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Phone Rights: Agency Threatens To Imprison CEOs Of Telecom Companies

The Director General of the Consumer Protection Council, Dupe Atoki, on Thursday, threatened to exercise the full extent of the law on the Chief Executive … Continue reading Phone Rights: Agency Threatens To Imprison CEOs Of Telecom Companies


Dupe AtokiThe Director General of the Consumer Protection Council, Dupe Atoki, on Thursday, threatened to exercise the full extent of the law on the Chief Executive Officers of all the telecommunication companies in Nigeria, if they continue to ignore the agency’s summons to a round-table discussion.

Atoki, a guest on Channels Television’s breakfast programme, Sunrise Daily, issued the warning while speaking on the 2014 edition of the World Consumer Rights Day which is themed ‘Fix Our Phone Rights.’

“Every year there is a theme for which consumers all over the world highlight. This goes back to 1963 when President John F. Kennedy addressed the Congress, raising issues of consumer abuses and got the Congress to recognise four basic rights of consumers, from where the various consumer protection legislations emanated.”

“Consumer Protection agencies all over the world adopted 15th of March, the day John F. Kennedy addressed Congress, as World Consumer Rights Day.”

Atoki explained that the theme of the Day was a call to all telecoms companies to ‘Fix Our Phones Right’. “All over the world, that would be the theme that would be considered for the next 12 months, highlighting the challenges that phone users all over the world have been calling on the various operators to fix them right”.

Atoki, who stressed that there are myriads of issues being faced by phone users in Nigeria particularly “the phone use and all the appendages of the telecom system”, disclosed that there are about 122 million phone subscribers in Nigeria.

She further listed major complaints as truncated or dropped calls, unsolicited services including telemarketing, calls and messages, automated sign in services, wrong charges, poor internet services, sales promotions.

She also admitted that many of the issues are unattended to largely as a result of the unpopularity of the agency as well as citizens not knowing what their rights are. However, the agency has published a compendium on its website which consumers can access and submit complaints.

In line with the agency’s vision to ensure that consumer rights are protected, the DG had called for a round table meeting with the CEOs of all the telecom operators to address the issues but the individuals did not attend.

Atoki stressed that the meeting had been moved twice so that the CEOs could attend the policy-making meeting. She warned that refusal to honour the CPCs summon is a crime which can attract a 5-year jail term.

“We have a robust law that gives us power to issue orders and disobedience of those orders also attracts imprisonment.”

She added that she was more interested in finding solutions than sending people to prison.