The Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) yesterday in Abuja sealed two estate property developers, Ochacho Group and Ti’Bilion over compliance and breach of contract with its clients.
Daily Trust reports that the Commission had few weeks ago sealed three Paradise Estates in Abuja over same consumer rights complaints.
Addressing journalists after the enforcement, the Deputy Director of Surveillance and Investigation at the FCCPC, Mr Marvin Nadah said the enforcement is a continuation of the Commission’s efforts at stopping obnoxious and exploitative practices in the real estate sector against consumers.
‘So we have issued orders through a compliance notice to these entities that you have seen today and the other ones which we have visited. And in those orders we have requested, we have directed certain actions to be taken to provide redress to consumer complaints that were before us. That is in line with our law which was provided in Section 150 for the Act.
‘However, these entities did not comply and as a result of non-compliance, we have come and sealed the business premises. Basically, the consumers had paid for properties that were not delivered in one case and in another case, there was a situation where we had, after reviewing the matter, had requested and ordered the entity, that’s the company here, to make a refund to the consumer and that was not carried out and both entities are real estate companies. They sell, land, they build, they also manage these properties’, he said
On rationale for the enforcement, Nadah added that ‘FCCPC’s action is a statutory provision of their Act in Section 150, particularly in Subsection 4, which empowers us to seal any premise among other powers that’s provided when there’s a non-compliance to a compliance notice that has been issued since June last year, between then and now, certain conversations have been had with the entity. However, they still failed to comply’.
