Nigeria to get safety requirement standard for mobile phone

Nigeria to get safety requirement standard for mobile phones
Ben Uzor Jr
Nigeria’s mobile phone market is on the verge of transformation as stakeholders in the country have decided to join forces to initiate a minimum safety requirement program aimed at tackling the influx of substandard mobile phones into the country, Business Day can now reveal. The minimum safety standard, an international benchmark is expected to be in place by the end of the year and would address the menace of sub-standard GSM handsets flooding the Nigerian market by the day. It was further gathered that the plan with sturdy backing from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON), phone manufacturers and the National Environmental Standards and Regulation Enforcement Agency (NESREA) would ensure that safety specifications by different manufacturers of mobile handsets are strictly adhered to. BusinessDay also learnt that although there are a number of type-approved handsets by the regulatory agency, the entry of refurbished and substandard handsets into the country has remained high. Richard Adewunmi, head of Electrical Engineering department of Lagos office who confirmed this while speaking to Business Day in a telephone conversation yesterday stated that the industry wide initiative would address the menace. He said: “We are trying to tackle the possible health problems associated with exposure to Electro-Magnetic Radiation (EMR) from sub-standard mobile phones.
All stakeholders in the industry would all be part of the technical committee that would come up with the standard.” According to Adewunmi, there is already an international standard for the manufacture of mobile phones and that is what his agency and others are hoping to nationalise in the country. Business Day also gathered that in 1998, the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP), an independent body recognised for its expertise by the World Health Organisation (WHO), issued guidelines for radio signal exposure that are applicable to mobile phones, base stations and other wireless devices which have become de-facto world standard.
With an active subscriber base of about 67.8 million, Nigeria is yet to enforce through appropriate legislation the ICNIRP guideline as in most other countries.
In addition, the absence of this has made the country a dumping ground for all kinds of handsets which could be detrimental to human health. Inferior handsets have health implications because of radiation, which is harmful to human beings. However, the target markets for the inferior handsets are the third world countries, including Nigeria where demand for such product is so high because of the low purchasing power of the citizenry.