We’ve succeeded in docking many people selling unwholesome products —Irukera

Year 2019 in the agency

I think this was the biggest year in the life of this organisation yet. On January 30, that year, we succeeded on what the country had tried to do for 18 years, passing the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Act. For the first time, we now have a framework that addresses anti-competitive behaviour, which is good for both consumers and other businesses. People have asked me what does this come to? And I tell them, this is the most important piece of legislation to promote fairness for small businesses to be able to enter into the same market, where big businesses operate. You know that there are people who want to make their own soap. They don’t intend to sell big, like the big brands. They don’t want to be that big. But if the big brands in that market segment have already gone somewhere to make sure that they cannot even get raw materials, you know that is unfair. You know some people want to sell their own soft drinks, but they don’t want to compete with the one in Agidingbi or Oregun. But if those ones have said to everybody who distribute soft drinks that ‘if you take this other person’s drink, we will withdraw our businesses from you’, you know that is a barrier. So, the small guys suffer. That is what the law is about. It is designed to check all these. It will take a while for our culture to understand this, but as the institution settles down, and does some real tough big cases, people will shape up. It’s natural.

 

Our enforcement activities on the rise

On a daily basis, we are doing a lot more enforcement. Companies now respect the organisation more, so they are coming. A lot of things are happening. One big new area that we got into this year is our partnership with the Federal Road Safety Corps for a very ambitious plan on how to address road transportation, especially, interstate. For instance, driver-monitoring, driver-reporting, fleet-management, fleet-renewal, redundancy and recovery plans, when a vehicle breaks down halfway through, probable insurance for the trip. So, as we go into 2020, we need to address that. Another thing that happened last year was that we interdicted those who were selling inappropriate products. For instance, selling rice that is dangerous, and for over a year we were fighting to deal with the issue. So in 2019, we succeeded in getting them to court, very powerful people, who use all the powers, including the powers of the state to resist getting to court. But we’ve arraigned them. They are standing in the dock, and the trial has started. I personally go there. I was in Uyo thrice in 2019 for court. We’ve opened their cases, we’ve started taking evidence, and God helping us, and the judiciary staying with us, we will prosecute these people. What that does is that consequence is the greatest modifier of human behaviour. When people know that there are consequences for their conduct, they’ll behave differently.

 

Why partnership with the media is key

One of the things I said in 2017, when I was just coming to the Commission at was that ‘you are under- resourced, both budgetary and human capital, and there is just no way you will ever be sufficiently resourced, let’s agree on that. You will never have enough money for the mandate that you have, and you can never employ enough people to carry out the job that is ahead of you. So, to succeed you have to consider the most important partnership which is with the media’. At that meeting I remember saying that the last thing I’ll be courting the media for is to be in the news, because the reality of the benefit of news is for the people who watch or listen to the news, not the people in the news. The people in the news are doing something newsworthy. The focus is what they are doing and so far as a consumer protection regulator, your focus should be how people are treated, not the number of mentions you get in the media. And so, the media would not be an important partner for me if the objective was to be seen or to be heard. But the reason why the media still remains an important partner is how we talk about influencers and people who are active on social media and are able to push opinions, but the history of influencing and the origin for influencing framework is the media. And so, the partnership with the media for me is because you are influencers. It was because I have three objectives, the vibrant consumer space, where the consumers are very discriminatory, very demanding and insistent on their rights from those who provide goods and services to them.

 

Why consumers should demand for their rights

You know that the best mechanism for respect of rights is demand for rights, insistent must be made first. It doesn’t matter if we have a million lawyers, on every street in Nigeria, if you don’t have plaintiffs, there will be no defendants. So fundamentally, people must want to enforce their rights. So, the theory and framework for rights enforcement, lies in people who demand and insist on their rights. And the media, as influencers, have a big role to play. And that is the idea about being in the news for us. It is about making sure that we improve the space, not making sure people see our face. That is why, for me, you are so important.

 

The agency then and now

When I arrived here, it was a busy year. Then, if you had between 700 and 1000 complaints, it’s seen as a busy year. Right now, it’s not even a busy week when we get a thousand complaints. Just look at that scale. What you did in a year then to what you now experience within a week of the year. And so, what do you expect? There will be more complaints, and more resolved complaints. And the reason I say that is that even if I was asked to go and recruit, and I recruit 3,000 employees, the complaints would still go on, as it goes up, the number awaiting resolution too, will go up with it. So, it’s not going to be the regulator that will ultimately take us over the line, but what the regulator will do is to move the needle. It’s the kind of work you do, and the partnership with you that will ultimately make this land. You are not reporting, you are influencing.  So, when we are seeing you, we are seeing that other side of your role, we are seeing that other side that news does: influencing, providing information for a purpose, for respect of rights and for enforcements of rights.

The media is also important in that the companies are afraid of you, brand reputation is very important, and every organisation wants to find a way to protect their brands. In any given week of my job now, there would be one large company or the other, whose senior executives are struggling to meet with us because there is a problem. So, what you get to know as our media partners is only a fraction of what we do every day. We have some number of problems that arise and the people will say ‘let’s sort this out, Mr Regulator, we don’t need this out there, at all’. So, it’s more than you get to know. And so, the service providers are afraid of you. So, you must know that they want to keep away from you what is going on.

Finally, your work keeps, not only FCCPC, but all the regulators, on our toes. And in this ecosystem that I have described, the consumer part, the business part, the regulator part, we see how the entire system should work. That’s why it’s a strategic partnership. That’s why this engagement is very important. Our own work is really about the people and we truly want to deliver on it. In addition to the things we tell you, I want to beg you for one more thing, you tell us some things yourselves. Investigate.

 

Why we got involved in sex-for-grade issue.

When the sex-for-grade thing started, somebody said to me, ‘why are you putting out materials?’ And I said because students are consumers, and once I put something out, and these, our partners in the media, take it, everybody is on the hot seat. But you know that those things would go on the backburner, if the media don’t keep them on the front-burner. We don’t have the capacity to keep them on the front-burner. We honestly don’t, no matter what we do, we simply don’t have such capacity. You are the only one that can hold everybody accountable, including us.