CPC Seeks Collaboration with Aviation Agencies, Others

The Consumer Protection Council (CPC) is seeking to improve its collaborative measures with the relevant agencies in the aviation industry and other sectors as a means of ensuring that the rights of consumers are not infringed upon arbitrarily by service providers.

The CPC said unless there is a robust enforcement mechanism, consumers right will not be respected adding that if companies know that they can violate the rights of consumers and get away with it, whether those consumers know or not, they won’t respect those rights.”

Director General, CPC, Babatunde Irukera who made this known stated that the aviation sector had the third highest number of complaints the Council received in 2017 followed by the electricity and banking sectors.

He said the last report of complaints received by the council had gone up to 40 percent while the resolution rate of the agency had gone up to over 78% within the same reporting period.

Irukera said: “Our benchmark is to be able to resolve at least 96% of complaints within the reporting period.”

The director general used the forum to clear the notion being held in some circles in the aviation sector that the agency might be usurping the powers of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority with its issuance of press release on incidents bordering on the sector.

He said: “There is nothing in the Consumer Protection Council Act that creates a conflict. There is nothing that that the consumer protection council is doing, intends to do with respect to consumer protection that conflicts with ICAO standards or recommended practices.

“We are always communication with the relevant authorities in the aviation industry. Every statement that the CPC has made with respect to what happened in Abuja, Port Harcourt, and Ghana, these statements were made after discussions with at least one person or the other in the NCAA. So I don’t see where the usurping is at all. I am the protector of consumers, I have a mandate, it is not even a question of discretion, I have a mandate and I am going to fulfill that mandate. And whatever it takes to fulfill that mandate including this collaboration, I will. You are talking of a department of an agency; I am speaking about an agency of its own. So there is no usurping anywhere.”