Police extortion, petrol responsible for high prices – Traders

Traders in Lagos have debunked the claim that they were inflating prices of goods, rather blaming police extortion, energy and petrol price hikes for the high prices of goods.

This is following recent campaigns against exploitative pricing by the Federal Competition and Consumers Protection Commission.

The PUNCH reports that at a one-day stakeholders meeting in Lagos on Wednesday, the FCCPC appealed to players in the production and distribution value chain to join the commission’s effort to combat consumer exploitation.

However, at the gathering, market sellers denied willfully inflating prices of goods, especially agricultural products.

The Secretary-General, Mosan-Okunola Local Council Development Area Markets, Lagos, Kafayat Ibikunle, said market women were wrongly accused of inflating prices of goods, whereas, they were responding to the cost of operations, including petrol costs and unofficial road taxes.

According to Ibikunle, sentiments of price inflation by the farmers’ association, represented by Olaoti Shodiya, were a cumulative effect of processes sellers go through before selling their goods.

“When we buy our goods, we use petrol to lift our market. On the way, there are policemen extorting money from our vehicles.

“Everything summed up together will have to be divided on whatever we are going to sell in the market. This is our problem. We are not the ones inflating,” she added.

Ibikunle noted that while cutting down the prices of goods in the market was a general concern, sellers had little to no choice after spending a lot of money on gathering their goods from the village or the major market before getting to the markets.

“How do we sell? It is not possible,” she maintained.

Ibikunle explained how energy costs had further affected prices, saying, “Some of us that are selling frozen (goods); that are running frozen shops, you have to buy fuel.”

The market leader said the FCCPC agreed with the stakeholders to pass on to the government their opinions and grievances and that market sellers were hopeful the Federal Government could help the situation.

Meanwhile, market leader and Iyaloja-General of Lagos, Folasade Tinubu-Ojo, acknowledged the challenges of sellers, especially in their operational costs and appealed that the burden should not be fully passed on to consumers.

Tinubu-Ojo said, “It is a fact that transporting goods and farm produce from the point of harvest to the market attracts much cost. The rational decision, as a trader, is to pass on the burden of these taxes to the final consumers.

“However, my appeal is that the entire burden should not be borne by the consumer, the burden should be shared between the seller and consumer.”

The FCCPC’s Chief Executive Officer, Tunji Bello, addressed the challenge of exploitative pricing in the face of Nigeria’s cost of living crisis.

According to Bello, the commission’s investigation into price fixing in Nigeria’s markets showed there were cartels in the market who put barriers in the form of membership groups such that without joining them, a seller would not be allowed to enter the market or provide services.

Bello urged market sellers, supermarket owners and manufacturers to work together to ensure that there was fairness in prices.