Zero Corruption: Multichoice Lagos Office Raided by Nigeria's Consumer Protection Agency

Posted by Odinaka on Fri 16th Oct, 2015 - tori.ng

Officials of the Consumer Protection Council on Thursday raided the head office of pay-TV service provider, MultiChoice Nigeria, in Lagos.

In a statement on Thursday, the Nigerian Consumer Protection Council, said that in an operation led by the Council’s Director of Legal Services, Emmanuel Ataguba, raided the head office of pay-TV service provider, MultiChoice Nigeria, in Lagos.

The officials who were armed with a warrant, were accompanied by Policemen and journalists to the company’s office at about 1pm and allegedly left with laptop computers and important documents about the company’s operations.

In line with relevant sections of its enabling law, CPC said it conducted the raid in an effort to checkmate any obstruction of the ongoing investigation into the operations of the Digital Satellite Television (DStv) by the Council.

"CPC, in line with one of its mandates to provide redress for consumer abuse, commenced investigation into the operations of DStv based on a barrage of complaints of alleged consumer rights violations against the company.

The CPC commenced investigative sittings into the operations of Multichoice Nigeria, the franchise owners of DStv on Friday, July 31, 2015.

This followed a barrage of consumer complaints alleging wide-range abuse of subscribers’ rights. These include poor quality of service such as incessant disruption of service without compensation, wrongful disconnection of service during subsisting subscriptions, decoder swap irregularities and poor redress mechanism and customer service.

The inaugural sitting provided a four-man DStv team the opportunity to respond to questions from the CPC investigating panel, and was adjourned for the DStv team to provide more documents. Since then, subsequent sittings of the CPC investigating panel have suffered abrupt adjournments and disruptions at the instance of Multichoice Nigeria.

The CPC declined the six-week extension request, countering the short notice claim of Multichoice Nigeria, insisting that its representatives at the first sitting of the investigation were constructively put on notice to produce additional documents. In the interest of justice, the CPC granted a postponement of two weeks to Thursday, September 10, 2015," the statement signed by Mr. Ataguba said.