SON Rectifies System Failure, Reprimands Non-compliant Importers

The Standards Organisation of Nigeria on Wednesday said the system failure in its organisation that posed challenge to importers who tried to upload their SON Conformity Assessment Programme code to the Nigeria Customs Service trade portal for the past two weeks had been resolved.

The SONCAP code was needed to get the Customs Pre-Arrival Assessment Report without which cargoes could not be cleared from the ports.

Importers who spoke to our correspondent confirmed that they could upload their SONCAP code.

The agency that recently upgraded its portal said in a statement made available to our correspondent that some of the importers who encountered challenge with the upgraded portal were not compliant with the pre-shipment process.

The statement signed by the Head, Public Relations, SON, Bola Fashina, indicated that portal upgrade was aimed at ensuring optimal performance, enhancing a seamless operation and more efficient service delivery to customers and stakeholders alike.

He listed some of the advantages of the portal to include a one-stop-shop that provides clients opportunity to apply, track application, send messages to SON and receive responses as well as upload evidence of payments seamlessly.

He said the challenge of activating approved and activated SONCAP certificates to the trade portal was not peculiar to SON but other trade related agencies from January 22.

He said some importers who brought in about 182 containers into the country without following the pre-shipment conformity assessment process were those trying to circumvent established procedure and crying wolf.

According to him, such consignments would naturally be subjected to scrutiny, seized if found to be substandard while those behind them would face prosecution.