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Nigeria National Accreditation Service (NiNAS) joined the global accreditation community on 9 June, in Abuja, to celebrate the tenth World Accreditation Day (WAD). NiNAS, created under the aegis of the EU-funded UNIDO National Quality Infrastructure Project, hosted stakeholders from the construction industry, as well as laboratory professionals, media personnel and representatives from the public and private sector. The theme of this year was Accreditation: Delivering confidence in construction and the built environment. The celebration is the first time NiNAS marked the event.

The Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Raji Fashola, gave the keynote address, represented by his Special Adviser on Policy and Legal Matters, Lanre Akinsola. The Minister urged for building standards to be “met and kept, to ensure that the integrity of the construction sector is not compromised, to ensure that the quality of our construction materials meet international standards, and to ensure that our professionals are not only competent on paper.”

UNIDO Representative and Director, Regional Office, Nigeria Hub, Jean Bakole, emphasized that “NiNAS will work to the standards set by the International Organisation for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electro-technical Commission, to deliver impartial, objective and technically competent accreditation services to the Nigerian economy.” Mr. Bakole highlighted the importance of accreditation in the construction and building environment to the Nigerian economy by fostering competitiveness, marketability, and job creation, as well as health, and safety.

UNIDO NQIP Project Manager, Raymond Tavares, encouraged Nigeria to embrace NiNAS and the principles of World Accreditation Day, “as an important pillar of the national quality infrastructure.” He said, “World Accreditation Day is … a reminder that a weak national quality infrastructure can be a major reason for human injury, and structural and material failure in construction. A good accreditation system provides part of the solution to these problems.”

The 2017 theme for World Accreditation Day is a timely one, as Nigeria has recently recorded five collapsed buildings, four of which occurred in May, this year, in Lagos. “In less developed economies, existing commercial and domestic properties, as well as infrastructure projects such as roads, bridges and transport networks, tend to be highly vulnerable to climate and disaster risk,” read the joint statement issued by International Accreditation Forum (IAF) and International Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation (ILAC) chairs, presented by the NiNAS Board of Trustees chairperson, Dr. Dahiru Adamu. NiNAS CEO, Celestine O. Okanya said that the theme, “reminds us of the danger posed by constructions that were not designed, approved, built and/or inspected by accredited conformity assessment bodies.” He added that “accreditation can provide support in every stage of construction” from personnel to construction industries’ management systems, to laboratories that provide services to building material producers and regulators.

The President of the Architects Registration Council (ARCON), Umaru Aliyu, represented by Mansur Kurfi and the President of the Council for Registration of Engineers in Nigeria (COREN), Kashim Abdul Ali, represented by Dr. Mayas Adoyi, echoed the “need for more work to be done in the construction industry,” concerning the accreditation and certifying process of equipment and materials and expressed readiness to partner with NiNAS.
NQIP International Expert on Accreditation, Stephen Cross, gave a brief lecture on the impact of accreditation, sharing success stories from another UNIDO-implemented National Accreditation Project, the Southern Africa Development Community Accreditation Service (SADCAS), and highlighted the ECOWAS Regional Accreditation System. This was followed by a highly engaging interactive session that raised the question: “What should be the national response strategy in the context of opportunities offered by accreditation?”

The event closed with a vote of thanks from the UNIDO NQIP Chief Technical Advisor, Dr. Shaukat Malik, who implored the construction industry to adopt accreditation within its systems. The advocacy for accreditation in Nigeria can best be summed in the words of NiNAS CEO, “Integration of accreditation system in our construction industry shall reduce the number of building collapse to barest minimum.”

On the 9th of June 2017, Nigeria National Accreditation Service (NiNAS) will join the global accreditation community to celebrate the World Accreditation Day (WAD). The WAD, is a day set aside globally by the International Accreditation Forum (IAF) and the International Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation (ILAC) to create awareness on Accreditation.

NiNAS has just recently been successfully established through the second component of the National Quality Infrastructure project funded by European Union and implemented by United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and the Government of Nigeria. For NiNAS and its stakeholders, this year’s celebration is special as NiNAS will be unveiled to all Nigerians at this occasion.

NiNAS accreditation services shall build confidence in Nigeria made products and services for local and international trade by ensuring quality and integrity of these products and services. The establishment of NiNAS is quite timely to support Nigeria and its people in diversification of economy to the non-oil based sources of foreign exchange. This will be achieved by providing accreditation of conformity assessment services, which was hitherto unaffordable and difficult to access, within the reach of conformity assessment bodies (CABs) such as testing and calibration laboratories, inspection and certification bodies.

This implies that these CABs operating within Nigeria now have access to affordable accreditation services that can demonstrate their competence to carry out specific tasks. NiNAS shall grant accreditation to CABs that meet the requirements of specific standards of International Organization for Standards (ISO), and is working towards ensuring that the NiNAS accreditation brand is recognized and accepted globally.
This year’s theme is “Accreditation: Building Confidence in the Construction and Built Environment”. It focuses on how accreditation can support professionals in the construction industry to deliver quality and safe infrastructures. This cannot be achieved without conformity assessment. Accreditation plays the role of ensuring that conformity assessment bodies that test, inspect and certify these constructions are themselves conforming to international standards. Accreditation services can be applied to every component in the construction industry starting from building materials, construction processes, and personnel certification of architects, surveyors, engineers, and all others involved in this process, as well as other sectors of our economy.

Nigeria has recorded a number of building collapses resulting from cases of substandard construction projects. The situation is worsened by non-professionals involved in obtaining and executing construction contracts. NiNAS plans to use this day to bring all stakeholders together to discuss how accreditation can be used as a tool to protect our citizens and their investment by bringing sanity into the construction and built environment through application of accreditation services.

