Nigerians Alarmed as Loan App Intimidation Tactics Escalate Ahead of Festive Season
Threat to life is a criminal offense provided for in Section 56 of the Criminal Law of Lagos State, 2015. It states that a person who threatens to carry out the violence of attacking another person is guilty of a misdemeanor and can be jailed for one year.
While the criminal defamation under the Nigeria law clearly states that a defamation matter is defined in section 373 of the criminal code as a matter likely to injure the reputation of any person by exposing the person to hatred, contempt or ridicule, or likely to damage any person in his or her profession or trade by injury to his reputation.
Despite these clearly defined laws, Nigerians across the 6 geopolitical zones are not spared the extreme tactics used by loan app operators on clients considered to have defaulted in their loan repayment.
However, loan app operators can not claim ignorance in their approach, resorting to high-handedness as the solution to loan recovery when they break the law to do so. Ignorance of the law does not afford any excuse for any act or omission which would otherwise constitute an offence, unless knowledge of the law by the offender is expressly declared to be an element of the offence.
As the yuletide season gear up and the end-of-year fever heightens with the drop in conscientious consumerism, LightRay Media carried out a survey to feel the pulse of Nigerians regarding the upsurge of extreme tactics by loan app managers and operator’s and their disregard for the rule of law.