The Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA) has said that the former members of the Governing Council of the Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria (CRFFN) as well as some high ranking officials of the Federal Ministry of Transport had been promised one percentage or the other from the proceeds from the collection of the Practitioners’ Operating Fee (POF), hence their insistence on going ahead with the collection of the fee even against a court injunction to that effect.
Speaking to newsmen in Lagos, the Publicity Secretary of ANLCA, Dr. Kayode Farinto noted that there was an arrangement to give a company called S.W Global the collection of this money on the premise that the company would take 40% of whatever it collected querying those behind the company.
According to him,” I need to let the press know so that they will let the whole world know that on the issue of POF, there is a new development. I have just given you an information, go to the CAC (Corporate Affairs Commission) and find out who are the Directors of S.W Global and you find out some freight forwarders that I don’t want to mention have been promised percentages, so also some Directors and Assistant Directors in the Federal Ministry of Transport, hence they insist that they must collect this POF and that 40% of what they collect will be removed immediately”.
When asked to give the names of those that were compromised in the freight forwarding industry as well as in the federal Ministry of Transport on the POF issue, he had this to say,” You are journalists, write to CAC that they should furnish you with the names of the Directors of S.W Global and they will do that. A part of investigative journalism is that you go and do that investigation”.
He however recounted that the position of ANLCA on the issue of POF remained unchanged adding,” we have just sent another letter to the Federal Ministry of Transport because we just noticed that another letter was signed by one Musa Nagogo, an Assistant Director in the Federal Ministry of Transport on the 15th of July that they should go ahead and collect the POF. But we have sent them a letter letting them know that we are in court. Secondly, the issue of collection of POF has not even arisen.
“We are doing that one when we discovered this issue of S.W Global. What we should be talking about now, at the last meeting we had on the 2nd of July at the AIG Adeniyi’s office is that he has given us one month to go and conduct an election”.
Reacting, the Registrar, CRFFN, Sir Mike Jukwe said that the Council was handling the issue of POF maturely since staff of the Council were not touts adding, “We are government agency, there are laws we are following, so you don’t expect us to be joining issues with those we are regulating. We are regulating them, they are not regulating us. So, if they are dancing naked in the market, we cannot join them to dance naked in the market. That is why we have kept mute but we are doing what we are supposed to do. We are not the same thing with ANLCA that we want to go and join issues with their principals”.
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