May 26, 2024

The Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC), said electricity sector related issues were top on its consumer complaints list in the last one year.

The acting Executive Vice Chairman of the Commission, Dr Adamu Abdullahi, said this while speaking with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Sunday.

Abdullahi said that aviation and banking related complaints followed electricity on the Commission’s record of consumer complaints received.

He said that no fewer than 3,000 consumer complaints were received by the Commission, adding that the number dropped due to some interventions by FCCPC and MacArthur foundation.

“The major complaints that we have received so far has to do with electricity followed by aviation, banking.

“We have this intervention because the sector regulator is not doing enough, so we have to come in.

“In electricity, the MacArthur Foundation came up with a grant to the commission and they said we should intervene in the electricity sector and do advocacy so that we can address the issue of complaints in that sector.

“We brought in the sector regulator, Nigerian Electricity Management Services Agency (NEMSA) and the Distribution Companies (Discos).

“We now started going round states to sit down with the sector regulator, NEMSA and Discos and people came and lodged their complaints in those days and complaints were resolved there and then.

“People were very happy because it has not been done before and once we had the breakthrough, it now became easier for them to continue that way.

“The complaints started dropping,” he said.

The acting executive vice chairman listed the states where the intervention had been done to include Bauchi, Edo, Jos, Ibadan, Lagos.

“We are planning to go to other areas to solve electricity complaints.”

On aviation, he said the Commission was working with all necessary stakeholders to ensure robust consumer protection. (NAN)