The Director-General, Consumer
Protection Council, Mrs. Dupe Atoki, in this interview with IFEANYI
ONUBA, speaks on measures being taken by the council to check the
flagrant abuse of consumer rights
Some consumers are still not aware of the functions of the CPC. Can you tell us the mandate of the council?
The mandate of the CPC is two-pronged.
The first one is to provide redress to customers that have bought a
product or has paid for a service; there is a place to lodge complaints.
The second is to address those complaints and provide appropriate
redress, which can either be a replacement of the product, a repair or a
refund as the case may be and we have been working hard to ensure that
consumers, who complain, get a turnaround time to address these
complaints.
In addition to that, we also have a
mandate to sensitise customers. We know that anyone, who does not know
their right, cannot assert it and cannot ensure its protection. So, one
of my cardinal points when I resumed here is to see how consumers can be
properly educated on their rights because once they know their rights,
the job of the council is half done. At the point of engagement with the
business owners, we will be able to assert and ensure some level of
redress.
We also have a mandate of seeking ways
of eliminating hazardous products from the market and to compel
manufacturers of goods and services to comply with standards. But
basically, I think one of the major areas that consumers need to know
about our operations is that we are there to receive complaints when
they are not satisfied about the quality of goods and services.
What was the level of consumer rights violations when you took over at the council three years ago?
When I took over this office three years
ago, the level of consumer abuse was really deep and the impunity of
business owners was at its highest. Consumers were seen as an irrelevant
component of business; meanwhile they are the reason for the business.
The parlance that ‘consumer is king’ was
never part of the business and it was obvious in the relationship with
the CPC because at the beginning, business owners didn’t take the CPC
seriously. They refused to attend meetings; summons and ignored any
communication coming from the CPC. So, we found out that in every
sector, there was consumer abuse. The sectors included telecoms,
aviation and banking. Even with business owners doing retail, consumers
were not having any refund, repair or replacement of products found to
be defective. In fact, there were standing regulations in some
organisations that they would not offer any refund. So, everywhere you
turned at that point in time, there was abuse of consumers.
What were some of the steps you have taken since assumption of office to address consumer rights abuse?
Having analysed the depth of consumer
abuse, it was a herculean task for me to find out how to begin to engage
these challenges. So, after a lot of thoughts, I came out with a
four-year strategic plan, which was based mainly on sectoral
intervention. Prior to that, we had spent a lot of time at the CPC
addressing individual complaints and matched against the huge number of
abuse that I highlighted. It would take forever for us to address
several complaints and the resources we would need, both human and
financial, would be astronomical.
So, we came up with the quick way of
engaging sectors by looking at the challenges there, looking at the
abuse, correcting the anomalies so that the complaints that will arise
will be minimised. This has proved very productive for us because we
have engaged the food and beverage sector; satellite television sector;
and aviation sector. And what has come out of that is a great reduction
of the abuse.
This is because at the intervention,
what we do is in the form of an in-depth investigation into each sector
to find out why the complaint arose. If it is a product, we look into
their processes to see if they were inherent defects and then we come up
with a recommendation that will clean the system up. So, that has
helped in quickly resolving the issue.
To what extent have these interventions assist in checking the level of consumer abuse?
In the food and beverage, for instance,
there were huge complaints of rusty bottle tops, half-filled cans and
foreign substances in bottles. We engaged one of the leading bottlers,
who had the highest number of complaints about their products. We
engaged them and carried out on-site visits to their factories and at
the end of the day, we came up with recommendations to clean their
system and this led to a renewal of the various plants that they have in
the country.
Right now, at the end of six to seven
months investigation, the products and the bottles are now clean; the
cans are full now and there are fewer complaints about foreign
substances. So, this has translated into ensuring that all the bottlers
in that sector key into the process that we have engaged the leader of
the pack and every bottler in that group has improved on its processes.
So, we now have full compliance in the food and beverage sector.
We also intervened in the digital
satellite television service, which a lot of Nigerians subscribed to and
had several complaints. But again, rather than deal with individual
complaints, we invited the service providers, engaged with them, had an
in-depth enquiry into the challenges and how they could come up with
better services and we issued our orders. The major complaint from that
sector was the simultaneous release of service and payment. This has
been resolved because we directed the company to ‘re-tweek’ their
processes and all their equipment to be able to capture immediate
payment and immediate release of service; a lot of consumers are happy
about this.
You seem to be focussing
more on the private sector in checking the level of consumer rights
violation. What about government agencies that are seen not to be
performing their duties effectively?
Let me say that government agencies that
offer services to Nigerians as they stand now are very few. In the
past, we had the electricity sector that was mainly a service provider
offered by the government; now it has been unbundled and run like
private enterprises. We also had the telecoms sector that was strictly
government enterprises and that has also been privatised. So as we
speak, there are a few enterprises that are run solely by government
that offer services or products. What we have left now is the water
board. So, basically, the providers of service and manufacturers of
products are in the private sector. However, there is an organ of
government known as the Public Complaint Commission, which is available
to receive complaints with regard to activities that are generated by
public utilities. For us, the privatisation that took place has moved
most of the services to the private sector.
