The Consumer Protection Council (CPC) has no aim of modifying consumer preferences or to materially affect lifestyle choices but the Council will ensure that consumers are sufficiently protected in the choices that they have made by providing information about products, the Director General of the Council, Babatunde Irukera has said.
According to Irukera who rendered professional advice to some regulatory agencies before his appointment as Director General, “if there is an inherent danger in certain goods or choices, the CPC has the responsibility of ensuring that the provider of the service or manufacturer of that good as well as the CPC puts sufficient information on the product to inform prospective consumers of the implications of consuming the product.” This he said is applicable to lifestyle choices which have to do with what consumers chose to consume, or habits they choose to engage in, adding that it is the responsibility of the CPC to enforce compliance of the product manufacturer in this regard.
The Director General made this known recently when he was featured in Frontiers, an International Broadcast Service of the Nigeria Television Authority (NTA) recently.
While saying that the Council is determined to modify the demand of choices by providing information about products in order to ensure that consumers are sufficiently informed about the product, he said there must be consumer education or information in a manner that the consumer understands. “Sometimes this enforcement may change demand pattern of the particular product, but it is not the intention, and since the action is necessitated by our penchant to protect consumers, we will continue to execute our mandate,” he said.
Discussing a target of the CPC under his watch, Irukera said: “What we in CPC want to achieve is: We want consumers to have requisite information about what they are buying, we want them to know their rights while government provides appropriate framework or mechanism for providing remedies when complaints arise,” he said, adding that when this is done, the Council will pride itself as having “gone a long way in customer satisfaction.”
Commenting on the economic recovery plan of the Buhari administration, Irukera who earlier noted that all businesses seek to provide services to consumers said: “If you study the economic recovery plan, you will observe that it puts the people first, it also has a clear regulatory framework for business engagements as well as additional principle of ease of doing business”.
While reiterating that businesses relate with consumers, Irukera commended the Buhari administration for putting in place strategies to ensure that businesses are carried out in a manner that guarantees consumer protection and satisfaction.
