We’ll be unsparing in our onslaught against illegal money lenders —FCCPC boss

The Executive Vice-Chairman, Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC), Mr. Babatunde Irukera, recently led a team from the Commission to raid some illegal money lending companies in Lagos. In this interview with AKIN ADEWAKUN he explains reasons for the raid and the resolve of the Commission to rid the country’s financial space of the unwholesome practice, among other sundry issues. Excerpts:

WHAT exactly do you hope to achieve with this enforcement?

Investigation so far has led us to establish who the big illegal money lenders are. Most of them we’ve taken out. You’ll agree with me that there is certainly a significant reduction in the defamatory messages and the unacceptable lending practices. But it is not over, yet. The target today is one of the biggest ones, Soko Lending, that operates amorphously with different brand names. It’s a notorious company, and it has demonstrated both penchant for versatility, to be able to recalibrate itself, very quickly. This is not the first time we’ve taken this kind of enforcement against it, and it has also shown that it is unwilling to subject itself to regulation. We are pretty certain that after the efforts today, we’ll hold Soko Lending accountable, just like we’ve held others accountable, and they are going to have a very difficult time,  doing business without complying to the law of the land.

We’ve got operatives in at least one other location as we speak right now, and they  are doing exactly what we have done here. So we believe that our success with this enforcement here,  today,  would address a significant number of the remaining violations.

 

Unfortunately they keep devising new methods of harassing contacts of debtors, ranging from harassment, intimidation to even threat. What is the Commission doing to curtail this?

Obviously, the method in which they were doing their business,  before, has become difficult, due to regulatory intervention. So they are migrating. You have to understand that in a technological age, technology promotes a leverage for people who want to do legal and illegal business. But we are capturing all these, and just like we intervened in the previous situation that made it difficult for them to do business, we’ll continue to do that. And I believe some of the things that we’ve done today will make their business very difficult. The fact is that  the businesses can not exist by themselves. They need technology, and they need the service providers. So, the more we are able to restrain the provisions of those services to them, the more difficult their businesses will do. While I acknowledge and recognize that it’s a continuing problem, we must also acknowledge and recognize that where we are today, on the 18th of August, is definitely not where we were on the 10th of March, when we got involved. It was far worse than this,  it was growing at exponential rate. That growth is not happening now. The commitment we made at FCCPC to the public at the time is that we’ll stay on it, until we are able to get a hand around it, and that’s what we’ve done. Even what we are doing today demonstrates that commitment. We are unrelenting in our efforts. And we’ll be unsparing in this fight against those doing this business illegally. They can be rest assured we will make doing the business very hard for them.

 

The commission once complained about Google not cooperating with it in this fight against the unethical money lenders in Nigeria? What is the situation now?

The communication channel between us and Google is good now. They have been responding very timely to our requests. For instance, the evidence we discover here suggests it is Soko Lending company. We discover there is another app that we previously didn’t know, and we’ve  just communicated that  to Google now, and we expect the app to be taken down before the end of the day.

 

But some of the apps, discovered during the last enforcement, are still active on Google Playstore?

No. there is no app that we asked Google to take down that is still on its Playstore. Absolutely none. However have we been able to reach every single money lender that is violating the law? Not yet. But for the ones that we have  intervened with, either through our investigation, or they come up with it to the Commission themselves after previous raids, none of them is on Google Playstore at this time.

Also, one of the things,  coming up today is the interim framework, where Google would have to show some regulatory approvals before  putting up any other app for business in Nigeria. That is it will look at their businesses, their policy, their operating procedure with the law, both privacy and consumer protection and fairness requirements, before putting them on a play.

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