The Nigerian Federal Competition, and Consumer Protection Commission, (FCCPC) said it received the most customer complaints about the financial services, power/electricity and aviation sectors in 2022.
According to a statement by the FCCPC’s Director of Operations, Dr Adams Abdullahu, a total of 13,580 complaints were received in 2022.
A breakdown of the complaints showed that the financial services sector made up 5,709 of all complaints, followed by 3,293 for Electricity and Power sector and 674 for aviation.
Aviation complaints: Abdullahu said the nature of complaints aviation customers had was poor communications, as operators failed to communicate a change of plans to customers. He said:
- ”Most times, if you explain to passengers what the problem is, they can understand, but operators don’t tell the public what is going on with their operations.
- “You buy a ticket, sit in the airport for unending hours, you don’t even get any sort of information on the status of your flight and that angers passengers.
Future plans: He added that the FCCPC is working with some federal regulatory agencies, including a Memorandum of Understanding with the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) and all sectors of consumer protection to address the lapses in the sector. He added:
- “If you usually carry them( customers) along and tell them, these are the challenges that you are facing, it brings down the tempers and that is always what we encourage our service providers to do and they should do that also”
Other Sectors: Telecoms was the sector with the 4th largest number of complaints according to the FCCPC at 605, followed by E-commerce with 508; Electrical electronics with 415; Food and Beverages with 222; Satellite and Cable services with 122.
- Postal and Courier service with 71; Road transport with 69; Land and Construction with 65; Real estate with 63; Health services with 52: Education with 29, among others.
- FCCPC noted that 3,327 complaints were resolved out of the total number of complaints that were received by the commission, compared to 1,990 in 2021 received 10,178 complaints.
What you should know: Recall that the FCCPC’s CEO, Babatunde Irukera, earlier revealed that the regulator’s ability to resolve banking issues (including failed transfers) is constitutionally limited. He explained that the FCCPC does work with banks by getting them to acknowledge what issues they may have with customers.
Irukera further disclosed that issues in the banking sector used to make up most of the complaints it receive until a recent law changed all that. He said:
- “The financial services sector is tricky. FCCPC before addressed complaints from the banking sector and it was the largest volume of complaints we received until it was surpassed recently by the electric power sector.
- “Even up till now, it is still the second largest, however in 2020 a new law came that excluded FCCPC Act from the banking industry. Meaning the FCCPC oversight with resolving the banking sector became limited.”
