Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has cautioned members of the public to be cautious of fraudulent activities of those it described as loan sharks.
The Commission said it has received over 20,000 complaints from those who have fallen victim to the sharp practices of online fraudsters.
The Head of Consumers Affairs Bureau of the commission, Mr. Ayanbanji Ojo, spoke on Thursday during a telecom consumers sensitisation programme with the theme: “Shine Your Eyes- No Fall Mugu,” at the spare parts Market, Agodi-Gate, Ibadan.
Noting the need to educate the people on the financial fraud going on in the telecom space, Ojo said the activities of the loan sharks have caused a lot of people pain with many traders vulnerable to what is going on.
He enjoined telecom consumers to approach their service providers to resolve their complaints adding that if they are unable to resolve it, they should approach the commission by dialing 622 which is toll-free.
He said: “The market people are our telecom consumers, without them, we can not exist as a regulator. The market people deserve to know what is going on. Today’s programme is different from what we did at Bodija and the University of Ibadan.
“Today we are talking about ‘Shine-your-eyes’ which means there is so many financial fraud going on through the telecom and we want to educate our people, particularly the traders because most of them are vulnerable to what is going on in the telecom space.
“There have been so many complaints on the loss of money, so we need to educate our consumers all the time because we are now in the sustainability of telecommunications industry and if we do not sustain the telecom consumers there is nothing we can not do.
“The complaint we have been seeing so far is over 20 thousand, even this money the loan shark saying a person on your contact list collected loan, how did they get your number, this is the kind of things we are trying to protect and to protect people, we have to educate them, so when people have the information they are protected.”
Ojo, however, advised the traders to use strong passwords in emails, and private networking platforms, avoid clicking on any link to avoid theft.
