Sola Salako is the Chief Executive Officer of the consumer rights advocacy group, Consumer Advocacy Foundation of Nigeria (CAFON). In this interview with Akin Adewakun, the consumer rights activist shares her feelings on the low level of consumerism in the country and why her organisation, in collaboration with others, have decided to call Nigerians out of the banking halls on March 1, this year.
Why this interest in consumer advocacy in a society that seems ‘averse’ to consumerism?
By my nature, I’m somebody who does not like injustice. I don’t like people cheating others just because they can cheat them, just because they are vulnerable. And you can see that very much around here. People are very self-centred and self-focused.
They think of what they get, without minding how that affects the other man. One of the challenges we have in the country is that we don’t think of the impact of our own action on somebody else. But I wouldn’t condone that. My right ends where yours begins. So we have to learn how to respect each other’s rights, how to live in a just society. I don’t like to be cheated and I don’t like to be there when somebody cheats somebody else. So being a media person I will speak up and enlighten you on your rights to enable you defend yourself.
Few days ago, you declared a ‘bank fast’, a no banking day. A lot of people are still confused about this campaign, can you throw more light on this?
No banking day is a consumer protest against excessive bank charges which a lot of people are experiencing and they are complaining about. The idea of a no banking day came from another consumer. I was trying to educate Nigerians on the new account maintenance fee that CBN just introduced, that was supposed to be negotiable, but the banks were not telling them that it was negotiable. So I put out a post on social media to say this money is negotiable. You can go to your bank and say I don’t want to pay, then the bank will negotiate with you. It’s not by fiat, it’s not by force. It’s not mandatory.
So consumers were complaining and one of them said, look, we need to have a no banking day. Just to show them that we are angry. And I saw it as a fantastic idea, and that’s how we picked it. So it actually came from a consumer, but we have the platform to galvanise all the consumers to achieve such a goal, that’s why we picked it up and we have been pushing it. The essence of a no banking day is to passively protest by avoiding that service provider for one day. All of us have reasons to go and do banking everyday.
But what we are saying is that let’s just pick one day to say we are not coming to your doors because we are not happy with the way you have been charging us. It is a platform to give consumers the opportunity to express their displeasure with these service providers by avoiding them for one day. Now you don’t go to bank everyday, you don’t do banking transaction everyday. You go only when you need it. So what we are saying is: ‘let’s all pick one day, consciously, because if I don’t go today and somebody else goes, the banks will not feel it. But if all of us decide to boycott the services for one day, the banks feel the impact of that loss of income. We want to jolt them to say these people are not happy, how do we make them happy.
That is how we can achieve that change we intend to achieve. Grumbling on the social media, calling in on radio and complaining to your friends is good, but it doesn’t achieve any change and the service providers have noticed that Nigerians have a habit of just grumbling and not doing anything about it. We need to get to a point where when things are not the way we want it, we need to put the pressure enough to change it.
Every time I do an online transaction, you charge me N105, and at the end of the year, you charge me another N100 as Card maintenance fee, now tell me how did you maintain that card for that one year. When did you explain it to me? The consumer doesn’t have an input, they just charge. This monthly account maintenance that they just introduced, one this introduction was without any notice.
Just about the time that COT was going to expire, CBN by itself had said COT was no longer sustainable as a means of income for the banking industry, so they phased it out. It would have ended January 31, this year. Just as it was about to end CBN came up with a directive and said that to stabilise the banking industry, you may charge a negotiable monthly account maintenance fee, not more to exceed N1 per N1,000.
The flaw in that is that we were all waiting to get into a COT-free year, you truncated that less than a week to that happening. You don’t run a banking policy like that. You just scattered people’s plans. CBN gave the directive and the banks started charging. Whose interest is CBN protecting?
The banks making money or the customers trying to make a living? Besides, CBN says the charges are negotiable, but the banks did not give the consumers any opportunity to negotiate. They just slammed us. Every one of them just went for the maximum allowed without it being agreeable to the consumers. Nobody checked with the consumers. They just deduct money from our accounts just because they have access to it. If you don’t have access to my money, and I’m the one that is supposed to pay it to you, you will tell me what I’m paying you for. But they don’t need to, but they have access to it.
