Officials At Abuja Chinese Supermarket Risk N10million Fine Each For Discriminating Against Nigerians
The Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) has stated that officials and owner of the Abuja Chinese supermarket risk payment of N10million each for discriminating against Nigerians if they are found guilty according to the law.
According to the FCCPC acting Executive Vice Chairman, Abdullai Adamu in an interview on Arise TV on Tuesday, he said officers of the FCCPE met the supermarket locked and summons were only pasted on the facility. He clarified that it was not the FCCPC officials who shut the facility. He added that the owner and management of the supermarket had been summoned to the FCCPE office to defend the allegations against them. Speaking further he said the supermarket would be sealed if the owner who was reportedly at large failed to show up at the FCCPC office for questioning.
We did not really seal the supermarket, we just pasted summons; we found the supermarket locked when our operatives went there and all efforts to get in touch with the owner were in vain, we got her phone number; couple of calls were made; even the facility manager decided to call her a couple of times, she refused to pick and so we just pasted the summons.
“The summons has now been served we asked the owner and management of the supermarket to come to FCCPC tomorrow at 11am to defend what they were supposed to have done, we cannot just go ahead and take action without hearing their own side of the story and so far we have not found them culpable, all we are trying to do we were there on fact finding mission to find out whether all the allegations made were true and if they were we would know what action to take; as of now we don’t have such facts.”
Adamu said the law of Nigeria is against discrimination and if the owners and management of the supermarket are found culpable, they will face sanctions. “If found culpable, this is a major issue and it can lead to all sorts of sanctions beginning with 10% of the turnover for the year also all officers of the company found individually culpable will pay N10million each; that is what the law says but we have to prove first and foremost.”
