Saddened with the infiltration of sub-standard products into the Nigerian markets, the minister of state for Commerce and Industry, Humphrey Abah in collaboration with Standard Organisation of Nigeria (SON) recently summoned a meeting with service providers, importers of cars and generators where the minister read a riot act to those indulging in the act. He spoke to journalists after the meetings. Our reporter was there.

What is this meeting with the service providers, importers of cars and generators all about?

We are disturbed about the infiltration of sub-standard products into our economy, but we believe we can all join hands to drive away this monster. Most of the vehicles that come into this country do not have SONCAP certification and the reason they are running away from SONCAP certification is because they are not keeping to the emission safety standard requirements. On the contrary, the auto manufacturers who are operating within the country meet this mandatory requirement so why should people bring us rubbish from outside the country in the name of importation of FBU (Fully Build Unit of cars). We have that problem with cars, generators, television sets and air conditioners. In the past we got better products. If you come to my sitting room, the window air conditioner I'm using was bought in 1991 from cash and carry in Marina, Lagos and as big as my sitting room is, it chills the room. Today you don't have the same but what we have are take away air conditioners which does not last.

We need to begin to tell ourselves some truth and tell these people who are importing these items that they are not helping our people. You buy something that cannot last four years whereas its counterpart in Europe last ten, fifteen and twenty years.

When they show it on television that this man bought this car 25 years ago and is still going well without breakdown and we get surprise. Why can't we have such standard here?

This is all we are crying about and want to enforce. For the time I will be in this ministry by the grace of God, I will ensure that is done and I have told the Standard Organisation of Nigeria (SON) if any of them is compromising, they have to stop because we will not take it kindly with anybody we catch along the line.

We have also told the service providers to do us official report in writing and we will deal with it accordingly and bring the persons to book according to the law.

Every day you read about accidents in the news papers, fifty, twenty people die and so on. It is not in all cases that the drivers are in error. More often it is system failure due to low standardisation of the parts and we want to tackle it.

They are all running away from attending this meeting because we wanted to confront them head on but since they are running away, we know where to check them.

We will go to the Ports and stop them from coming in. So do not be surprised that in a few months to come some of them might not be able to bring in their vehicles and when they begin to call us names, you will know why they are calling us names.

We are not going to ask them for a dime by the grace of God. What government is giving me is enough to sustain me. Before i came here i was not a beggar and I was sustaining myself and my family. I don't need any of their sustenance to move on so we will do what we need to do.

We will stop them. If you are bringing a substandard product you will be our enemy but if you are bringing the right product you will be our friend. We will help to advertise your products and market you but if you are bringing a bad product for our people we will de-market you. We will tell our people your product is bad. Let us exposed this evil and get our system back.

The second thing that we in the ministry of commerce and industry have taken upon ourselves to champion is the issue of internal production. Today we have this man in Nnewi, Innocent, he is assembling buses there and has close to 30 percent local contend because the whole of the body is locally fabricated.

Those are the kind of things we are looking for. The boys who are doing the body are employed. If all people importing cars have people to even do the assembly, most of our graduates will be gainfully employed.

It is not good for us to earn foreign exchange and then export the whole of it in paying for vehicles that are manufactured in the moon to be shift to Nigeria.

If we continue like that, a time will come where there will be no foreign exchange to pay for those imports. We cannot afford to get to that level. We will not die if we enforce this system so I want us to be confident that we can pull through if the will is there.

If we sustain the campaign we will not die. I'm sure you have been reading in the papers how Dubai became heaven in 10 years, the place was a desert in 1990, today everybody in Nigeria wants to go to Dubai.

We can make Nigeria more beautiful than Dubai. It only takes the will of all of us. That is what we must do. We have no option because the President has said we must be one of the 20th largest economies by the year 2020. How far is 2020 from now,10 years, if we don't begin the journey now, we are not going to get there?

If this place becomes a huge manufacturing entity you and I will be better off for it because it will give employment and the safety of lives and property.

We are not going to allow some selfish individuals to run us aground, it cannot continue.

When are you going to start the enforcement exercise?

I have asked the Director General of SON to give us a design and implementation framework that we can use to assess the importation of second hand vehicles.

I don't want to name names but if you go to some neighbouring countries you don't see a smoking second hand vehicle on their roads and it is not that these countries are richer than Nigeria. Infact, they are not half as wealthy as we are in Nigeria but you don't find rickety vehicles on their roads.

Why is it that we are turning into a huge dumping ground? You go to the seaport, they are clearing a vehicle and they are using a toying van to pull it because the engine is not there or it has knocked or when it kicks in the afternoon, the whole of the place turns dark because of smoke. We are not going to continue to tolerate these things, we must move forward.

On the generator issue, we are going to do the road inspection and I will lead the team. We will be there to inspect and if it is bad, we will announce it so that you can tell Nigerians that we have inspected this generator and is bad and so don't buy it.

That is what I mean that we will de-market those that are doing bad business and send them out of their shops until they turn a good leaf and be good Nigerians and do it correctly.

That is one way of starting it. We will do those things that are within our capacities to do before we begin to look at the extras that are enormous. For instance, policing the vast borders that we have.

Again in that we need to appeal to the conscience of our young men and women, that look when you engage in smuggling, you will earn a little sum, the major money goes to your principal but the little sum you are earning, you are paying for your own destruction.

Smuggling destroys a system, it is in your own interest as a youth, as a hard working person not to allow yourself to be used to smuggle. You drive a car from Cotonou all the way to Niger Republic and down into Nigeria, you are destroying yourself.

You talk about knowing them (perpetrators). Why not just swoop at them?

We are no longer waiting. We are taking the fight to their door steps. You see, we have an intelligence report and we want to do hard core evidence.

If you tell me that this man is selling substandard telephone sets and we have a system of checking telephone sets, if I get to his shop and discover that yes truly they are substandard sets, I will now have the ground to tell the world that this man truly is selling substandard sets.