The Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) has declared that it has concluded plans to begin raiding markets to eliminate unfair trade practices such as collusion, price gouging, price fixing, and cartel running.
The FCCPC made this known in a post on X.
Dr. Adamu Abdullahi who is the Chairman of the Commission explained how value of our money, the Naira, has been going down a lot. Towards the end of 2023 and the start of 2024, it got really bad, with one dollar being worth about 1900 naira.
He stated that it happened partly because some people bought lots of dollars online, making the naira less valuable.
As a result, prices for things went up a lot, making them hard to afford. When the value of the dollar goes up, prices in stores also go up. And even when the value of the dollar goes down, the prices don’t always go down because stores might still have expensive stock left.
In response to the rampant inflation and deceptive trade practices, the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) initiated numerous interventions nationwide.
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Apart from the inflated prices, retailers were found tampering with weight scales and misrepresenting quantities sold to customers.
For instance, a targeted enforcement operation at Garki Modern Market in Abuja uncovered deceptive weight scales and discrepancies in the quantity of rice sold in bags.
Similarly, at 4U Supermarket in Abuja, pricing irregularities and the sale of pest-infested food items were discovered.
The commission also seized 97 bags of rice produced by Stallion and Caprice, brands that hadn’t been locally manufactured since 2018, indicating potential malpractice.
Dr affirmed the commission’s commitment to combating unfair trade practices. While the commission lacks direct control over prices, it vowed to leverage existing legal frameworks to ensure fair competition and consumer protection.
Enforcement operations will continue across both formal and informal markets nationwide, targeting collusion, price gouging, and other exploitative practices to safeguard consumers’ interests.
It wrote, ”…This has necessitated The FCCPC, Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, to make several interventions across the country, in the wake of the psuedo-inflation that has affected the prices of goods and services.
Aside from the exorbitant prices of goods, retailers had also resorted to manipulating weight scales and tampering with the actual measure of the quantities of the goods they sell to customers at certain prices.
On Wednesday the 24th of March, 2024, in a targeted enforcement operation at Garki Modern Market in Abuja, it was discovered that the weight scales were deceptive and the quantities in a 25kg or 50kg of rice were much less than stated on the bags.