Nigeria dismisses DStv price complaints
September 8, 2022
By Chris Forrester
A Competition & Consumer Protection tribunal, sitting in Nigeria, has thrown out class action lawsuit challenging recent price increases by DStv.
MultiChoice owns both DStv and Gotv, which are pay-TV operations in Nigeria.
Delivering judgment on September 6th, a three-member panel of the tribunal, dismissed the suit for lacking in merit.
Lawyer, Festus Onifade, had issued the lawsuit on behalf of a coalition of Nigerian consumers. Onifade had asked the tribunal to curb MultiChoice and DStv from raising their subscription fees. The case had been running since May 2020,
The tribunal held that the price increase was valid and that only Nigeria’s president had the power to regulate prices which in any case did not apply to these circumstances. It also ruled that the plaintiff had not shown evidence that claimants had suffered “psychological trauma, hardship or violation of their human rights” as a result of the price increases.