The Director-General, Standard Organisation of Nigeria (SON), Dr. Joseph? Odumodu, yesterday disclosed at a Senate Public Hearing on the Local Industry Patronage Bill 2012 (SB. 147) that Nigeria imports a whopping 80 per cent of its consumer product needs.
Citing a technological gap, Odumodu stated that local capacity to produce consumer goods has been greatly dented by years of neglect of the manufacturing sector. According to him, Nigerian businessmen increasingly preferred to import cheap foreign products as opposed to manufacturing locally in view of the? high cost of production caused largely by inadequate power supply.
The SON DG called on relevant stakeholders – private and government- to copy strategies adopted by emerging economies which in the past copied technologies of developed countries and replicated them locally.