Nigeria’s ranking in the list of countries according to their Ease of Doing Business index, formulated by the World Bank, has moved up by 24 points from 169th position on the 2017 ranking and also 170th position on the 2016 ranking to 145th (out of 190 countries) position on the bank’s 2018 report. The rankings, released last October, are based on a country’s regulatory laws for running a business, calculated by measuring the ease or difficulty for starting a business, dealing with construction permits, getting electricity, enforcing contracts, among other factors.
In a nutshell, a high ease of doing business ranking means the regulatory environment is more conducive to the starting and operation of a local firm. But I wish to point out that we should not be quick to cheer, as this ranking could come at an ecological cost, which we may regret in the near future.
This article was inspired by an incident that happened at a Stakeholders’ Sensitisation Workshop, South-South region, organised by the Standards Organisation of Nigeria on February 8, at the Prof. Eyo Ita House, Calabar. At the event, the Chairman of the Electrical Materials Dealers Association in Cross River State, boldly stood up and told the SON officials at the event that when the government allowed fake product importers to bring in their substandard products into the country, they, the local dealers, would not have any other choice but to sell them to the hapless consumers. The man then suggested that SON should relocate to the ports of the country in order to nip the problem of fake and substandard goods in the bud.
Although the trader did not realise that the situation was more complicated than he thought, his submission still provided food for thought. Granted, because of our porous borders there may be hundreds of ingress points into Nigeria; but the general idea is that chasing the fake product sellers in the hinterland while the supply chain would have been neatly terminated right at the borderline is a smarter way for SON’s regulatory initiatives.
Anyway, there is no harm in trying. Nobody says the whole loophole could be sealed overnight. But wait a minute; the government is not even thinking in that direction. In fact, the opposite is the case.
Just last week, it was reported that the Nigerian Ports Authority had given a 24-hour ultimatum to officials of unauthorised government agencies to vacate the seaports or risk being arrested. SON is one of these “unauthorised agencies”. According to the report, the directive is in line with a new order issued to the NPA by the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council.
The PEBEC was set up to remove the administrative bottlenecks associated with doing business in Nigeria. So, among its strategic moves, it made strides in reducing the number of agencies in Nigerian ports to “allow ease of entry and exit of goods and people.” Apparently, these reforms helped Nigeria move up 24 places in World Bank’s Doing Business 2018 report. The government was quite swift; at the tail end of 2016, the operational arm of PEBEC – the Enabling Business Environment Secretariat agency – became functional with a delivery plan of two years to implement the reforms of PEBEC.
Nevertheless, I maintain that we must not be so much in a hurry to climb the approval ladder that we forget to put the appropriate checks that would not allow our country to become an even worse type of dumping ground for all sorts of products and hazardous substances. It would be tantamount to neglecting one’s health to make money, and later realising that one is too ill to even enjoy the mindlessly amassed wealth.
The government is already showing signs of making this blunder. For instance, mining rights are given to coal miners for the Coal-to-Power policy, while not even a single National Environmental Standards and Regulations Enforcement Agency field officer being on ground to monitor the environmental and social impacts of the activities of these private operators whose sole purpose for invading the resource blessed communities is to make profit.
And now the government wants to kick SON out of their primary duty posts at the ports. It seems the officials responsible for this move have forgotten how the country is presently folding up under the weight of fake and substandard products dumped on her from all over the world. Could it be they never realised how happy the fake product importers and their collaborators would be to discover that as their deadly cargo arrives, there would be no standards expert to examine them, therefore giving them the needed window to cheat the system and endanger the lives and property of the unsuspecting Nigerian masses?
Interestingly, the NPA said the only agencies allowed representation at the ports were, beside itself, the Nigerian Customs Service, Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency, Nigeria Police, Department of State Services, Nigerian Immigration Service, Port Health and the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency.
As it now appears, the government does not realise the nexus between fake and substandard products and avoidable hazards. It was at the earlier-mentioned SON stakeholders’ workshop that experts warned that most domestic hazards associated with electrical and electronic equipment were caused by substandard electrical equipment. They also added that most road accidents in the country were caused when road users purchased and used fake and substandard tyres.
It was indeed shocking to realise that because Nigeria actually manufactures one of the best electrical cables in the world, fake and substandard ones are produced overseas and criminally branded “Made in Nigeria”, and then shipped into the country.
“Despite the efforts by the government of the Federal Republic of Nigeria to ensure that the Nigerian market is free from substandard electrical products, the menace still persists at an alarming rate, and I want Nigerians to beware of this trend,” Dr Michael Mlahaga Iorbee of the Department of Vocational and Technical Education, Benue State University, Makurdi, who is also a consultant with SON, had said at the event.
“Test and close examination of many conductors show that the cables do not conform to the requirements of the Electrical Safety Standard AS/NLS/500. The plastic insulation and sheating become brittle within a short period of time and cracks, exposing the conducting material and potentially causing electrical shocks, short circuit and fire outbreak.”
And on the issue of substandard tyres, one recalls that the Federal Road Safety Corps sometime ago said that 772 out of the 9,000 road traffic accidents recorded in 2015 across the country were caused by burst tyres. This is not hard to comprehend. The pneumatic tyre is a very complex product made with over 30 semi-finished products, and more than 200 materials – sulphur, silica, natural and synthetic rubbers, steel cords, polyester, nylon, textile cords etc. These component properties evolve over time, and for each tyre, this evolution depends not only upon one element, but upon many elements such as weather and storage conditions.
Therefore, that a customs officer has “cleared” a brand new tyre, and drug enforcement personnel has verified that the tyres were not used as drug mules, is not enough to determine that they are fit for use here. As a matter of fact, this brand new tyre might have been stored in a wrong environment overseas and has accordingly lost its road-worthiness in Nigeria, despite being unused. It is only a standards expert that could determine this fact.
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