INTERVIEW: Full Implementation Of Nigeria National Quality Policy Will Generate Huge Revenue For Nigeria-Aboloma, NQC Chairman

The National Quality Council (NQC) was established in 2022 by former President Muhhammdu Buhari to implement the Nigerian National Quality Policy (NNQP). In this interview with THE WHISTLER, the Chairman and Chief Executive, Mr Osita Aboloma speaks on the mandate of the Council, the challenges faced in starting up a new agency of government and how the implementation of quality policy will enable the Nigerian economy to reap the benefits of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement. EXCERPTS…

In a nutshell, what is the Nigerian National Quality Policy all about and what is it meant to achieve?

The Nigerian National Quality Policy aims at strengthening and development of the National Quality
Infrastructure (NQI) in order to achieve accelerated economic growth, increase in exports, ensure supply
of safe quality product at competitive prices and contribute towards the protection of the environment.

The NNQP is expected to contribute to poverty reduction and economic prosperity by realizing an effective National Quality Infrastructure (NQI) capable of raising the quality of goods and services, thus increasing Nigeria’s export-led growth and leading to industrial expansion and diversification in line with the National Industrial Revolution Plan and the National Economic Recovery and Growth Plan.

This policy supersedes other provisions in any other national sectorial quality related policies.

The primary objective of the NNQP is to ensure that goods and services emanating from,
imported into and traded in Nigeria are designed, manufactured, packaged, labelled and
supplied in accordance with the needs, expectations and requirements of the purchaser and
the consumer as well as the requirements of the regulatory authorities in the local and export
markets.

The NNQP also aims to develop an environment in which both public and private sectors can achieve
excellence for product and services.

So, countries are beginning to put policies together to clearly define how those things should be done in the best interest of the economy and the welfare of the people of that country. So, the national policy quality in Nigeria is just taking after what has been done in Africa, ECOWAS, and other continents of the world and clearly defining what is done, and how it will be done to ensure that any issue relating to quality in this clime is protected while achieving the objectives of the Federal Government.

Could you please highlight some of the National Quality Council’s (NQC) mandate and its relationship with key stakeholders and organizations involved in quality?

The NQC came about as a result of the approval of the NQP. In approving the NQP, the government approved and said that a body must be set up to implement the policy as it is being approved and it must be a body that has responsibility in implementing the letters behind the NQP.

To do this requires a coordinated effort. This body is not under any of the federal ministries; rather it is under the presidency, in the office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), such that issues of bureaucracy and bottlenecks can be reduced to the barest minimum. That is to ensure that it has the power to coordinate other institutions both in the private and public sectors and achieve the objectives of the NQP.

What constitutes Nigeria’s National Quality Infrastructure and what are the short- and medium-term plans for achieving the NQC’s mandate?

We have a lot of things that could be called plans, one of which is to ensure that the body is set up properly and has a structure to take off immediately. Now, the structure requires that it has a legal framework thus the FEC approval of the NNQP leading to the set up of the NQC has been gazetted.

Secondly, there are a lot of things to be done. But basically, we have some things that we refer to as low-hanging fruits. One of them is within the shortest possible time, we want to convene a national discussion on the implementation of NQP and how it affects every facets of the economy.

We will also carry out a gap analysis. A gap analysis will start with gathering data from every laboratory in Nigeria whether government or privately owned and what is their international capacity for testing, do they have international accreditation, and will their results be accepted because we are discussing the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCTA) standard. So, when we analyze the gaps, we can then advise the government in the short-term, medium-term, and long-term. This will ensure that trade and commerce within Nigeria and neighboring countries will be to the benefit of Nigerians through job creation.

These are part of what we are doing. So, when you hear conversations of sanitary or sytosanitary problems as the reason that Nigerian products are rejected worldwide, this is because these products exported through the Nigerian Export Promotion Council (NEPC) do not pass through the Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON) and the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) scrutiny which has made the country lose a large sum of money.

So, we will be working together with everyone in the production chain of every product. These are the short and medium-term.

In the long term, the NQP will guide the government on the need to align the laws that set up all these bodies, so that SON, NAFDAC, and the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) can focus on different approaches while achieving the same result. This will also involve the quality of the country’s education, and all this is not rocket science.

So, we will be monitoring every agency both private and public in the country. In the course of our job, we will be creating awareness from the grassroots level. The setup of NQC cuts across all of these agencies. To avoid resistance, the NQC has to be inter-ministerial and domiciled in the Presidency in line with international best practices

You spoke of the private sector, in specific terms, what are the roles of the private sector in the implementation of the Nigeria National Quality Policy?

