After months or few years of free reign, illegal loan sharks now being pursued by the Nigerian government. This has become imperative as Nigerians have complained bitterly about the invasion of their privacy by these online loan companies.
Their modus operandi is come have unauthorised access to your contact even though you are not the one who took the loan. Afterwards, if someone on your contact gets a loan from them and defaults, they will send you defamatory messages to inform your friends to pay up the loan.
Shockingly, the amount involved so ridiculously l small-N5,000, N7,000, N10,000 and N20,000-that you are taken aback by the extreme actions resulted to by the online loan companies.
Now, the Federal Government is clamping down on them. Recently, the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC), with the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) and other sister federal agencies, raided the premises of an illegally run Chinese-owned online money lenders at two locations on Opebi Road in Lagos.
The Executive Vice Chairman of FCCPC, Babatunde Irukera, who led the enforcement exercise, condemned the exploitation of Nigerians by unlicensed online money lenders in the country, noting that most of them were not registered with the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) and do not have any license to do their businesses.
He stated: “This investigation started a long time ago. Sometime during the pandemic, when the country was on lockdown in 2020, we started seeing a rise in online money lenders.
“Because people were on lockdown due to the pandemic, people started needing small easy loans, which is understandable.
“However, over a period of time, people started complaining about the malpractice of the lenders. So, we started tracking it”.
He adds: “The key two things that were subjects of concern were what seems to be naming and shaming, violation of people’s privacy with respect to how these lenders recover the loans.
Secondly, the interest rate seems to be a violation of the ethics on how lending is done. So, those were the two things that we set out to look for.
“We started an investigation trying to determine the location of these people and that has been a very difficult thing.
“We did that for several months and so one of them has moved from one place to the other and we have been visiting this place for months.”
The company that was raided, Soko Lending Company, with a workforce of over 2,000 has several loan apps — Soko Loan, Fast Money, Go Cash, Okash, Kash Kash, Speedy Choice, Easy Moni, among others.
This is a good move by the government. Perhaps with this pursuit, it will serve as a deterent to others.
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