Fresh protection for consumers through inter-agency collaboration

IT is bad enough for Nigerians to contend with importers of fake and substandard products from Asia, but how do one explain internal exploitation by goods and service providers in our own country.

This had been the case over the years in the country. Consumers are treated with disdain; good covered by warrantee develops fault and the seller develops cold feet or even tell you to go rot in hell for all he cares.

This collaboration ought to have been reached like yesterday to protect consumer as the only apex government agency given this mandate because there are no other agency in Nigeria given the mandate to protect consumers.  Some organizations may have consumers’ protection unit but they don’t have the power to prosecute for non-compliance or disobedience of summons like we do.  So, at the end of the day, we remain the apex body set up by government with adequate powers to protect consumers’ interest in every area.  The EFCC on is part is responsible for preventing, combating financial and economic crime.  It investigates and prosecutes where the need arises

This was until the Consumer Protection Council (CPC) came to the rescue with the aim of redressing the widespread anomalies.

Indeed, CPC came to ensure consumers get value for their money and redress cases of dissatisfaction in trade transactions.

The council, in Abuja recently, went a step further to shield Nigerians from financial fraud and other forms of malpractices hitherto ignored by consumers while goods and services providers continue to smile to the banks.

For instance, it is easy for individual consumer in the telecoms sector to overlook the N50 deducted from their airtime for services they never subscribe to, but  with the estimated 100 million Nigerians on the mobile network,  the N50 in 100 million places is a big deal.

It is with this realization and the need for Nigerians to occupy their kingship positions as major determinants of profits made by business owners that the CPC went into collaboration with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to ensure that citizens no longer suffer needlessly as a result of the activities of unfaithful business owners.

At the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) the Director General of the council, Mrs Dupe Atoki, said the council will be further empowered by the instrumentality of the MoU, noting that all Nigerians are consumers of either goods or services.  She lamented that much as Nigerians are supposed to be kings in their own right by setting agenda for business owners, they are not occupying the throne they ought to occupy.

Her words: ‘We have the resources to make business thrive and without your patronage, there is no business or profit and therefore we should always get value for our money wherever we put our money.  But we do know that there are certain circumstances where established and regulated business do business but sidetracks the consumers, give less value or no value at all.  There are also circumstances where people who have no reason to be in business who are fraudsters also engage in one form of business or the other with the sole aim of defrauding the consumers.  It is at this point that we think that there is a need for harmony between the two agencies’.

She explained that the nexus between the council and EFCC stemmed from the fact that the anti-graft commission has the capacity to network with other anti-graft bodies across the borders of Nigeria in order to apprehend fraudsters. 

Atoki said this capacity of the EFCC will be needed by her agency to arrest those who may want to swindle Nigerians of their hard earned money and bolt away with the believe that they could always come back when the coast is clear to enjoy their ill gotten loot. 

‘This collaboration ought to have been reached like yesterday to protect consumer as the only apex government agency given this mandate because there are no other agency in Nigeria given the mandate to protect consumers.  Some organizations may have consumers’ protection unit but they don’t have the power to prosecute for non-compliance or disobedience of summons like we do.  So, at the end of the day, we remain the apex body set up by government with adequate powers to protect consumers’ interest in every area.  The EFCC on is part is responsible for preventing, combating financial and economic crime.  It investigates and prosecutes where the need arises’.

‘The end destination of every product in market place is consumption, however the market place has never been devoid of market failures, sharp practices, unfair trade of producers of goods and services all of which at one point in time  result in financial loss to consumers.  Over the years, a number of complaints have been received which bothers on fraudulent savings and loan schemes, deceptive and misleading mortgage schemes, scams emanating from online forex trading, fraudulent education admission scams, deceptive business practices like what they call the pyramid sales.  All these are aimed at deceiving unsuspecting and vulnerable consumers who puts in their money and found themselves on ground zero at the end of the day with their lost. This money is in millions of naira and sometimes in foreign currency’.

Citing the recent land scam by a company which went into agreement with the Nigeria labour congress (NLC) with the bargain that it would provide houses for civil servants after they had made initial deposit for the purported houses, Atoki said this scheme has negatively affected a lot of civil servants who thought that they would not have any issue since the NLC was involved.

‘The involvement of the NLC gave the civil servants the confidence that the scheme was authentic but as it turns out, a land was promised, money was paid into a particular account.  What has transpired is that land never existed anywhere allocated to this company, civil servants had parted with their hard earned money and the promoter of the scheme is nowhere to be found.  NLC officials have claimed some level of innocence as they believe they also had been deceived as they cannot account for the promoter.  This is where the EFCC’s role comes handy with the mandate they have.  They can find the promoter wherever he is in the world either in Nigeria or outside the country’.

She however questioned what the lots of victims of the scenario she painted would be even if the EFCC is able to institute an arrest and prosecute the promoter.  With court verdict which may either jail or request the promoter to pay a certain amount of fine, Atoki said there is still need to be done to assuage the victims. 

She said it is therefore the responsibility of the CPC to seek redress and ensure that victims do not lose out entirely.  She admitted that with this magnitude of scam, the council requires the instrumentality of an organization like the EFCC which would make seeking redress faster because of its capacity to arrest anywhere in the world and carry out investigation with the apparatus of the police and other security agencies which the CPC do not have. 
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The EFCC boss, Ibrahim Lamorde, harped on the need for consumers to stop ignoring the unfair treatment meted out to them by business owners in Nigeria.  He said situations where consumers do not complain about their disappointment in products and services is not encouraging and would not help agencies saddled with the responsibility to see to their protection.

Lamorde said Nigerians should begin to come forth to complain instead of just murmuring to themselves and letting the perpetrators go without being reprimanded. He said that Nigerians are the ones giving much power to product and service providers to cheat them.

‘Malpractices are going on in all these places where we should be provided goods and services, but the sad aspect of it is that most of us keep quiet, nobody complains, nobody raises any eyebrow, we just count our losses and we move on.  I think that is a wrong way of approaching things and that is why the CPC is set up by law to protect all of us’.

Citing situations where products do not measure up to the acclaimed weight on the package, contaminated drinks, unnecessary delays in the Airports and flight cancellation without remorse, illicit promo done by the telecoms sector, call drops among others, the EFCC boss said there is need for Nigerians to get to a level where no one will be able to take them for granted.

‘There are many examples we could talk about, but i think we should all take advantage of the existence of the CPC and that is why the collaboration we have been having and sealing it up with this MoU will be useful for every citizens of this country.  We need to get value for our money.  It is a contract, as consumers you have completed your own part of the contract by making payment for the product and service, the onus is on the producer to be faithful to his own part by giving out the exact quality and quantity of what had been paid for.  We cannot continue to murmur to ourselves and we assume live goes on’.

Lamorde said the success recorded by CPC when it took up a multinational company in Nigeria is an enviable feat adding that most of the evils multinationals perpetrate in the country are things they dare not to do in other countries of the world or their native country.