The quality policy is a national document, written and composed by sets of stakeholders as well as the private sector. So, the role of the private sector is clearly stated. The private sector in the real sense is composed of the producers and the consumer. When a consumer knows his or her right as far as the consumption of a product is concerned, then the consumer is adhering strictly to the rules of the NQP. But the focus is on the producer who is the private sector special actor.

Secondly, when a commodity is about to be exported, the private sector needs to be aware of certain procedures that must be obeyed before adequate certification is issued. The quality policy is complete because it takes into cognizance what happens in the destination country of any exported products while harmonizing their standards.

Lastly, the role of the private sector is numerous, because, without the private sector, there is no point in implementing a policy like this. The private sector is meant to cooperate with the public sector for a policy of this nature to win and for us to grow the economy which is the end goal.

President Bola Tinubu recently declared a state of emergency on food security in Nigeria. What role would the National Quality Council play in achieving sustainable food security in Nigeria?

Whether it is food security or the security of the government or the people, it all has something to do with the lives of the people. There are extension offices in the federal and state ministry of agriculture, whose job is to assist farmers, guide them, and ensure that those can be reused maximally and they are paid by the government. Up to the buyers, the Ministry of Works will ensure road linkages are created for easy movement of goods. A lot of the jobs of NQC will directly affect the issues of food security.

The efficiency of NEPC, working with SON, and NAFDAC will ensure that food will not only be available in the country, but food can be better planted, harvested, and stored.

How would the Nigeria National Quality Policy’s implementation impact the Federal Government’s economic diversification programme?

The job of the NQC is to ensure the implementation of the letters of set rules, policies, and sanctions of the organization and spirit behind the NQP. It is not just what is written there, but there is a spirit behind it. It is not by what is written, but by how it is implemented. We want to ensure that the welfare, and environment of Nigerians are protected. All this cannot be done without the presence of economic prosperity.

There is an African Quality Policy, which says that quality assessment procedures and methodologies must be harmonized. Because of this harmonization, we are having the African Continental Free Trade Area Agreement. This is because Africa wants to be strong like Europe. So, all of these things are derivative, and that is why we have the policy to guide the careful implementation of all the different activities to ensure that we achieve the same goal for prosperity for Nigeria and jobs for our children amongst others.

As a newly created agency of the government, what are the challenges you faced since you came on board and how are they being surmounted?

We have been lucky because the NQC is domiciled in the presidency, and working directly with the SGF, and our current office is through the grace of the SGF. We don’t even have the requisite funds to rent an office. In terms of teething problems, they are natural. We are having challenges that are common with a new organization. Here we have the advantages, of which one is not to make mistakes that others have made in the past. Structures have already been created, and that is what we call National Quality Infrastructures in the public sector.

So, we will not be duplicating what they are doing, but ensure strict implementation of policies while ensuring efficiency. NQC will not be as large as those organizations, but it will be lean and efficient. Well, funding will not be a problem, because the government cannot set up an organization without making proper preparation. Apart from government appropriation, the NQC is allowed to partner with development organizations, get grants, and donations, and use all of that to assist anywhere in the National Policy Infrastructure whether public or private.

For quite some time, Nigeria has been facing the issue of project rejects of some of our exports. As an agency of government that deals with quality, what could be the reason for this and what specific steps will you be taking to address this issue?

When a commodity is about to be exported, the private sector needs to be aware of certain procedures that must be followed before adequate certification is issued. The quality policy is complete because it takes into cognizance what happens in the destination country of any exported products while harmonizing their standards.

We are talking about growing the Nigerian economy and leveraging on the non-oil sector which has so much potentials. Our primary focus is the agricultural products. Now, the country’s export faces high level of product reject at the international market, most times, it is because the exporter does not know where to go for certification of a particular product.

For instance, Benue state women will suffer and harvest yams, they want to export this product to Europe, on getting to the airport, they will be stopped from taking this product outside the country because the yams do not meet with the standard they are accrediting.

All these happen because the agencies that certify them are not accredited to do so. So, it is not about the yam; the product has all the quality needed to be exported, but certification will become a hindrance. When such incidents happen, the exporter will quietly move the product to a nearby country like Ghana and export from there labelling the yams to have originated from Ghana.

There is need for sensitization because if only the exporters knew that SON had the accreditation and the facility to do the testing, that would have saved cost and also increased the exporter. Agencies like SON have certification capacities that are not being utilized by exporters, and that is because they are not aware. When you take your products outside the country and they are rejected, you are at loss, and the country is also at loss.

For us to grow an inclusive economy in the non oil sector, we must explore our capacities to ascertain where we have shortcomings in order to make holistic adjustments.