By Felix Khanoba
The Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) says it will soon join forces with the National Universities Commission (NUC) and other relevant government’s bodies to wage an all-out-war against sexual exploitation of students by some lecturers in the nation’s tertiary education institutions.
Director General/Chief Executive of FCCPC, Barr. Babatunde Irukera, made this known on Friday in Abuja during a ‘Strategic Media Engagement’ organised by the Commission, with the theme: ‘FCCPC: Promoting choice, ensuring fairness’.
He said a common front will be formed by the concerned government agencies to tackle the situation where lecturers demand sex from students with a promise of dishing out unmerited grades.
The FCCPC boss, who spoke on various moves by the Commission to ensure that consumers are not exploited, said the agency would focus more on a robust enforcement and wider consumer education next year.
His words “In 2020, I want you, the media, to come on a voyage with us to improve the mechanism of enforcing consumers’ rights in Nigeria.
“We should be focusing on a robust enforcement, wider consumer education.
“If we can achieve these two better than before, we would put more smiles on the faces of Nigerian consumers, be able to rescue them from exploitation by service providers, production, distribution and manufacturing entities.”
He said the number of complaints that the Commission usually receive from consumers have witnessed a massive plunge after putting a place a mechanism that always engage manufacturers, producers and services providers, adding that the number crashed from about 500 weekly to about three.
Irukera called on manufacturers and service providers to do more on Corporate Statutory Responsibility (CSR) in order to prevent the exploitation of consumers instead of channelling all energy to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).
Speaking further, the FCCPC boss said the Commission would work towards the establishment of a Tribunal that would be solely responsible for adjudication of cases on consumers rights violations as provided for in its Act.
