The Executive Secretary of the Consumer Protection Council, Babatunde Irukera who was recently a special guest and lead speaker at the Quarterly Roundtable organised by the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) Lawyers In the Media (LIM) Forum spoke with the Chair of the Forum and BUSINESSDAY LAW EDITOR, THEODORA KIO-LAWSON, about his role at the CPC, his passion for consumer protection, the competition bill, the patients bill of rights, collaborations with regulatory agencies such as the NMA and others, consumer complaints and institutionalising best practices. The conversation started on an interesting note with Irukera speaking of his appointment as executive secretary. He said, “When I got a wind ‘informally’ of my appointment to the CPC, I started out making protest calls to protest this development but of course these were not successful.”
Why? What were your fears about taking this role?
First, I knew the incumbent DG at the time and we were supporting her in many ways.
In fact, I was carrying on lateral conversations on how her tenure will be renewed, as we had an excellent working relationship at this point.
Secondly, I was at the point where I thought that building my practice and taking advantage of a new network and the relationships we had built was the way to go. I thought this was the time to make some money and I saw that there was a cause for the potential passage of a competition law, which was also a very good thing for me – in the sense that I have been engaging with anti-trust work in Nigeria as far back as 2005. I had advised the NERC when the law was initially passed, with respect to the ‘Competition’ provisions in there. I advised the NCC, while I was still residing in the United States and actually advised the then Attorney General on the competition bill that was being drafted at that time with the BPE that was going to the National Assembly.
I think it must have been us who hosted the first antitrust seminar with Lagos business school so we published an annual chapter on competition law worldwide.
WHO IS “WE”?
Simmons Cooper Partners (SCP); the firm where I worked until my assumption of office at the CPC. The firm currently publishes an annual chapter of the Competition Law in Nigeria. As far as I was concerned, if competition law was coming and the incumbent at that time was going to be the chief executive of the organization and we were already supporting her, what that meant was that we were on a very fast track to being the key competition lawyers in this environment – which frankly was the one of the primary reasons I returned home in the first place. And so at this point, taking up such a role was the last thing on my mind, but here we are today.
When I got into the Council, I became more convinced than ever that I shouldn’t have taken the job because what I found was an incredibly huge gap and I began to imagine the magnitude of kind of work the director general must have done to even bring the council to the point where I met it.
Would that be knowledge gap?
That would be knowledge gap, resource gap; a total capacity gap – whether from a skill or resource standpoint.
The first thing I had to do was to go back and engage the federal government. We had to explain to them the need to prioritize consumer protection in a way that truly delivers result to the people. Luckily we have an administration that is very keen on the issue of consumer protection. So we received attention and support all the way to the presidency and we focused on the real issue at stake. We had a bunch of conversations at that level, where we agreed on how to resource the organization and we’re still working through that because the infrastructure we met in place was really bad. This includes, physical infrastructure and soft (human capital) infrastructure needed a lot of restructuring – first from a staffing standpoint and also from a remuneration standpoint.
So, what I spent the vast of these initial months doing was to work on some of these key infrastructure challenges. We had to find a proper headquarters for council, and locating the different zonal offices. It might interest you to know that the council headquartered in Abuja and has six zonal offices, with an additional Lagos office – numbering eight in all. At the time I became Director General, they were under eviction in every single one of these location. They all were undergoing eviction proceedings. This establishes how to know how poorly resourced the place was when we arrived. All of these we had to promptly address and get out of the way in other to begin real work.
I have beaten myself so many times thinking that I could move faster with all that we have to do or made far greater impact but I realise that most of the work we have done are important in trying to ‘set the ducks in a proper row’. Gratefully, I’ve got good support from the government and so I’d say that only in September did some of the hard work of the initial months begin to crystalize into some level of clarity, by way of budgetary discussions as well as finding a location for our head office.
The other thing I was asked to work on was the bill that was then pending at the National Assembly – that is the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Bill. At this time, a version of had been passed, but with a bit more work done, a different version was passed by the National Assembly, but this still has to go through the process of harmonization to get a cleaner document (bill).
Where did this version come from?
