BY Bunmi Aduloju
The Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) says it has recorded a significant reduction in the number of consumer complaints on activities of illegal digital money lenders.
Babatunde Irukera, the executive vice-chairman, FCCPC, said this during a Twitter Space organised by the commission on Wednesday.
Irukera attributed the reduction in complaints to the enforcement initiated by the FCCPC joint taskforce.
“I agree that some activities of digital money lending institutions have destroyed relationships, whether professional or personal, and that is why we are doing all we can,” he said.
“I will be the first person to agree that there is a problem out there.
“Messages are still coming, harassment is still coming, but frankly, we have been tracking this for a while.”
The FCCPC boss said the complaints were the lowest recorded in the last two years, following several enforcement imposed by the commission.
“This is the lowest it has been in two years. From March that we started this enforcement; there has been a significant reduction,” he said.
“I will say that after our enforcement last month, we counted probably less than 25 percent looking at the tracking of the complaints that came in.
“But 25 percent is not it, we will keep doing what we are doing, even adding more.”
Irukera stressed that the task force would continue to set the guard rails and make the loan shark businesses difficult.
“Wherever we find their bank accounts, we lock it down, whatever applications they are using, we go to google, we take them down,’’ he said.
Following the order by the commission, he said Google had taken down over 70 applications and the FCCPC had locked out over 60 bank accounts.
Irukera added that flutterwave had also taken down dozens of applications.
He, therefore, appealed to members of the public to send their complaints regarding illegal money lending activities to lenderstaskforce@fccpc.gov.ng.
Last month, in efforts to further stifle the operations of loan sharks, the commission directed telecommunication companies to desist from providing connectivity services to digital lenders that are under investigation.
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