The Federal Government, in collaboration with the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, will initiate sanctions against trade association members found guilty of engaging in anti-competitive practices and engaging in indiscriminate and irrational food price hikes.
Babatunde Irukera, the Chief Executive Officer of the FCCPC, made this statement on Tuesday during a forum organised by the commission to address fair food prices.
The forum was titled ‘Fair food prices in Nigeria: A high-level forum for better competition’.
He said, “We will continue to monitor the market, and where we find that prices are excessive or find exploitative conduct, or find that consumers are being taken advantage of, we will intervene. One of the ways of intervening is unlocking the bottlenecks.
From Irukera’s perspective, he pointed out that certain trade unions have formed cartels, engaging in anti-competitive practices that lead to the price gouging of essential food items.
This behaviour has raised concerns and necessitated action to protect consumers from unfair pricing and ensure access to affordable food commodities.
He noted that taking a hard line against indiscriminate food price hikes had become imperative in light of the president’s declaration of food security as a national emergency last week.
“Competition regulation and consumer protection is not only to regulate the big companies. It is not only to regulate the formal sector. It is also to regulate the informal sector. In a place like Nigeria, it is even more critical to find a strategy to regulate the informal sector because, at the end of the day the vast majority of our economy is informal” he reteirated
