The federal government of Nigeria has finally taken steps to crackdown online loan apps parading as lenders in Nigeria.
The federal government says online loan companies have caused a lot of damages in the country through invasion of people’s privacy, breaching Nigeria’s data laws among others.
Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) reports that, the FG has written to Apple and Google stores to shut online loan apps down so that people will no longer be victimised.
FG says “In addition to what you are seeing here today, the FCCPC has also issued multiple orders today. Two of them are going to vendors: Apple and Google stores where some of these apps are available. We have asked them to shut these companies’ apps down so that people will not be victimised anymore.”
Also, many Nigerians have blamed some Nigerian commercial banks for accommodating these shylock loan companies.
In line with this thought, FG has also asked these banks to freeze the accounts of illegitimate loan companies. “Secondly, some of them (the orders) have gone to the bank, asking them to freeze the accounts used by these people.
These criminal loan sharks that parade google playstore have become experts in blackmail and blatant invasion of peoples privacy. They have been accused of employing different types of mannerless and uncultured characters as workers”.
The federal government have also insisted that most of them are illegally operating in Nigeria. Therefore, the FG through an Inter-Agency Joint Regulatory & Enforcement Task Force of FCCPC, NITDA, ICPC has raided some of the loan sharks offices in Lagos state.
