As the National Association of the Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF) elections observes a break, feelers are rife that the elections conducted so far which was believed to be generally peaceful and transparent may have been proven to be otherwise.
This is more so as one of the contestants in the elections, Comrade Peter Paul Uzobude has described the elections as unfortunate.
Uzobude who contested for the Vice Chairmanship position of the association in the Apapa chapter told Primetime Reporters in an interview that those who won in the elections especially the incumbent chairman of the Chapter, Dr. Fred Ajuzie who was re-elected for second tenure of hiring market women and shoe makers to ensure victory for himself and his team.
According to him,” the NAGAFF elections was unfortunate because I knew it before I entered it but I just wanted to try. A good candidate never win election in the black race, I am sorry. In the whole black race, no way can a good candidate win election because,one, he is ready to work, two, many people will be seeing him as a threat when he gets there because he is not going to leave anything unturned. He is going to do the accurate thing thereby they will not allow him to come on board. That is what I experienced”.
“They did the kangaroo election that they did, hired women who have not seen the port, shoemakers, those who don’t know their left from their right, those who have never been seen in the port to come and vote. It is unfortunate that even the founder allowed the thing to happen. It is very very unfortunate but it has happened, we take it in good faith”.
On what he did on noticing that some non Freight Forwarders were hired to take part in the election, he stated that they wrote petitions informing the electoral umpire of the development but failed to get any response from the commission.
He further accused the NAGAFF Electoral Commission (NECOM) of looking the other way when most of the contestants were campaigning at the election venue on the day of the elections as against the electoral guidelines which stipulated that all campaigns ends a day to any chapter’s election thereby giving some candidates undue advantage over their opponents.
Uzobude popularly known as Dogo also said that when they alerted the NECOM members, they were told that they were allowed to campaign outside the election venue and not inside the venue on the election day thereby violating the provisions of the electoral guidelines.
He moreover alleged that as against the electoral provisions which frowns against team and group campaigns, some of the contestants especially the incumbent chairman of the association at Apapa, Dr. Fred Ajuzie, not only campaigned with his camp but also used his print medium, “Port Evidence” to campaign for his camp as well as pre-empted the outcome of the election by predicting the eventual winners in the elections which happened as he he predicted yet no sanction was placed on him.
He admitted however that the elections seemed transparent and peaceful because of the understanding they portrayed in the face of those irregularities as learned people otherwise the situation would have been out of control if they had to go by it the Nigerian Context.
When asked how the hired women and the shoemakers managed to scale through the huddles of getting the NAGAFF and Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria (CRFFN)’s registration to qualify them for the elections since they are alien to the system, he has this to say,” along the line, there are people who did not register with the CRFFN. They went and printed receipts but they could not pay. Through the gang-up, the cleared them for voting and they voted. We brought evidence against them and nothing was done”.
He however stated that he had not made up his mind as to whether to go to the tribunal to challenge the outcome of the elections saying that he would sleep over the issue even as he disclosed that he was not going to work against anybody but may have to fight for his right.
On whether fighting for his right includes leaving NAGAFF, he said,” No! For now, I am not going to leave any NAGAFF but I am going to use my experience as an old association member to know how to work with them because I thought I was with them, I didn’t know I was not with them”.
In his reaction, the Chairman of NECOM, Mr. Okey Nerus acknowledged that the commission did received a petition from a certain candidate during the screening of both the voters and the contestants alleging some irregularities on the part of the aspirants standing for the elections.
Nerus however disclosed that upon investigation, the commission discovered that the allegations contained in the petition was baseless and contained no iota of truth in it and upon trying to place some sanctions on the candidate for raising a false alarm, the commission was made to relent by the management.
“Somebody made an allegation, that came as an allegation. One thing is to allege a thing another is for you to substantiate them. You know, when it got to our knowledge, we invited the man that wrote the petition and since he could not substantiate all of that, like I said, we wanted to wield the big stick but we were stopped by the management”, Nerus said.
