Lubricant Producers Association of Nigeria (LUPAN) has called on the Comptroller General of Customs, Alhaji Abudullahi Dikko, to help curb the influx of substandard lubricants into the country.

In a courtesy call to the Comptroller General of Customs, recently, the LUPAN executive council members condemned the rising trend of the importation of substandard lubricants which mostly were produced from recycled oil and lack the required additives.

The association alleged that the substandard products were sold at reduced prices to unsuspecting customers to the detriment of genuine locally produced lubricants. “The outcome of which includes malfunctioning or damage to machineries, environmental pollution and of course loss of sales for local producers which in turn result to low capacity utilisation and eventual closure of production plants. All these adversely affect the nation’s economy not to talk of the attendant loss of jobs that will arise,” the association stated.

“It is on this basis that LUPAN has taken the responsibility of bringing the awareness of this disturbing trend to relevant regulatory bodies and government agencies in order to galvanise them to take necessary steps against the importation of substandard lubricants into the country,” it stated.

According to Mr Emeka Obidike, the Executive Secretary of LUPAN, the body had in the recent past paid similar visits to Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) and Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON). He called for the support of the Comptroller General of Customs to ensure that these products do not indiscriminately enter the country through any of the ports.

Mr Emeka also urged the Comptroller General to appeal to the Federal Government through the Ministry of Finance to review the import duty tariff regime on imported lubricants and the chief raw material (base oil) used locally to produce lubricants.

He said under the HS CODE 2719:1939, both the finished product i.e. imported lubricant and the raw material (base oil) attracted the same duty tariff of 10%, which obviously gave undue advantage to imported lubricants over the locally produced lubricants.