The Director of Consumer Affairs Bureau at the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Mrs. Felicia Onwuegbuchulam has disclosed plan by the commission to partner with the Central Bank of Nigeria and security agents to jointly address the menace of cyber fraud.
She disclosed this in Lagos on Tuesday at the 4th quarterly open forum of the Industry Consumer Advisory Forum (ICAF) themed: “Progressing from customer service to customer experience – The consumer’s point of view.”
Mrs. Felicia added that a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) would be signed with CBN on how to tackle the menace, which she said has become rampant.
“Many people have lost huge sums of money to fraudsters. These fraudsters use ICT platforms to commit the crime which emanates from the telecommunications sector and ends at the financial service sector,” she lamented.
Speaking further, she revealed that the outcome of a meeting which held in October this year with all service providers and customer care service centres brought about the need to have a meeting of stakeholders which will involve financial service sectors, telecommunication service sector, regulators, operators, service providers as well as security agents on the issue of cyber fraud.
The stakeholders’ meeting according to her is scheduled to hold in the third week of January, 2019.
“We hope that by New Year, we will get somewhere to drastically minimize or eliminate the menace,” she stressed.
According to the head, consumer policy development and monitoring, Philip Eretan, cyber fraud is the biggest problem facing the ICT sector.
He noted that there are over 162million active lines on the telecommunication platforms.
“The fraudsters have formed syndicates, defrauding people. This fraud is also being perpetrated through the use of SIM swap,” he noted.
While he advised customers to always inform their banks to immediately place ‘Post No Debit’ (PND) on their account anytime they misplace their mobile phones; he warned against purchase of already registered SIM cards.
Earlier in her opening remark, the chairman of ICAF, Prof. Felicia Monye explained that the Open Forum is an annual event organized to provide opportunity for interactions among stakeholders from consumers to service providers and the regulator.
This, she said, helps to highlight issues of concern to consumers as well as enables the service providers and the regulator to go back to the drawing board.
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