The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has carried out a sensitization program, over rising cases of Nigerians that are being defrauded through telecoms.
The commission disclosed that it has received complaints from over 20,000 Nigerians who have fallen victim to telecoms scams.
In a bid to sensitize the public, the commission held a consumers sensitization program in Ibadan, Nigeria, at a market, with the theme: “Shine Your Eyes, No Fall Mugu”, addressing the public on the need to stay vigilant and informed to avoid losing their hard-earned money to fraudsters.
While speaking at the sensitization program, the Head of Consumer Affairs of NCC Mr. Ayanbanji Ojo said that many financial frauds are going on through the telecom, hence the need to educate the people, most especially the traders.
In his words,
“The market people are our telecom consumers and without them, we cannot engage in this business. The market people deserve to know what is going on. Today, we are talking about ‘Shine Your Eyes- No Fall Mugu’, which means there are so many financial frauds going on through the telecom and we want to educate our people, particularly the traders.
“So many complaints came from people who lost money to these fraudsters claiming to be telecom operators. So we need to educate our consumers all the time. We are now in the sustainability of the telecom industry and if we don’t sustain the telecom consumers, there is nothing we can do.
“Over 20,000 Nigerians have complained about being defrauded, even as of this morning. There are people we call loan sharks. These people will tell you that someone has obtained a loan from somewhere. How did they get your number and how did they know you are a friend to the person? These are the kinds of things we are trying to prevent and to protect the people, we have to educate them. This initiative is consistent with the mandate of the commission to protect, inform and educate the Nigerian telecom consumers”.
Addressing the complaints about services from telecom companies, Mr. Ojo explained that most of the time, it may appear as though telecom companies are cheating their users, but instead, he stated that these customers are the ones that activate the services which they are billed for.
The sensitization program also had in attendance officials from the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) educating telecom consumers on how to spot fraudsters, and also enlightening them on some of the tricks used by these fraudsters.
Investors King understands that as the Telecom industry evolves, there are growing concerns over the rising trend of fraud perpetuated on Telecom platforms across key sectors of the Nigerian economy. The menace which follows the wide acceptance of new methods of mobile money and electronic banking and payment systems has been discovered to cost the country whopping sums of money.
Fraudsters are now targeting telecom networks with the intent of getting access to consumer information in the databank of service providers. One often used tactic is that these fraudsters conduct SIM swaps of targeted individuals, and then, conduct USSD-based transactions causing huge losses of funds from victims.
