Date Published: 07/21/09

CONSUMERS AND DECEPTIVE ADVERTISEMENTS

By Emmanuel Onwubiko

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Mrs. Ify Umenyi, the Director General of the Consumer Protection Council of Nigeria is one of those few women in public offices that do their jobs with unmitigated commitment and passion. As the head of the Federal Government’s agency that protects the interests of consumers in a country where manufacturers, advertisers and wholesalers take consumers for a ride, she has distinguished herself as a patriotic Nigerian with the milk of human kindness. My fear for her however is that she is operating in a system whereby big time manufacturers are usually the key sponsors of almost all the political office holders and therefore there is very little she and her staff can do to actually protect the interests of the ordinary large army of consumers. For instance, the immediate past administration was single handedly sponsored by big time private sector investors that came under an amorphous platform called CORPORATE NIGERIA headed by a public office holder. The current administration was largely sponsored by the owners of big businesses in Nigeria and so may not be in a hurry to enforce stiff policies to check abuses of consumer rights by these money bags that have infiltrated the Peoples Democratic Party [PDP].

I must confess that though I have followed the activities of the consumer protection council in the past couple of years, Mrs. Ify Umenyi has never set her eyes on me except perhaps last week when I participated in a high profile two days technical training sessions for stake holders in the administration of the so-called consumers’ sovereignty. She actually chaired one of the sessions during which I raised some concerns by way of asking questions. The workshop was facilitated by the United States’ Federal Trade Commission.

The Federal Trade Commission of the United States of America is the statutory institution charged with the duties of protecting the interests of consumers. The consumer protection council of Nigeria is the equivalent in nomenclature only of the Federal Trade Commission.

Apart from the reality that the Nigerian consumer is not regarded as a king contrary to the universal truism which states that the consumer is the king, we as consumers in Nigeria are bombarded by series of advertisements that are substantially deceptive, false, criminally unverifiable and morally reprehensible. At the event which predictably was boycotted by the minister of commerce and his minister of state but only attended by the permanent secretary, participants drawn largely from the organized civil society groups were trained on very fascinating topics such as “current trends in internet fraud” by Deon Woods Bell and Jessica Gray of the Federal Trade Commission, and Mr. Basil Udotai of Technology Advisers, Nigeria; ‘’why consumer protection in a free market Economy”; and “The role of different tiers of Government and non-governmental organizations in consumer protection”.

The lecture on current trends in internet fraud by Mr. Udotai, a Nigerian lawyer was thought provoking because of his revelation that Nigeria is about the only country that does not have a functional national identity meaning that every Dick, Tom and Harry can simply match to the Nigerian immigration service and obtain the Nigerian international passport because there is no national identification data where records of all Nigerians at birth are kept. This means that identity thefts are rife in Nigeria. It’s a pity.

Deceptive advertisements came up even as most participants indicted all the leading telecommunications firms in Nigeria for engaging in this fraudulent practice because these business managers believe that most Nigerian consumers are so poor that they can not challenge the abuses by these service providers in the law courts. The Nigerian law courts are actually not for the poor and the fact remains that over seventy five percent of Nigerians are existing below extreme poverty line.

Set up under the enabling law known as the consumer protection council Act Number 66 of 1992, the functions of the consumer protection council is to ensure that consumers’ interests receive due consideration at appropriate forum and to provide redress to obnoxious practices or the unscrupulous exploitation of consumers by companies, firms, trade associations or individuals. We were told that this function protected by law also makes deceptive advertisement unlawful in Nigeria. The question is how many companies have been sanctioned in the past for the gross abuse of the consumers’ rights of Nigerians by the placement of these fraudulent advertisements? Why are the media houses not very circumspect in determining and refusing to run deceptive advertisements? What is the function of the Advertisement Practitioners’ council of Nigeria or are the members’ co-conspirators with these vicious manufacturers?

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It will be useful for the National Assembly’s committees on commerce to push for the passage of the proposed amendments to the consumer protection council’s enabling law and the issue of deceptive advertisements must be outlawed in very clear terms.

For instance, section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission’s Act provides that; “unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce are hereby declared unlawful’’. The enabling law of the consumer protection council of Nigeria ought to be amended to clearly reflect the unlawfulness of these fraudulent advertisements in Nigeria especially by almost all the GSM telecommunications’ service providers who use deceptions to promote their so-called “text 4 millions” promotions.

Other areas where fake advertisements have become rife and life threatening is in the traditional medicine sector whereby vendors and traditional medicine practitioners sponsor media advertisements with unverifiable claims of some exaggerated healing potency. These traditional medicine practitioners in Nigeria have wrecked monumental havocs because of some of their magical claims of being able to cure even incurable diseases.

Mrs. Umenyi briefly gave her scorecard thus; “earlier in the life of my administration in CPC, I had recognized that in spite of the fact that Nigeria was unarguably the biggest market in Africa, consumer supremacy in the country was far from being achieved. At the time, consumers were not only being abused with impunity, but CPC, the apex consumer protection agency of the Federal Government of Nigeria was also on its knees.”

“Consequently, I made it an immediate and cardinal focus of my administration to reposition the Council for efficient services, no matter the odds. The aim was to see Nigerian consumers operate with confidence in a fair and equitable marketplace in the shortest possible time.” Certainly, this writer thinks Nigerians know better because for now you are on your own as a consumer because you buy and perish alone.