By Job Osazuwa

Members of the Society of Testing Laboratory Analysts of Nigeria (SoTLAN) have spoken out on the recent adulterated Petroleum Motor Spirit (PMS) imported into the country, described the development as a national embarrassment.

At a briefing in Lagos, the president of the society, Prof Olugbenga Ogunmoyela, said the development has also unleashed more hardship on Nigerians as well as disrupted the economy in the last week.

He expressed worry over how Nigeria, for many years, has persistently patronized mainly foreign laboratory companies in the analysis and certification of imported petroleum products into the country.

“It is said that the government agency in charge has come out to claim that the imported fuel had a high methanol content, which was somehow not detected during testing, because this is not in the normal testing protocol, before being released to depots for lifting.

“It is, therefore, our opinion that, as key stakeholders of high integrity, we should be involved in all forms of laboratory testing of products in Nigeria. This unfortunate experience, therefore, presents an opportunity for us to re-examine our present policy and look inwards to help strengthen the capacity of our local analytical laboratories by patronizing them, building capacity where necessary, and encouraging the growth of the sector, rather than continued dependence on foreign firms.

“It is therefore high time that we as professionals are given the opportunity to serve as a form of check and balance in the certification of quality of our fuel imports to help prevent the type of hardship and embarrassment we are currently experiencing on our fuel imports,” he said.

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On the contaminated fuel issue, Ogunmoyela said upon analysis, it was confirmed that the PMS product was contaminated with 20 per cent methanol, which is an illegal substance in Nigeria.

He said: “While it is reassuring that NNPC has taken necessary steps to reject further imports of this type of product from any trader supplying fuels which contain ethanol/methanol into Nigeria, the question is, why should we still be talking about substandard and contaminated products in a petroleum industry which has been prominent in our economy for over 60 years?

“SoTLAN also seizes this opportunity to appeal to the government to take urgent steps to support and empower public analysts and relevant testing laboratories to be able to safeguard the integrity of all materials for testing in our laboratories nationwide.

“We wish to reiterate that we can no longer afford to put the fate of the country in the hands of foreigners. We have scientists and professionals practising locally of high integrity, who are well respected and recognized all over the world, and we recognize the importance of supporting and investing in the development of our Laboratory Sector to international standards so that we can look inwards.”

He assured that SoTLAN was ready to co-operate and collaborate with the government and its agencies in making quality and sustainable conformance of products such as PMS possible in Nigeria.

The president added: “In 1977, the Federal Ministry of Health designated the first set of Food and Drugs Analysts who incidentally became the foundation members of the then Society of Public Analysts of Nigeria (SPAN). On recognition by the government, their designation as “Public Analysts” emerged, with this description taken after the Association of Public Analysts of the United Kingdom for the professional regulation and practice of Public Analysis.

Early in 2014, Professional Members saw the need to re-establish the Professional Body, which now emerged as SoTLAN, to be able to effectively carry out the functions of a Professional Association. This is the origin of the present-day SoTLAN, which started as the Society of Public Analysts of Nigeria (SPAN) in 1978.”