CPC seeks partnership with CSOs to protect consumers interest

The Director General of Consumer Protection Council (CPC), Babatunde Irukera, has canvassed for mutual trust between Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) and the Council for a healthier relationship in the interest of Nigerian consumers.

Irukera, lauded the clamour for more partnership between the Council and CSOs, saying that no government anywhere in the world can single-handedly protect its citizens against exploitation.

He made the assertions on Thursday at the headquarters of the Council while receiving members of the Coalition of Civil Society Organisations on consumer protection, led by Omoluabi Bode Adeyemi, on a courtesy visit.

While acknowledging the positive role of civil societies in the development of the country, he said that for more entrenched progress to be achieved there must be mutual trust and confidence in the ability of each party in the relationship between government and civil societies.

According to him, “it is a very important thing that civil societies recognise that there is a split at a certain point and the fine split is when you are talking of a place like the Consumer Protection
Council, and we are holding each other accountable, not based on the adversarial context but more on a partnership level”.

He emphasised that “it is important because what will happen is that if we do not have mutual trust and confidence on how we do our work, you will succeed to a certain extent and we will succeed to a certain extent too, because there will be people who will say that we have done well and there will be others, who will credit civil societies for being the conscience of the society.

“But there will be a point that we could both reach, that we do not reach. That point that we could reach but do not reach will not affect your resume or your credentials, neither will it affect ours, but the real people who will be affected is the society itself”, he stated

On the clamour for more partnership, the director general asserted that “there’s nowhere in the world where government is the only one that has ever succeeded in protecting its people” noting that “government improves every time because civil society holds it accountable”.

Irukera assured that the Council would be willing to work with organisations and civil societies to increase consumer education with the aim of “letting people really know what their rights are and then the harvesting of feedback”.

He assured the group that “whatever credibility and statutory mandate that the Consumer Protection Council needs to support your organisation, to access the type of support that is required for you to assist us to percolate sensitisation and consumer awareness all the way down to the ground, I want to bring that to the table”.

In a related development, the DG also received two other non-governmental organisations, the Save the Consumers Initiative and the Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), which also paid courtesy calls on him.