There are strong indications that the Federal government may have suspended its planned implementation of pre-shipment inspection of used vehicles.
The pre-shipment inspection exercise spearheaded by the Standard Organization of Nigeria (SON) is to be carried out by Quality Assurance Projects Limited, Medtech Scientific Limited and Cotecna Destination Inspection Limited.
The indication to suspend it was disclosed by the National President of the Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA), Prince Olayiwola Shittu at a public fora organised by SON on Wednesday.
“In the meeting we had with SON recently, we discussed with them and they knew they have been upstaged so, they decided to suspend the policy.
“Also, the issue of service providers was discussed and we were able to resolve it and left the meeting better informed,” Shittu said.
It would be recalled that the federal government recently introduced the Standards Organisation of Nigeria Conformity Assessment Programme (SONCAP) for used vehicles.
Odumodu noted that “out of the over 2, 000 parts that make up a typical car, government mandate only about 120 safety and environmental standards.”
This, he said, calls for the need to institute a regime that would ensure effectively enforcement of these standards and monitor their compliance.
Odumodu added that as part of the SONCAP regime, a separate pre-shipment verification of conformity to standard on used vehicles would be implemented by the organisation, stressing that “this is being premised on the fact that the pre-shipment to conformity be done against NIS127 and NCP018.”
He said the effect of import of poor quality motor vehicles were self-evident in the deterioration in road safety statistics, air pollution, degradation of environment, and huge economic losses to the economy, among others.
Odumodu said the chosen companies for the programme implementation met the criteria of having certification to ISO/IEC17020:1998.
However, as soon as the policy was announced in October, clearing agents of used vehicles kicked against it.
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