By; ABDULL-AZEEZ AHMED KADIR, Kaduna.
The organised private sector, a body of various business organisations involved in product and service delivery have called on the National Assembly to speed up the passage of the Consumer Protection Law to save the teeming masses from the grievous clamp of monopolistic product and service providers in the country.
The group made the call today in Kaduna during a peaceful protest and enlightment rally to sensitize the public on the importance of the law.
Led by a member of Manufacturing Association of Nigeria; Abdulkadir Lawal, the group said though the bill. Has scaled second reading in the National Assembly and the awareness at the national level is high, at the state levels the awareness is low or non existent.
“That informs the reason why this advocacy walk is being undertaken today” Lawal stressed.
He said the bill is important because “in the business cycle, we know thay companies, industries and businesses in general operates at different levels. Some are small scale, some are medium and some are large but their wherewithal are the same. But this competition bill aim to bring a level playing field to all the various sectors of the economy and industries in general.”
He asserted that in advanced nations, such competition bills are in existence and operate optimally “but in this part of the world, in Africa and Nigeria in particular, they don’t have this law in existence” hence the need to raise the level of awareness for the business cycle to know that they will be adequately protected if the bill becomes law.
He assured that with the law, smaller businesses will be protected against the bigger ones, consumers given the option and also protected from the over bearing influence and manipulative tendencies of high profit seeking organisations, and the economy will be bolstered given everyone the choice of best available product.
With the law, any organistaion that try to outsmart any consumer can be reported and tackled accordingly he added.
Among the rallying groups were Consumer Advocacy Foundation of Nigeria (CAFON), NABG, MAN, NASME, ELAN, NIM, NCCN, NECA, BWA, NASSI, NANTS, NIA, NISER, FCA among others.