It may look small, but when you put these charges together, you will know that they are much. So they sit down there and declare huge profits at the end of the year, while the rest of the economy is not going anywhere.
In 2015, their profit after tax was N878 billion. Their asset base as at 2015 was N47 trillion. What productivity are the banks putting in this economy that they are generating such income? They are leeches, they suck up from me and you and say they are giving a service. The only service they provide for me and you is keeping our money save. Everything else we pay for. You request for a copy of your statement, they charge you per page.
Don’t they owe me access to my statement if I want? If I put money in your care, you must be transparent to let me know what is happening to my money. You want to transfer money from your savings to your current, some banks will ask you to pay N210 for the form. So how am I supposed to access the money, if you are charging me for everything? You charge me for the card with which I access my money, you charge me for the cheque book with which I access my money, you charge me now for the form to do even a transfer and I will go to the ATM to go and withdraw, then you charge me again. Those charges don’t make sense. It doesn’t encourage financial inclusion. The charges are becoming excessive and the Nigerian consumers are saying no.
Is this responsibility that your organisation is taking up now not an indictment on the regulatory bodies, statutorily mandated to protect the interests of the consumers?
One thing you have to understand is that when it comes to consumer protection, government agencies alone can not do it. They have their responsibilities, yes, but they can’t do it alone. Globally, you find out that the people that actually make consumer protection effective, are usually non-governmental organisations, because government is caught in the web of this. They depend on people like us to raise awareness about consumer infractions or violations of consumer rights. Government can not know what is going on in practically every sector.
But it is when we raise this kind of noise, for instance, that CBN will realise ‘oh, banks are doing this,’ because most of the time consumer does not even have the opportunity to get to the apex bank. Millions of people don’t have access, and when they have access, they don’t understand what they are supposed to do. Besides a lot of Nigerians don’t even know they have a right to go and report. So it may not be so much as an indictment. We are like a watchdog. We are doing what we should be doing in the market place. When we see things like this, we galvanise consumer action in that direction, we send the signals to the statutory agencies that there is a problem in this area, and so we need to act.
But a lot of people have queried that decision of yours to start with the banks when it is obvious that there is no market segment in the country that the average Nigerian consumer is being fairly treated?
This is because the product that the banks deal with is money. Money is the means by which we solve every other problem. If I put my money in your care, and you don’t give me the way I gave you, I would not be able to meet my obligations to everybody else. So the money thing comes home really fast. It is the fastest that touches you. So if you have taken my money away, you have robbed me of my capacity to meet these other demands.
So there are others consumer activators who are working on the power sector, but we are taking this banking one because it’s an immediate one. Once we get that action sorted out and we get response, and we get the banks and CBN to explain all these charges and we are able together review all these charges and explain, they don’t bother to explain because they don’t want you to know. When we get them to get to that point, and we are able to together, consumers, service providers review each one of them and agree on which makes sense and which does not and agree on a cleaner environment where consumers can transact business with banks without fear of their money going away, then we move to other sectors.
So banking industry is like an artery of the nation’s economy and if consumers lose confidence in the industry, the Nigerian economy is in trouble, and that is happening fast. We already have a terrible economy we are trying to build back, but we can’t achieve that if consumers don’t trust the banking industry, because it is that industry that would oil the engine, that will get the economy to run. But the banks have stopped playing that role, instead they are waiting for you to go and struggle, make the money and bring it to them, then they start saying, they charge you for this and that.
Is this action not capable of worsening an already terrible economy, if consumers begin to go on bank fast as you’ve agitated?
We are hoping it won’t get there. That is why we say it’s going to be for one day, though some are asking for one week, arguing that one day is too small. But we know the effect a one week bank fast can have on the economy. This is not an attempt at to destabilise the economy. While everybody is struggling to make ends meet, we want the economy also to be fair.
We don’t want a situation where a sector will be making money for doing nothing. I don’t make money for doing nothing, so why should the banks be making money for doing nothing. That’s not fair. So that’s what this is about. One -day income is not enough to destabilise the banking industry. What we are saying is let us reduce their income for one day as a warning. If we don’t patronise you, you won’t be in business. So respect us when we say this is not acceptable to us. A lot of people avoid the banks as much as possible now in protest, but individually.