The Senate got a team that worked with the house of representatives, so significant modifications were made to the bill, based on the advice they received from this technical team and I suppose they also had input from all the other sector-specific regulators and stakeholders, such as the SBL. The differing points and modifications are not so significant, because in principle, it’s all headed in the same direction – only with slightly different provisions. E.g., there are provisions, which address the essential regulatory conflict that could arise and more of that in the Senate Bill for harmonization hopefully to be called up soon.
The other thing I have also spent time doing is re-negotiating the memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the consumer protection council and the NCC the CBN, the NERC, NCAA and all the other sector-regulators, because I looked at the existing relationship some of them have had in the past, and it seems very acrimonious and those which were not acrimonious, were just not operating at optimal. So I took out time to meet the chief executives of almost all the regulatory authorities – i.e. SON, NAFDAC NTDA, NCAA, CBN, NCC, NERC, NICTA and it’s been quiet a mileage.
All of these have worked out very well and one thing that I think has been helpful to me is the that I have quite some knowledge of this area; which is what I have done most of my legal career.
What did this remarkable passion for consumer protection come from?
The purpose and passion has always been people-driven. I started my career in the bank as in-house counsel which is what I did until I left to go to the United States. When I started practicing law in the United States I started out doing more of immigration work, so it has always been about people somehow. I moved on into core litigation, I did some federal criminal defense work and in the law of discrimination usually on the plaintiff side representing employees who have been discriminated against and so as I was coming down to Nigeria I was still focused on public interest issues those were the biggest jobs on my mind – large pharmaceutical companies, large tobacco companies, etc.
So, I have been in this space and supported the council in some of its key investigations and interventions, and having this knowledge have helped in the negotiating the memorandum of understanding and then I assisted some of these organizations also with respect to their own consumer protection policies. For instance, with regards to the aviation consumer protection regulations, the law firm I was with before my appointment, that is Simmons Cooper Partners (SCP), wrote most of these regulations and I led the team that that worked on these regulations. So there I have intimate knowledge of all these regulations as well as a good relationship with the agencies. we have also worked with the CBN win the development of their consumer protection framework.
All of these relationships helped to develop this new broader memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the different agencies.
How have the other agencies received these efforts at collaboration?
I believe we are making significant progress. We are not at the end of it, but from the feedback we have received, stakeholders and staff of the council believe that we have received more traction than we’ve ever had in the past. With regards to market place in interventions, we have also done quite a few things that are vital to the progress of the work we are doing.
Our first engagement with the regulatory bodies was with the Nigeria Medical Association (NMA) and we have advanced significantly on developing a Patient’s Bill of Rights, which I think it’s a game changer and vital for the market.
What this Patient Bill of Right seeks to achieve is that it would be a front document with a simple listing of the patient’s right to privacy, his/her right to information and for the doctors to truly and fully explain exactly what’s is wrong with the patient, as well as the full implications to them; as well as a right to a second opinion; and generally give them some guidance on how to get that second opinion. After this, there would be a ‘backing document’, which will be a whole lot bigger that the front document. This will be given to the patients by the doctor document for them to read through.
This is just something like the Aviation Passenger Bill of Rights, which we also created for the aviation industry. The Patients Bill of Rights would be published in different languages and displayed in hospitals and medical centers.
What stage are you at with these regulatory engagements?
A: We have reached various advanced levels with these works and I think it was quite a breakthrough to get the leadership of the premiere professional association for doctors, i.e. the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) to agree to this partnership and together, we have pursued this mutual objective, such as the Patients Bill of Rights which has been very inspiring to me.
One of the key problems identified were the challenges with the medical and dental council of Nigeria, which is responsible for discipline and yet have not been constituted for a number of years. What the CPC did was take it upon itself to engage the presidency on these issues; it’s as much as a consumer protection issue as any other.
The fact is, we cannot make appropriate regulations for the market without engaging those in the market, so we look forward to working with stakeholders across industries and sectors, including the legal sector.
Could you share some thoughts with us on regulating the market?
As I said earlier, there’s no way to make appropriate regulations for the market without engaging the market itself and so we are working with different stakeholders and different lawyers to ensure we regulate right.
