Nigeria to lead ECOWAS implementation of quality control – SON

Nigeria, through the Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON), has been selected to lead other West African nations to pioneer the implementation of the Economic Committee of West African States Quality Policy.

This selection was announced by the Secretary General, African Organisation for Standardisation (ARSO), Hermogene Nsengimana, during a two-day capacity building workshop on the Implementation of the National Quality Infrastructure (NQI) in ECOWAS held in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire, recently.

Hermogene expressed the need to strengthen the regional effort in implementing the ECOWAS Quality Policy (ECOQUAL) desspite the domestication of the National Quality Infrastructure by all member states in their respective countries.

This, according to him, necessitated the initiation of a pilot programme to be championed by the National Standards Boards of a select eight member countries: Togo, Benin, Sierra Leone, Burkina Faso, Niger, Ghana and Nigeria.

The ARSO Secretary General disclosed further that in recognition of Nigeria’s position in the implementation of its National Quality Policy, the Director General of SON, Mr. Osita Aboloma, was nominated as the chairman and coordinator of the pilot scheme, with the chief executives of Ghana Standards Authority (GSA) and his Nigerien counterpart as vice chairman and secretary respectively.