Know Your Rights (KYR)

Communication has been made a whole lot easier thanks to the invention, affordability and popularity of mobile phones. Telecommunications is definitely now an important aspect of our lives because everybody now uses phone. In Nigeria the popular telecoms companies are arguably: MTN, AIRTEL, GLO and 9mobile. As their consumer you are entitled to certain rights in your business relationship with these companies so today let's quickly talk about a few of these rights: 1) Right to minimum standards of quality of service. Your service provider should be able to satisfy your basic telecommunication needs. 2) Right to information and consumer education. You should be properly educated on the terms and conditions of your phone services before you pay for it. 3) Right to protection from fraudulent, misleading and deceitful information, advertisement or labelling. 4) Right to safety and a healthy environment, especially from radiations and other hazards from telecommunication ...

Today I'm going to talk about an area of our law that is still developing and still largely unknown to most people. Nevertheless, it is a very important area of law which creates and protects several rights. I'm talking about cyber law which basically deals with all your online and offline activities that involve computers. And by computers I'm not just talking about laptops and desktops but I'm referring to computers in the broader sense which includes electronic devices such as mobile phones, ATM machines, POS machines etc. They are several laws which cover different aspects of cyber law but for the purpose of our discussion today I'll be focusing on the rights and protections provided by the Nigerian Cybercrime Act. This law talks about so many things that are useful to every Nigerian but I'll only be mentioning just a few. For more information, please consult your lawyer. Without further ado, some of your cyber rights are: 1) right against unlaw...

It's been awhile. Let's briefly talk about the issue of manufacturers and vendors liability. As a human and citizen of Nigeria you have the right to life. Flowing from this right to life is your consequential entitlement to safe  consumable products that will not harm or jeopardize your health in anyway. Apart from your right to safe products, you also have the right to get products of approved/acceptable standards (in Nigeria the government has bodies which determine what standards are acceptable for different products). The crux of our discussion today is this: when you pay for goods, you should get exactly what you pay for. Applying this principle to real life it means that if a manufacturer produces substandard or fake products and you unknowingly consume such, you have the right to sue. Your right to sue even extends to the vendor(s) who sold the defective product. Considering that they are so many fake products flooding our markets today, this legal right is very...