The Standard Organisation of Nigeria has said that all new and existing steel companies must produce their products to meet the minimum requirements using optical emission spectrometer.
The Head of Inspectorate and Compliance, SON, Mr. Bede Obayi, who represented the Director-General, Standards Organisation of Nigeria, Dr. Joseph Odumodu, said at a press conference in Lagos on Wednesday that this current administration came into office, it had shown particular interest in the steel sub sector to ensure that all the steel products produced in the nation meet the minimum requirements.
Odumodu had, in an interview on the sideline of the conference, explained that every steel company in the country would need to purchase the right universal textile testing machines and the optical emission spectrometer for chemical analysis to ensure that every steel produced in the country were of good standard.
Going forward, he said he called a stakeholders' meeting, where he gave steel producers the marching order to ensure that steel manufacturers acquired the right testing machines for chemical analysis to ensure that they gave exactly what the strength should be.
He said, “All the steel companies in the country today have complied with these order .The next step is the implementation and monitoring, to ensure that all the products that are coming out is properly tested and this will do on a monthly basis to ensure that any product that comes out of the company complies with the standard.”
He added, “Most of the steel companies in the country have either acquired the Mandatory Conformity Assessment Programme or are almost at the verge of acquiring the certificate.
“Today, I am proud to say that locally made steel products especially the reinforcement bars produced by Nigerian companies are of the right quality and can compete with imported product. In terms of the chemical composition, the sizes of the materials, which ranges from 8millimetres, 10millimitres, 12millimetres and the likes.”
He said such should be upgraded to the weldable steel grade, using the tempo process to produce weldable steel bars that had very high strength with carbon equivalent values.
According to Obayi, these are comparable with imported products from Ukraine and Turkey, which are known for steel works.
He said, “We believe that we are taking a right step in the right direction in ensuring that these products that are imported are monitored from the ports but the only problem that we are having presently has to do with the directives given to us to leave the ports.
But today, we can bet you that the locally produced steel products are properly monitored and they are complying while the imported ones are not also doing badly because we have not had cases of the substandard ones in the course of our monitoring exercises where we go from warehouse to warehouse to ensure that those ones we missed at the ports also meet the minimum requirements.”
He pointed out that Nigerians preferred imported steel bars over locally produced ones, stressing, however, that “both have the same strength according to the test carried out by the organisation.”
He added, “If the right sizes are not used where they are supposed to be used, the environmental impact analysis not well carried out and of course an unqualified engineer to handle such a structure, a collapse is likely to happen.”
According to him, anytime there is a building collapse in the country, SON checks to find out the kind of steel bars and sizes that are used at different levels.
He explained further, “You do not use any kind of rods in the construction of a building, you must know the specifications to be used in constructing any structure you are building. We take the samples and even make sure that they were used in the right proportions and we also look at other aggregates such the number of blocks and cement used.
