Why SON’s Reform Matters to Nigeria’s Industrial Future

The Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON) was established by law in 1971 and now operates under the Standards Organisation of Nigeria Act 2015, which sets out its functions in standardisation, certification, testing, enforcement, product recall, and annual reporting.¹ SON’s own published mandate is to promote consumer confidence and improve life through standardisation and quality assurance.² Against that legal and institutional framework, the persistence of substandard goods in Nigerian markets raises a legitimate question about whether enforcement outcomes are keeping pace with the agency’s statutory responsibilities.³

The Human Cost of Weak Enforcement

The consequences of weak standards enforcement are felt across several sectors. SON’s own standards-development structure covers areas including food, civil and building works, electrotechnology, health-related services, chemicals, and mechanical products, showing how widely product standards affect public welfare and industrial performance.⁴ In healthcare, NAFDAC has repeatedly warned that substandard and falsified medicines can lead to treatment failure, drug resistance, increased hospital admissions, higher out-of-pocket costs, and death.⁵ In the electrical sector, SON states that standards exist to ensure that products are fit for purpose and safe for use.⁶ Where poor-quality products circulate despite those safeguards, the resulting risk is not confined to one market segment; it extends to households, businesses, and critical sectors of the economy.

Border control is also central to this problem. The Nigeria Customs Service identifies collaboration with SON and NAFDAC as part of its official functions and expressly lists the import of fake and substandard goods among the illicit trade threats it helps to combat.⁷ SON, for its part, describes SONCAP as a pre-shipment conformity assessment process intended to prevent the dumping of substandard goods into the Nigerian market and to reduce loss of lives, property, and foreign exchange.⁸ If substandard products continue to circulate at scale despite these mechanisms, the issue is not simply the existence of rules but the effectiveness of enforcement and coordination.

Transparency and Public Accountability

Public accountability matters because the SON Act 2015 expressly provides for accounts, audits, annual estimates, and annual reports.⁹ SON also operates public-facing systems for certification, including MANCAP and SONCAP platforms, and maintains access points for standards and certificate verification.¹⁰ Even so, the practical accessibility of consolidated, user-friendly enforcement data remains a policy concern if citizens, businesses, and lawmakers are to assess regulatory performance with confidence.

• Certifications: SON publicly identifies MANCAP and SONCAP as core certification mechanisms, but a stronger culture of routine publication around issued, suspended, and revoked certifications would improve public confidence in compliance oversight.¹⁰
• Enforcement outcomes: Because the SON Act provides for reporting and enforcement powers, regular publication of seizures, recalls, penalties, and compliance actions would make performance easier to evaluate over time.⁹
• Oversight: Better reporting would also assist the National Assembly, businesses, and consumers in scrutinising whether the regulatory system is working as intended.⁹

Any institution that cannot—or will not—account publicly for its enforcement record struggles to make a credible claim to protecting consumers.

Weak Capacity and Poor Coordination

Beyond the direct danger to consumers, regulatory failure imposes a wider economic cost. SON’s own description of SONCAP says the programme is meant to create a level playing field, prevent unfair competition, encourage genuine investment, promote made-in-Nigeria products, and conserve foreign exchange.⁸ When substandard goods still enter or remain in the market, those objectives are undermined: compliant firms face unfair competition, confidence in product quality weakens, and the cost of doing business rises. The problem is compounded by overlapping mandates and weak coordination among agencies. Customs formally collaborates with SON and NAFDAC on border enforcement,⁷ while NESREA’s statutory role includes enforcing environmental standards and coordinating with relevant stakeholders on enforcement matters.¹¹ In the same vein, the Nigeria Industrial Policy 2025 identifies fragmented value chains and insufficient coordination between government and industry as barriers to industrial performance.¹² In practice, that fragmentation can translate into repeated inspections, conflicting directives, and avoidable delays for legitimate businesses while leaving enforcement gaps that bad actors exploit.

Priority Reforms

A credible reform agenda should therefore focus on legal reporting duties, enforcement transparency, institutional coordination, and the infrastructure needed to test compliance effectively. The following reforms flow from SON’s statutory framework and from the broader policy goal of building a more competitive industrial economy.⁹¹²

1. Mandatory public performance reporting: SON should publish accessible annual performance reports that go beyond formal compliance and clearly disclose enforcement actions, penalties, recalls, certification outcomes, and complaints handling.⁹
2. Investment in testing and conformity infrastructure: Effective standards enforcement depends on functioning testing, inspection, and conformity-assessment systems, which SON identifies as part of its core services.²¹⁰
3. Clearer inter-agency boundaries and protocols: The responsibilities of SON, NAFDAC, NESREA, and Customs should be coordinated through clearer operational protocols so that compliance is strengthened rather than duplicated.⁷¹¹¹²
4. Industrial policy alignment: Standards enforcement should be treated as part of industrial competitiveness, not as a stand-alone bureaucratic exercise, because Nigeria’s industrial policy depends on coordination, value addition, and market confidence.⁸¹²

Conclusion

Nigeria’s industrial ambitions depend not only on policy statements but on whether standards are enforced in a way that is credible, transparent, and coordinated. The Nigeria Industrial Policy 2025 links industrial success to competitiveness, value retention, and stronger coordination across government and industry.¹² A standards system that works only on paper cannot deliver those outcomes. For that reason, reforming SON and improving coordination across the wider regulatory system should be seen as part of the country’s broader economic strategy, not merely as an administrative adjustment.

Notes
1. Standards Organisation of Nigeria, ‘About SON’ <existing official SON source> accessed 12 May 2026; Standards Organisation of Nigeria Act 2015.
2. Standards Organisation of Nigeria, ‘About SON’ <existing official SON source> accessed 12 May 2026.
3. Standards Organisation of Nigeria Act 2015; Standards Organisation of Nigeria, ‘SONCAP’ <existing official SON source> accessed 12 May 2026.
4. Standards Organisation of Nigeria, ‘Standards Development’ <existing official SON source> accessed 12 May 2026.
5. National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control, ‘Curbing Substandard, Falsified (SFS) and Counterfeit Medicines’ (11 November 2019) <existing official NAFDAC source> accessed 12 May 2026.
6. Standards Organisation of Nigeria, ‘Standards’ <existing official SON source> accessed 12 May 2026.
7. Nigeria Customs Service, ‘Functions’ <existing official Nigeria Customs Service source> accessed 12 May 2026.
8. Standards Organisation of Nigeria, ‘SONCAP’ <existing official SON source> accessed 12 May 2026.
9. Standards Organisation of Nigeria Act 2015.
10. Standards Organisation of Nigeria, ‘How do I apply for MANCAP certification of my products?’ <existing official SON source> accessed 12 May 2026; Standards Organisation of Nigeria, ‘SONCAP’; Standards Organisation of Nigeria, ‘SON Certificate Verification’.
11. National Environmental Standards and Regulations Enforcement Agency, ‘Our Functions’ <existing official NESREA source> accessed 12 May 2026; National Environmental Standards and Regulations Enforcement Agency Act 2007.
12. State House, ‘President Tinubu Unveils Nigeria Industrial Policy 2025, Demands Speedy Implementation’ (17 February 2026) <existing official State House source> accessed 12 May 2026.