Standard Organisation of Nigeria (SON) has destroyed assorted products worth over N4.5m in Ekiti state and vowed to prosecute the owners.
The products, according to the organisation, lacked quality assurance and other factors.
Among the products burnt by the agency were fake and substandard tyres, expired supermarket products including breakfast cereals, snacks, detergents, soaps, wine including soft drinks and fruit juices.
Also burnt were electrical and electronic items such as television sets and cables as well as substandard LPG cylinders.
The newly appointed Coordinator of SON in Ekiti, Mr. Ayeni Oyebola, who supervised the exercise in Ado Ekiti on Saturday, said items destroyed were seized from distributors and sellers in different parts of the state after failing quality assurance test.
He lamented that most of the seized items had fake company names , fake brand name, fake country of origin and imaginary expiry date embossed on them at the expense of peopple’s safety.
He said apart from blacklisting distributors of such items, the agency was also on the trail of the manufacturers of the products and their other collaborators, with a view to prosecuting them in addition to paying penalties ranging between N500,000 to N3m.
He described the burnt items as "life threatening products", saying most of them had either expired since more than three years ago, or are entirely fake and fraudulently labelled as being newly made and kept on the various supermarket shelves for unsuspecting residents to buy for consumption.
He described perpetrators of substandard and fake products and their collaborators as worse than terrorists adding that no efforts would be spared in unravelling the identities of the manufactures.
He explained that while a single fake product like electric cable and iron rod could travel miles and wipe out several households in a row through sudden fire or building collapse, terrorists on the other hand, do have particulat targets in mind during their operations.
Ayeni called on traditional rulers and local government functionaries to collaborate with the agency in its bid to rid the society of killer-products, by telling their subjects to cultivate quality culture and refusing to buy cheap products suspected to be fake.
He also urged generalty of the residents to constitute themselves into whistle-blowers to the agenvy by promptly reporting circulation or sale of suspected fake product in any part of the state.
The burning was witnessed by Mr. Ojo Ademola, state Chairman of Master Bakets Union, Mr. Leonard Onyemesim, Chairman of Tyre Dealers Association as well as Mr. Victor Abe, Chairman of Table Water Producers in the state. They commended the action of SON, saying the destruction would act as lesson to others.
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