The Standards Organisation of Nigeria has destroyed 60 truck-load of imported used tyres in Shagamu, Ogun State.The tyres, impounded by SON barely a week ago from some Ladipo Market, Mushin, Lagos-based businessmen, were valued at about N200mThe Director of Enforcement, SON, Mr. Louis Njoku, said the move was to encourage companies, such as Dunlop and Michelin, which had to succumb to unfair competition by relocating their manufacturing plants to other countries, to come back to the country to continue production.Njoku, who spoke at the site of the destruction exercise on Thursday, said that SON had announced that it would do all it could to ensure that only standard tyres were used on vehicles plying the nations roads."We told you that there is a new face of SON. When we say something, we mean it and we will do it. We told you that when we discovered these substandard tyres, we would destroy them. We are destroying them now. I am assuring you now that those culprits involved will also be prosecuted," he said.According to him, these tyres have no economic value. He said the influx of the substandard tyres had had the impact of yielding nothing but death and enormous negative value to the economy. He said, "Like my director-general told you, in the economic sense, it has no economic value and the reason for this is that anything that kills cannot have value attached to it. Rather, it has had a negative value. So, the negative value is enormous. "So, if you look at other negative values, such as the lives it has taken, you cannot quantify it. The so-called poor people that buy it, believing that they are buying quality goods; in a year, these set of people spend up to N20, 000 on a tyre, depending on the size of the car." On the need for the SONs re-invigorated push, Njoku said, "You saw the huge number of tyres and that would discourage a lot of people from buying new tyres, believing that what they are buying is good. But when these are removed out of the system, you will find out that a lot of lives will be saved, and genuine manufacturers will be encouraged to come back and manufacture." He disclosed that a company had approached SON to start a shredding factory to recycle used tyres towards producing new ones. He said the move will encourage tyre producers and also generate a lot of employment in the nation."Our job is now in two perspectives: that we are trying to ensure that quality is maintained as well as take out poorly made and substandard products. These are products that are useless to the economy and the products that pollute the environment. The new products will provide employment because more factories that have been killed because of the poor products will now come back," he said.
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