In checking the level of
consumer rights violation, some people are of the view that your mandate
is encroaching on the regulatory powers of some other agencies. How do
you react to this?
Governance is premised on the building
block principle. The CPC is the apex body charged with the protection of
consumer rights in the country. There is no single agency that has one
narrow mandate and has exclusivity of that mandate. It will not work
because there are certain things that some other agencies will be able
to support as a supplement and not as a core duty. So, we must make room
for those other agencies to supplement and make governance solid and be
able to deliver on the mandate.
We’ve worked with other sectors; the
Central Bank of Nigeria, for instance, we have signed a Memorandum of
Understanding with it to work together with the unit of their consumer
protection. We have an MoU with the Nigerian Communications Commission.
So, for those who are open to working in a manner that is in synergy
with us in protecting the rights of consumers, we usually work with
them.
The level of quality of
housing projects in the country in recent times has been very poor.
People pay for houses to developers and after many years, the houses are
not delivered to them. Is the council addressing this issue any time
soon?
We have actually intervened in that
sector. We have intervened in the housing sector because we are aware of
the various complaints that border on this sector with regard to the
delivery of housing after a huge sum of money has been collected. We
have issues about the quality of houses being delivered and so, we have
taken that area seriously. We have intervened on behalf of the consumers
in several cases. Some have actually led to court action against the
council and I can say, for instance, that we intervened in the case of
El-Salem Nigeria Limited that built a complex and consumers had issues
as regards the delivery. There is a court action going on and we are
also currently investigating another company that has offered some
mortgage to some consumers. That company has actually refused to attend
to summons, we are commencing prosecution. We are working on that sector
and it is something we feel strongly about when consumers are denied
their rights.
In recent times, the level
of complaints by Nigerians about arbitrary hike in bank charges has been
on the increase. What steps is the CPC taking to assist consumers in
the financial services sector?
We are in that sector and we have a
working relationship with the CBN. Some of these charges are approved by
the CBN and so it will not be in order for us to begin to find ways to
put the blame on the banks. Because if the CBN has approved these
charges, it becomes legal but what we do know that banks also have ways
in which they introduce charges that are not approved. They charge you,
for instance, when it should have been a current account charges for
savings account. We’ve resolved quite a number of them that have been
brought to our attention. We’ve also brought some of these to the
attention of the banks and they have done a number of reversals. But
with regard to those charges that customers call excessive, we have to
bring the issue to the attention of the CBN to see if some of these
charges can be reviewed. But our hands would be tied if they are
approved by the regulator.
The CPC recently ordered
First City Monument Bank to refund N1.5bn excess charges to the Bauchi
State Government. What is the level of compliance with that directive?
No, the matter is sub judice.
There are a lot of products in the market that don’t have warranty. What is the CPC doing in this regard?
We recently had a stakeholders’ meeting
with a number of manufacturers and a number of providers of services in
the electronic commerce sectors to intimate them with the plan of the
CPC to aggressively pursue the warranty and guarantee principles and get
them ready to begin to enforce them when consumers demand it. Because
we know in simple terms, if you buy a product with guarantee, that
product should meet the specifications that have been stated. But if the
product does not meet the standards that they put out, there will also
be remedy of a replacement, refund or repair. So, that is going on and
we have alerted all major dealers, especially in supermarket,
electronics sections, the e-commerce, and online traders. We’ve sent
them notices that at the end of December 2016, the CPC will begin to
carry out the enforcement on business owners that still have receipts
with words such as ‘goods purchased cannot be returned or ‘no return of
products’. You find these phrases on the receipts and this is contrary
to the regime of proper warranty system.
Would you seek to amend the CPC Act any time soon to engage in more proactive operations?
If we have the resources to implement
the law as it is, it will be fine. However, attempts to review the CPC
Act may not hold water anymore. Before now, there have been attempts to
review the Act, which was pending in the National Assembly for quite
some time. But in the last few days, the efforts to change the whole
landscape of doing business in Nigeria by enacting the competition law
are yielding fruits. The competition and consumer protection bill that
has been in the National Assembly for over 10 years, which has been
recycled over the years, seems to be seeing the light of the day and
that bill proposes to subsume the CPC into the competition and consumer
protection commission. This means that the CPC, as it stands, will cease
to exist. But in its place, there will be a commission with a
two-pronged mandate to protect consumers and to effect competition in
the business where we are able to ensure that monopoly, cartel and abuse
of dominant position are put under control. So, that has passed through
the second reading at the Senate.The information reaching us is that
the National Assembly is working to bring this bill to a closure before
the end of the year. That is a stronger body and all that we will need
to protect consumers and modify business is put in one place and there
won’t be any need for any review because all the reviews needed have
been captured in this law, which hopefully will transform the CPC.
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