First, there is a value chain here. There’s a manufacturer’s position and a retailer’s position. So, we must engage manufacturer, the distributor and the retailer on the table, as well professional and regulatory bodies covering these sectors or industries, such as the Chambers of Commerce, the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN), the Nigerian Medial Association (NMA), the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) and several other such bodies depending on the sectors we are focused on.
Where we do not get them all on board, this may become problematic. The rights of everyone in the value chain most be taken into consideration
We are interested in the service level agreement between the retailer and appointed distributor because the distributor is right when he says all I have are distributing rights and if there’s a defect I am not the one to fix it and he’s right, that’s a valid statement. That notwithstanding, we want to see a more beneficial agreement between the distributor and the principal manufacturer, so that there is an understanding on the side of both parties – one that takes sufficient responsibility to protect the consumer.
As a consumer you should be able to go back to the distributor or the retailer for some sort of recourse. We are still working on the development of all of this, and while we (Policy makers, regulators, manufacturers, distributors, retailers and some consumers) are all at the table, there is hope that we will unanimously agree on what should be the best practice in these circumstances.
If a computer that turns out to be defective, a consumer would expect that there would be an existing understanding between the manufacturer, the distributor and the retailer about its return or how it would be taken care of. So there must be an understanding between all the parties about how to get the best out of their products and services, while taking into consideration the interest of the consumer.
When you address one piece of value change without addressing the rest there will be a break in transmission and what really makes market work well is that everybody understands his or her role in the chain. Everyone must have some level of security or assurances in how things would be.
I don’t think a retailer will have that much trouble providing a refund if he knows that that he will get his money’s with back all the way down to the manufacturer and so he also knows that well if it doesn’t happen in 10days or 20days or whatever the warranty period is there is definitely a guarantee to fix it, if not to replace it. So this information is also passed to the consumer – that in a certain period of time, if something goes wrong with the product, that they would be entitled to a repair or replacement.
With this, the retailer is willing to take it on and ship it back or replace the product, right there in the store or send it back to the manufacturer. Once all of that is addressed, the consumer gets better products and services and commerce moves even better.
Another huge challenge we have tried to tackle is the issue of consumer complaints and setting up effective response and resolution mechanisms.
On assumption of office, did you set up new mechanisms/machineries for responding to consumer complaints?
To ensure swift response to consumer complaints (and we have several coming from so many quarters), we thought it necessary for the council to be more active on all social media platform, and we quickly set these up.
With these, we have been able to monitor complaints coming directly to our social media handles and those going to the manufacturers and service providers and I must tell you that these efforts have yielded great results.
Do you as executive secretary respond to complaints personally, or do you have a chain of people who jump in to intervene on your behalf?
I have a team but I do a lot of it myself. While some of these can be handled by any member of the council, I also deal with issues that come directly to my mail – these include private mails and direct messages. Once we are copied on complaints to manufacturers and service providers, we ensure that something is done immediately. So we follow up with the progress of the resolution given by the product/service provider.
I respond to several of these mails/messages directly and I’m beginning to see a few comments and appreciation from consumers who are glad to have their problems resolved.
What gives me the greatest joy however, is not just the number of complaints and problems we are able to resolve but how the council has become more versatile. Our turnaround time for complaints are shorter and successes we record are on a steady rise.
Other than the platforms you have mentioned, what is due process for complaints to be initiated and resolved?
In reality complaints should go directly to the manufacturers and service providers, while we step in where there arises an issue between the parties or defiance on the part of the manufacturer or service provider. The consumer protection council should not be the first place people go to make complaints.
What we’re striving to achieve now is to institutionalize a process where the companies themselves take responsibility for resolving a lot of these complaints and problems with products and services.
With our intervention, we see that a lot more manufacturers and service providers are stepping up to take up this responsibility and I think that this is a welcome development. This is a good way to institutionalize best practices and it’s a welcome development for us at the CPC.
You’ve touched on institutionalising best practices, what does this mean for consumer protection?
Building strong institutions continue to pose huge challenges for us in Nigeria. So if we succeed at institutionalising our efforts our methods, it won’t matter who comes in here after us, or what happens to the organization, the market will continue operate in an efficient way.
That, for me is one of the things that I am happiest about. I am happy that manufacturers and service providers are beginning to take customer satisfaction more seriously and then consumers are also becoming a lot more discriminatory.
