The Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON) has uncovered three buildings filled with imported and repackaged expired goods such as cosmetics and household items.‎

When journalists visited the buildings in Lagos with the SON enforcement team, it was observed that the importer converted three buildings, into storage facilities for the products.

The head, inspectorate and compliance, SON, Bede Obayi said, “This is a follow up operations we carried out in Lagos in March where we saw a three storey building stocked with expired products imported by a company known as Jouf Ventures Limited.”

He said that “We are going to carry out further investigation and process of recall to those people that they have supplied the status of the products and the expiry dates. We have our offices throughout the nation and we are going to escalate the recall process immediately when we get all the details of their transactions.”

Obayi pointed out that during the investigation, the dealer did not disclose his other warehouses and this is to tell you the intention of the importer, but due to the support of other regulatory agencies collaborating with SON in its effort to stamp the nation of substandard products, we were able to discover three other warehouses belonging to the same company based on the information given by the Nigeria Police Force (NPF).

He also applauded the Lagos State government for their support in sealing the warehouses, saying this is a quick response to the cries of regulatory authorities.

According to him, we are very happy to discover all the warehouses of this man and we are going to do due diligence on these warehouses. We have arrested him and handed him over to the NPF for further investigation and prosecution in line with SON act.

He pointed out that it is a very sad situation seeing Nigerians going outside the country to bring in products that are nearing their expiration dates only to change the expiring dates and sell to Nigerians.

Also, the director, investigation and enforcement, National Agency for Food Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), Mr. Kingsley Ejiofor said that these products came in from the nation’s porous borders, commending the effort of the NPF and SON for tracking this dealer down.