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The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) has created a consumer complaints clearinghouse on indigenous IT product and services.
The new initiative is the country’s first ICT consumer protection forum to help citizens express their grievances as it relates to indigenous IT product and services and to then settle the issues in a non-litigious manner.
Director General of NITDA, Mallam Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, while speaking at a ‘Virtual Digital Services Consumer Protection Forum, a webinar, presented for review, the Draft Framework on Alternative Dispute Resolution for the ICT Sector Abdullahi said the occasion was very critical to the success of NITDA’s strategy aimed at building qualitative indigenous content for consumption in the ICT sector.
According to him, the multiple complaints and quality of ICT products and services has led to the conceptualisation of the consumer forum as well as the drafting of the framework for alternative dispute resolution in ICT.
Leaving such issues unattended to could lead to lack of confidence in local ICT products and services, which in turn could lead to very low patronage and job losses in the sector, said the NITDA’s boss who was represented at the webinar by NITDA’s Director IT Infrastructure Solutions, Dr Usman Gambo Abdullahi.
The agency aim is to protect digital products and services, help to win consumers’ confidence while also encouraging Nigerians to buy made-in-Nigeria ICT products, said Abdullahi, and added that NITDA has been playing its role in ensuring that it maximizes opportunities embedded in the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to him, government was addressing the challenges in the IT sector from a holistic point of view.
Earlier, NITDA’s Director Standards Guidelines and Frameworks, Mr. Olayinka Adejube, described the event as a meeting point for service consumers and digital service providers to interact on possible ways of enhancing mutually beneficial values.
His words: “This event is to bring consumers and service providers to interact and seek areas where there is need to work together to ensure that the essence of all the investment in digital economy is not wasted.”
