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From Fred Ezeh, Abuja
Babatunde Irukera is the Executive Vice-Chairman/Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC), formerly known as Consumer Protection Council (CPC).
He is responsible for the daily management and leadership of the commission in fulfilling its mandate to promote market competition, protect consumers and secure remedies when consumer rights are violated. In this interview with some journalists in Abuja, he spoke on various issues regarding FCCPC and some misconceptions by Nigerians.
How would you compare the former CPC and the FCCPC as it is now?
CPC was an old order that metamorphosed into FCCPC. CPC had some limitations that were corrected by the FCCPC Act. The CPC was a struggling agency but the FCCPC is now completely autonomous, not funded by the Treasury. However, the agency has moved through the years in developing capacity internally, its credibility externally, and its respect. People know the FCCPC more than the CPC was known. Businesses and individuals are more careful not to violate the FCCPC Act than they were with the CPC. This was because they understand the consequences of doing that. Also management system is far more robust and accountable than what obtained in CPC.
Your mandate seems to cover every sector of the economy. How are you able to do that?
We allocate our resources based on the challenges in each of the sector. We don’t have that much and that’s why we are allocating based on prioritization. We look at what national priorities are. For instance, things that affect majority of the people are key to us and attract our attention. In the education sector, for instance, we are involved in investigations about things happening in the school environment. Recently, Premier Academy took us to court in trying to prevent us from conducting an investigation. So, if people should entrust their children in your care, we must be concerned about the quality of care.
We were also engaged in doing other investigations in other locations. However, the outcome of the cases in court with respect to Premier Academy was that FCCPC Act allowed for investigation of cases. We also had some investigations in healthcare sector. Beyond that, we have promoted a patient’s bill of rights and we were going from place to place in domesticating it and trying to strengthen the responsiveness and sensitivity framework of medical facilities to patients.
Does the delay in court system affect any of the cases?
Unfortunately, the amount of time it takes for judiciary outcome is excessive. What we have done is to do our work the best way we know to avoid unnecessary litigation. Our cases are resolved on time not really from the standpoint of how we will prefer them to be resolved but comparatively to other cases that are in court. So, to some extent, the amount of attention focused on the intensity you dedicate to resolving cases in court are also factors in how quickly or otherwise the cases are resolved. Also, we provide significant evidence, and when we are defending a case, we don’t go there for unnecessary preliminary objections. We embrace the challenges and do what we can to advance the case.
What is quite satisfactory with the FCCPC Act?
Every piece of legislation should be evolved in society. We started on a pretty good point. But from day one, we could see things we would have wanted in it, but beyond that, we have operated the Act for almost five years, and expectedly, we identified some gaps in it. Operational maturity is where the law needs to be strengthened. Another challenge is the evolution of the society. Changing dynamics in society also necessarily require legislation to be able to cope. For instance, digital markets vis-a-vis post-COVID learning across the world. There are things we need to include in the legislative framework. Nevertheless, I can say that we have a very good piece of legislation but also admit that there are things that need to be corrected, new things that need to be added.
How do you avoid overlap functions with other government agencies with related responsibilities?
There are overlaps, which is natural. They might not be legislative failures neither are they regulatory failures. Everywhere in the world, you can tell what a country prioritizes by the nature of its regulatory frameworks, and so in areas where you find overlap, you choose the most important things. For instance, the United States consumer protection authorities work to ensure that foods and other consumables are safely delivered to the people. What is required is for the regulators in the space to figure out how to bring their own competencies and leverage on what their expertise is to ensure that things are done as best as possible. Because we are young, we have experienced several push-backs from other regulators. But for the period that I’ve been here, engaging other regulators and working with them hasn’t been as problematic as it was prior to when I got here. But understandably, and this is the case globally also, that sometimes, there seems to be lack of alignment between the sector regulator, and the overall regulator like the FCCPC. However, we are working to address the challenges.
In which particular area have you recorded more success?
Success is relative. Sometimes, what people consider failure is actually a success. The biggest criticism we have is that there are many complaints that are unresolved. But you know why? Because people are now complaining more because they have confidence in the right enforcement mechanism that exists now. The better you do, the more complaints you get from different areas and sectors. So, there is no way you can have one composite complete regulatory authority down to a system that works for businesses to resolve the complaints themselves. However, companies are becoming more responsive. But we would ultimately get to a point where as a matter of regulation, most are easily accessible and responsive. Until we either encourage or push companies into investing and dedicating resources to a stand-alone complete resolution mechanism that allows them to focus on the satisfaction of their customers, we will continue to struggle with what is really the best complaint resolution mechanism.
I understand you are self-funded. Have you been able to sustain it?
What we have done is to do the work, broadly and diligently. We have completely rejected the option of levying consumers so that we can develop a complete resolution portal where there is a USSD fee, the consumer space, tokens, among others. We do not charge consumers for complaints. We also do not license companies. We don’t approve any products. We don’t want to take any monies from companies in the name of registration or licence so that we would not have any conflicts. We will be able to go against them and so our revenue is not really from them. The only fees we charge are merger notification fees which is customary, globally. If two companies want to merge and as a service in analyzing that, there’s a cost reflective charge to that service. But the vast majority of the revenue comes from penalizing infractions. But if there’s something wrong, we would engage and if it’s very grievous, we will deepen investigation. And we would conduct a very elaborate investigation and confront the defaulters with what has gone wrong. The penalty is proportion to the real conduct. So, it’s really about trying to work. Sometimes, investigation costs us money, sometimes, hundreds of millions of Naira, to conduct an investigation. So, when we penalise a company, they will see exactly what the problem was. So the quality of the investigation would certainly be a factor in accepting the outcomes. So that’s how organisations are funded.
Do you remit revenue to federal government
Yes, we do. In fact, we have made remittances to the Consolidated Revenue Account (CRA) lately. We have a revenue policy that 40 per cent of what you generate as Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) is remitted to the government. Last year, we made significant remittances to the Treasury. We remitted N6bn to N7bn to CRA last year. We have even done more than N22 billion this year, 2023. This was far above the target set for us by the National Assembly (N14 billion to N20 billion). We have even taken the responsibility of salaries and other entitlements of our staff. We are committed to doing more in the coming years.
What have been the challenges in your operations?
We have capacity and manpower challenges. For instance, we have about 230 workers in 774 LGAs in this country serving about 220 million population, and clearly, everybody is consuming something every day. So, capacity is one of the key challenges. We have a very diverse, large country, hence covering the country is a huge task, but we are doing that effectively well through customer education effort, running the multiple languages. So, finding the right mechanisms and the right strategies require quite some dedication of resource and intentionality. Again, managing relationships sometimes can slow down some of the most important intervention required.
What do you envisage for FCCPC, may be in the next few years?
I think FCCPC would become a critical player for Nigerian economy. We have a new administration led by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who is making some very tough and ambitious decisions in a very short period of time. What we’ve done at the FCCPC is to look at these decisions, and identify materials that convey what the administration’s focus is for the economy, and we found out areas that FCCPC could contribute, notably, in regulatory framework, procurement management, public and private engagements, monetary policy, and some of the other areas as contained in the roadmap for emancipating the economy. We have seen our role in it, seen our role in the constitution and understand what the FCCPC is. The constitution stated that it is the duty of government to ensure that wealth and means of production are not concentrated in just a few hands. What the constitution says is that shared prosperity is a fundamental factor in Nigeria. So, once we have positioned ourselves in that way, and are able to see a government roadmap, that shows the future of the agency and its relevance to economic growth.