So what we are doing now is a collective thing. If the totality of the Nigerian banking consumers, about 30 million of us, refuse to do business with you for one day, that means you lose the income for one day, that is a signal that there is something you are not doing well. So we want to jolt you into recognising the fact that we are not happy with the way this contractual relationship is going on. So we need to review it.
Between now and March 1, if your prayers are acceded to, would you change your mind about the date?
The banks will have to respond, because these charges are collective charges. We want a response. If they all have a meeting before the date and decide to review the charges, we will look at it, if it is agreeable to the consumers, we call it off. There is nothing to benefit from a no banking day. We just want to galvanise consumers to push the service providers to respond to what we say we don’t like.
Once you respond, we’ve achieved the goal. But I won’t call off a no banking day protest because one bank calls me and say ‘I’ve dropped my own charges’. Since they bond together to determine what these charges should be, then let them bond together to review it so that it affects all of us. I’m not fighting for myself because they dare not try that with me, but there are millions of Nigerians who don’t have the voice that I have. So this is a platform for all of those millions to enable them leverage on people like us that can talk and get action.
But if it is still business as usual after the March 1 date, what would you do?
Don’t worry, we have our different strategies. We will be unveiling them as we go. They will see that we are serious about. I know what we want will not happen, based on one action. If it does, that will be a miracle. It may not happen by just one action.
Consumers are interested in getting their rights should know that consumer rights don’t happen by just me shouting and they taking cover. It is always a sustained pressure. And we have already put structures in place to put sustained pressure. There is nothing that says we cannot continue to declare a no banking day every first day of the month, until they respond. By the time they sustain that loss three months, four months in a row somebody will start asking ‘what is going on?’ I’m not thinking that once we do it once, everything will be okay.
Since you began the countdown to the no banking date, what has the response been like?
Even I am shocked at the response. A whole lot of people are in support. When I go out on the street to distribute the flyers, you would see the way people throw their hands up in support. People are angry. I’ve spoken to people you will think N50 shouldn’t mean anything to. Everybody has something to complain about. It’s just that people don’t have the time, to go pursuing it individually, and even when they do have the time, the process is so tedious and so slow, deliberately.
Those are parts of the things we will be hoping to correct by the time we get them to sit down at the table. All these things need to change. So in terms of response, you don’t need to go far. Once you give them the flyer, it starts a conversation. You can not continue to be making profit in an environment that is hostile to you. I got a call from a micro-finance bank, thanking me for the initiative because they themselves are burdened by these charges. This is affecting their market. One customer on the radio said he had N2,000 in his salary account, and he wasn’t using it for sometime. When he eventually went there to close the account, he met N300 there, which means that over N1,000 had been deducted.
This campaign looks and sounds elitist, how do you intend to ensure that it gets down to the common man on the street?
I was on Naija FM, Wazobia FM has interviewed me. Those are not talking to the elites. I’m planning to go to Radio Lagos to go and say it in Yoruba. We are doing all we can to reach these people. As from next week, we have a team of young people, going from market to distribute flyers. We need other people to also own the campaign. We’ve been talking to Radio personalities and others because they have the airwaves where they can raise the awareness for Nigerians to hear.
How do you pull through all these campaigns in a society where consumerism is abysmally low?
It starts from somewhere. When I started advocating consumer rights, there was probably no voice. I had a platform, a media platform. That is why the role of the media in all these is key. Now a lot of people are speaking, and I like that.
We want to have more voices in different sectors, talking on behalf of the Nigerian consumers because the Nigerian consumers is under so much pressure, everywhere he turns. Consumerism is low because there is nobody supporting those who are speaking.
All of the people I work with are those also struggling to make a living for themselves. But they go ahead and still take out of their little money to prosecute these things. But if Nigeria is going to a point where consumerism will grow, we have to start like now. Everybody in America was not born into being aware of their rights. It grew. But I know we are going to get there.
Source:Tribune
