We Need Robust Enforcement to Protect Consumers’ Rights – Irukera

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The Director-General/Chief Executive Officer of the Consumer Protection Council (CPC), Mr. Babatunde Irukera, in this interview speaks on enforcing enactments to protect consumers against abuses or malpractices by companies and organizations. He also sheds light on recent interventions of the council in the aviation industry as it relates to consumers. Excerpts:

What is the state of the CPC with regard to consumer protection?

The council that I head now has nine offices, one in each of the six geopolitical zones with headquarters in Abuja and offices in Kano and Lagos. Approximately, right now we have about 266 employees spread in these nine offices. But Nigeria is a country of approximately 200 million people in 774 local government areas; 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory. What meaningful coverage can you expect from a council of nine offices and 266 people? How can you expect that council to effectively reach out to the 200 million people in this vast country? Not to mention that there are approximately 300 languages in Nigeria. So the effectiveness of the council is not entirely about the work of the people in the council. It is really about a systemic approach to protection.

 And what is the level of synergy with the stakeholders?

There are four main stakeholders in the protection ecosystem. The number one stakeholder is the council, the number two is the media; the number three stakeholders are the consumers and the number stakeholder in the protection ecosystem – the companies themselves.

The companies have an obligation to protect and that is what I have been saying: that consumers’ protection cannot be an ancillary or corollary part of your business, it must be the core of your business. Even with that recognition of the companies’ responsibility, internally they will always run into the conflict of protection and profit and so that is why they need someone who regulates them. That is why they need the media watchdog watching over them. That is why I put them at the very bottom in the regulatory framework.

Consumers are the potential victims and they will only enforce what they know as their rights. If they don’t know their rights, they will be unable to enforce them. Even when they know their rights, unless there is a robust enforcement mechanism, their right is still not being respected. For instance, if companies know that they can violate the right of consumers, whether those consumers know or not, and get away with it, will the companies respect those rights? They won’t.

But CPC is getting more involved in recent times with aviation. What really is the interest of the agency here?

Talking about aviation, it is the most important catalyst for economic expansion in the world today. If you think about what grows the economy, the fundamental thing is movement of goods and people. Aviation today moves far more people than any other means, whether it is domestically, regionally, intercontinentally or otherwise. Aviation moves far more people and many people travel on holidays. The last time I checked, more than 65 per cent of air travels especially on the international route were business travelers.

Now you might say that ships move a lot more goods internationally, that is true. But if you imagine how many cargo flights you can operate in the same amount of time that one ship will move thing from one country to another, just imagine how much you are moving by aviation, especially movement of perishable goods. Some of the fruits that can be loaded on the tarmac in Makurdi tonight can be consumed in Doha tomorrow. It is more so in our country where the rail system has broken down and it is only redeveloping. So movement of goods and people is a key factor in aviation.

And what’s the role of CPC in all of this?

Our role in the aviation industry is to build consumer’s confidence. Even when the regulatory authority like the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) has done all its work in terms of safety and all of that, we still need to work with them to promote confidence in the industry. That is why the collaboration between NCAA and CPC is inescapable. The law establishes the CPC for the purpose of protecting consumers in every single facet of the economy even in the environment.

Overlapping regulation is not confusion and it is not an error. It is not a legislative blunder, it is deliberate design. All over the world, overlapping regulation is a deliberate design and it always underscore the importance of what is being regulated, it is a way to make sure that subject of that regulation is sufficiently regulated.

That there is consumer protection in the NCAA is not mutual exclusivity, it is not entirely a covering of that space, it is because the government wants to make sure nothing drops. Secondly, the sector regulator by their very nature may not be in the very best position to truly, fully, completely provide end-to-end protection for consumers. The best working mechanism is the collaboration between that consumer authority and the Civil Aviation Authority.

I like to say that I also belong to the aviation industry. I, as an individual with a small team of about 200 lawyers in the law firm that I worked, wrote the entire consumer protection regulations of NCAA; I wrote it all. We were consultants to NCAA under Dr. Harold Demuren and Capt. Fola Akinkuotu as DG. We also wrote the economic regulations that are being enforced by the Department of Air Transport of the same NCAA. So I know the space well. But now I am Director-General of CPC and the law says the council shall, as part of its duties, enforce any enactment for the protection of consumers. This means I can sit in Abuja and enforce even the regulations of the NCAA because it is an enactment for the protection of consumers.

I want to tell you that in 2017, aviation had the third highest number of complaints received in the CPC. One of the reasons we have not really succeeded in aviation is because we have not found the right combination of regulatory tools. I am about to hold a meeting with NCAA, the delays and cancellations that we are experiencing, the approach we have will not solve it. The reason is that by the time the delay occurs, the problem has already crystallized.

I know that there have been some apprehensions and discomfort in the industry about statements being released by the CPC with respect to aviation incidents. My question is, we do not know how bad things can go when things go right. It is when they go wrong that we realize how bad the situation is. The level of apprehension in aviation travels, if somebody wasn’t stepping in very quickly, if those interventions were not coming almost immediately, where do you think things would have gone? What will be the public perception today if there are repeated incidents over a period of four weeks? Because aviation is very technical and specialized, people don’t know how it operates. People tell you, ‘only God saved us, if you see the way the aircraft was shaking’. The reality of it is that, that shaking itself does not present a danger. So they need information at that point in time. It is the intervention that ultimately promotes confidence in the industry.

You talked about aviation having the third highest complaints in 2017, which sectors had the first and second highest complaints received by the CPC? 

Electricity and telecommunication. We are unable to provide the data right now because our work is very manual and so it is usually a month end calculation that I get and it is usually segmented based on industry. How many have been resolved? How many are still pending? But in the coming weeks, we are deploying an automated system which is one of the projects I started very early after I got on the job. That automation system will give us real time data. So if you are asking me this question about this time next month I would be able to look right here on my iPad, I would be able to tell you. But looking from the last report, the complaints we are receiving have gone up by up to 40 per cent. Our resolution rate has also gone at over 78 per cent within the reporting period. Our benchmark is to be able to resolve at least 96 per cent of complaints within any reporting period.

What will you do if the law that you enforce conflicts with the Standard and Recommended Practices of the International Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA)?

With respect to ICAO standard and recommended practices, I am more described in this context as an aviation lawyer than anything else even though I don’t think I am. So there is a coincidence of someone who knows those ICAO standard and recommended practices being the Chief Executive of CPC. I can’t even count how many BASA (Bilateral Air Service Agreement) I participated in on behalf of Nigeria representing the Ministry of Aviation and the NCAA including the big ICAO annual meetings. So there is absolutely no conflict in any law in Nigeria with ICAO recommended practices and standards. There is nothing that the CPC is doing with respect to consumer protection that conflicts with ICAO practices.

A lot of people are worried that there is no collaboration between your agency and NCAA and that you are usurping the role of NCAA?

The first agency that I met with when I took over was the NCAA and the director of the Consumer Protection Directorate was gracious enough to come and visit. In fact the first complaint that was resolved under my watch as director-general was aviation complaint. It was that Turkish Airlines had carried some children from a school in Abuja to Houston and it has become a problem and a joint enforcement initiative of the NCAA and the CPC was what resolved that complaint. Every statement that the CPC has made with respect to what happened in Abuja, what happened in Port Harcourt, what happened in Ghana, the statements were made after discussion with at least one person or the other in the NCAA. So I don’t see where the usurping is at all. I am a protector of consumers.

Credit: Daily Trust


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