Feelers have revealed that the Federal Government will soon apply its sledge hammer against members of trade associations behind irrational and undiscriminating increase of food prices.
This would be done by the Federal Government Competition and Consumer Protection Commission.
Making the disclosure on Tuesday, July 18, was the Chief Executive Officer of FCCPC, Babatunde Irukera, at a forum titled: “Fair Food Prices in Nigeria: A High-Level Forum for Better Competition.
He was speaking at the forum organised by
the commission to deliberate on equitable food prices.
Irukera disclosed that: “We will continue to monitor the market, and where we found 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.”
He said that taking an uncompromising action against undiscriminating food price increase had become necessary, particularly because of President Tinubu’s recent declaration of food security as a national emergency.
Irukera said it was more compelling to evolve a strategy to regulating the informal sector, in a country like Nigeria, as the vast majority of our economy is informal.
“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,” Irukera said.