1 The Guardian