As the drumbeat of an epic battle between dealers in sub-standard products and the Standard Organisation of Nigeria(SON) rises to a deafening pitch today, the director-general of the standards and products regulatory agency,Dr. Joseph Odumodu, said the organisation was on the verge of recruiting additional 1000 Nigerians to beef up its war-chest.
Odumodu made this disclosure on the sidelines of a sent forth/reception dinner organised by the agency and chaired by the minister of trade and investment,Dr.Olusegun Aganga, in honour of the minister of state for trade and investment,Dr.Samuel Ortum, at the Transcorp Hotel, Abuja.
The DG while acknowledging that “we don’t have enough hands, but I can tell you that ten committed men is a lot more effective than a thousand disloyal and uncommitted people,” said: “Right now, we have over a thousand people who are involved in this war, but more importantly, I have also applied to the ministry of finance, and I can assure you that within a few days we will get an approval to employ more people…even when the war is won, we will keep up the fight, because the bad people will not relent, they will change colour, they will change their style, we have also formed the habit of changing our colour, style and form.”
He also hinted that beginning from today, the agency would take its campaigns to Lagos, Ibadan, Kaduna, Kano, Enugu, Onitsha and Port-Harcourt and that would mark a watershed on its strategy to zero tolerance for sub-standard products.
While dispelling rumours that he was under pressure from within to bend rules, the director-general said that he owed no apology to any alleged cabal within the organisation who had a rather unsavoury whiff about his style.
“I have a clear mandate to go there, clean up the system so that we can achieve economic development, job creation and wealth creation and that is what I am doing,”he said with a tone of finality.