Scroll over the image below for an illustration of the impact and extent that accreditation has in the construction sector and the built environment.

The Nigeria National Accreditation Service (NiNAS) held its annual Board of Trustees(BoT) meeting in Abuja. Dr. Adamu Dahiru the BoT Chairman while declaring the meeting open express satisfaction with work so far done in ensuring that NiNAS is recognized in Nigeria. He also assured of the board’s full commitment in ensuring that accreditation service in Nigeria would achieve its aims.

The Board members while commending the Management staff for their great effort in ensuring that the mandate of NiNAS is fully deployed in compliant with international best practices also reviewed and endorsed the 2017 10-point agenda with a Theme “BUILDING ON THE SOLID FOUNDATION.” The 10 Point agenda are drawn from the 2017 workplan.  The Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Celestine Okanya enumerated the 10 Points to include:

1. Full Compliance with all requirements of Corporate Affairs.
2. Strengthening the Governance Structure
3. Investing on a World Class Information & Computer Technology Infrastructure
4. Review and adoption of all draft operational policies
5. Capacity Building of all Staff members
6. Enrolling Qualified Assessors and conducting needed further trainings.
7. Conducting internal and external audit of NiNAS QMS, Policies and Procedure
8. Implementing NiNAS media and communication plan
9. Implementing an achievable sustainable plan
10. Conduct of Pilot Accreditation of Laboratories in Nigeria.

History was made on the 7^th and 8^th  of February 2017 as United Nations Industrial Development Organization successfully held the 1^st Nigeria Food Safety and Investment forum.  The forum brought together in one room the Honorable Ministers of Agriculture and Rural Development, Health, and representatives of the Honorable Ministers of Environment; Industry, Trade & Investment; Science and Technology, Food Safety Regulatory Agencies, the Food Industry, Research Institutions, Relevant professional bodies, Development partners, the Academia, Media, and the SMEs respectively. Other participants included the representative of the UNIDO Regional Director in Nigeria, Director & Officer In Charge, UNIDO, NQI Project Manager, NQI Project Assistant from Vienna respectively and National and International Food Safety experts.

The milieu of the forum was aptly set on the dwindling Nigeria economy and the urgent need for diversification of its economy to non-oil sectors. This was necessitated by the need to translate the massive investment by the Government and industries in the past five years into foreign exchange earnings, and the need for the small and medium enterprises to fully harness their potentials through products that meet and possibly exceed international standards. The Nigeria National Quality Infrastructure Project (NQIP) implemented by UNIDO and funded by European Union has been working assiduously with the Government and people of Nigeria to develop the five (5) quality infrastructure components that are imperative in the actualization of quality and competitiveness in the global market.

UNIDO has among other things, successfully established the Second Component of the NQIP, to establish National Accreditation Body, through collaboration with relevant stakeholders. The Nigeria National Accreditation Service (NiNAS) was established to grant formal recognition to Conformity Assessment Bodies (laboratories, inspection and certification bodies) that have demonstrated competence in carrying out the specified conformity assessment tasks. Accreditation when granted makes the output (results) of these conformity assessment bodies (CAB) accepted globally, thereby engendering confidence and trust in products and services certified by these laboratories, inspection and certification bodies.

The Food Safety and Investment Forum therefore provided an opportunity for NiNAS to showcase its services among stakeholders and interested parties, educate and promote the use of accredited CABs, and advocate for investment in food testing laboratories. The critical role laboratory testing plays in quality assurance and quality control, diagnosis and management of food borne diseases and regulation of food produce and products was a recurring decimal in the presentations and discussions. The Chairman, Board of Trustees NiNAS, was on ground and did not leave the participants in doubt of the need for accreditation in Nigeria. The lead Technical Adviser of the NQIP project, Dr. Hussein Shaukat nailed it by demonstrating that the quality infrastructure is incomplete without a national accreditation body. While Dr. Lawrena Okoro, Director Laboratory Accreditation highlighted how existing laboratories can be made more efficient and new investments in laboratory targeted to address the existing gaps, rather than the current trend of duplicating capacities which is obviously under serving the needs of the country.

For NiNAS, the best part of the forum was the exhibition booth which was deliberately designed with NiNAS logo and roll up banner and brochures to give NiNAS good visibility at this forum. These efforts paid off as NiNAS played host to the Honourable Ministers, Minister’s representatives, International Experts, Director Generals of Agencies and Companies, and Top Government Officials that attended the Forum. The CEO, Celestine Okanya and the International Expert, Stephen Cross took turns to explain to the dignitaries the benefits of accreditation and the value that the activities of NiNAS will bring to the public sector, and particularly in  the regulatory regime for produce, products and services. NiNAS Staff present also had one-on-one interaction with 95 other participants who visited the NiNAS booth. The good wishes, excitement at the establishment of NiNAS, expression of desire to collaborate, extended invitations by the Honourable Ministers and Companies for more interaction, expression of the interest to participate as assessors and the excitement by the Conformity Assessment Bodies that accessible and affordable accreditation service is here made it all the more worthwhile.

Being the first ever exhibition participated by NiNAS, the management is not basking in the euphoria of the successful outing. Rather, it has gone back to the drawing board to ensure that NiNAS is well positioned to meet the expectations of its clients and interested parties. The management also uses this opportunity to congratulate the Government of Nigeria and UNIDO on the successful hosting of the forum and is looking forward to this forum being an annual event.

• June 9^th 2016 marks World Accreditation Day, a global initiative to raise awareness on the importance of accreditation.
• NiNAS, the national accreditation body in Nigeria, celebrates World Accreditation Day for the first time.
• Accreditation supports quality and new business opportunities.

Since 2008 the countries around the World have celebrated World Accreditation Day on June 9^th.