FCCPC shuts Chinese supermarket for inferior, expired products

Isola Moses

Nigeria’s Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC), has shut down a Chinese supermarket and restaurant in the Jabi area of Abuja, FCT, over the sale of expired and substandard products.

Mr. Babatunde Irukera, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), FCCPC, while speaking with reporters at the end of the raid Thursday, January 30, said the move was a “cautious measure to protect the health of citizens”.

The closure had nothing to do with the raging Coronavirus across the world, Mr. Irukera said.

“We have no reason to believe that what we found here could be infected in anyway or could transmit coronavirus.

“It is a supermarket where all kinds of ethnic products that are expired are usually sold in wholesale packs.

“There is also a Chinese restaurant in the facility where food is cooked for consumers,” the FCCPC CEO noted.

According to him, “there are also other things in the freezer – sea food, meat – which were imported into Nigeria and which we have absolutely no way of knowing the value chain or whether the food safety process was sufficiently complied with.

“In reality, why this is happening is that they are operating these stores while violating the law.

They are creating stores that the law does not know they exist. “So, again, what we are going to be doing is to close this place down like we did before. It is the global sensitivity that all nations are into,” Irukera said.

Meanwhile, he appealed to citizens to avail the Commission of relevant information if they noticed any misdeeds from their service providers.

“We will continue to check all service providers, not only Asian ethnic stores. We are looking at everything.

“When we get credible information, where our surveillance people find something that is going wrong, not just in Abuja, we shall swing into action,” he assured Nigerian consumers.

He observed that the most credible intelligence or information is through people reaching out to the FCCPC via anonymous channels, sometimes through Twitter, private messages and calls.

“I think it is very important that if you see something, you say it,” Irukera advised.

The FCCPC operatives Tuesday, January 28, had shut down Panda (Chinese) supermarket in the Jabi area of Abuja over purported sale of expired and adulterated products.

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