From Joseph Obukata (The New Diplomat’s N’Delta Correspondent)
The Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, (FCCPC), has began investigation into activities of dominant PayTV providers in the country following alleged complaints by Nigerians.
FCCPC’s Chief Executive Officer, Babatunde Irukera, stated this in a statement on Tuesday, saying that the probe of the Pay TV companies followed credible information, public announcements by operators, and consumer perception analytics.
This comes at the backdrop of the Nigerian senate probe of alleged N200 billion fraud in the joint venture operations between, the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) and a Chinese Satellite Pay TV, StarTimes.
NTA-Star TV Network Ltd, a joint venture between the NTA and the StarTimes Group, had since denied the alleged claim of ‘missing’ N200 billion as suggested by the legislators.
The development is also coming on the background of a recent petition against South African pay TV company MultiChoice (DStv) which had recently announced that it will be increasing its rates for DStv and GOtv subscribers, citing the increase in Value Added Tax (VAT) rate as the reason for the price increment.
Irukera, in the statement said that over the past 24 months, FCCPC has conducted investigation, pursued legal action in court, secured an injunction pre-empting price increase, entered a specific orders regarding a provider, engaged in periodic surveillance and monitoring, and more recently inquired into a purported tax increase by at least one provider.
He explained that the investigation is in order to address the commission’s concern and publicly expressed consumers dissatisfaction with pay TV service.
The scope of the inquiry includes, unfair dealing and unreasonable and manifestly unjust contract terms, abuse of market power, colourable pricing practices and other otherwise obnoxious or illegal conduct.
Irukera, however, advised operators to familiarized themselves with the FCCPA and statutory clarification of their obligations to the FCCPA under S.104, in addition to, and or irrespective of nay obligation to other regulators.
“The Commission will continue to pursue initiative and efforts that promote and ensure fairness to all”, the Chief Executive Officer added.
It would be recalled that some subscribers in the petition addressed to FCCPC and copied to the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) and the National Assembly, had accused a Pay TV company of disobeying court injunctions stopping it from increasing tariffs in Nigeria.
The petition which was written on behalf of the subscribers by Festus Onifade Esq., Managing Partner at FS Onifade & Associates, read in part: “Our petition is anchored on ‘POWER OF ABUSE OF DOMINACE’ as provided for in new law Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Act 2018 signed into law by PMB in February 2019.
“The Act empowers the Federal Competition Consumer Protection Commission to fix and regulate prices of goods and services where such infractions have been brought to the notice of the commission.
“In the past, there has been court injunctions against similar increment which was not obeyed. We hope that the commission under law and new identity will have the courage to save the Nigerian consumer from another oppressive private monopoly.”
