A former National President of the Association of Nigeria Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA), Chief Sir Ernest Elochukwu has said that the Professional Operating Fee (POF) proposed to be collected by the Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria (CRFFN) may in time to come be declared an illegal fee.
Elochukwu who stated this in an interview with our correspondent said this. Was because the POF was not among the statutory income sources for the Council as laid out in its Act.
According to him,” But the story of what has now come to called POF can be traced back to 2012. Before then, there was a federal government committee that looked at government ‘s funding when the sources of funding became leaner and government was looking at ways to reduce cost of governance, that was Oronsanye’s committee came up with the submission that those regulatory bodies will no longer be funded by the government or from the federation account.
“That was how the council tinkered another source of funding whereby they made a regulation for Transaction fee. This Transaction fee was agreed upon and everything about it was accepted, the same characters that kept on creating problems now went to town again blackmailing every member especially the freight forwarding members of the council and that was why the Transaction fee could not take off.
“It was in the process of this and the controversy they engendered, that was how the council was not formed before the expiration of the tenure of that second council. And now, behind, without a council , they have now go ahead with the Registrar tinkering about everything, that was how the Transaction fee that was regulated by the council was clandestinely changed to POF”.
When reminded that his association, ANLCA was part of the process that brought about the POF, he had this to say,”ANLCA is not about who is the President or the Chairman BOT. Yes! Those people represent ANLCA but ANLCA is about the members and the members take decision about what they want and what they don’t want at the National Executive Council meeting. It was at the National Executive Council meeting that the issue of POF was presented by the leadership of ANLCA and majority of members rejected it.
“So, the issue of those who are privy and those who are not does not arise because at that point in time questions were asked and answers were given. Those questions for instance, was it the POF that was regulated upon and the answer was no because the second council made a regulation and that regulation was not about POF. So, when the members wanted to know where POF came from, a good answer could not be given and members rejected it”.
On the allegation that he was the one who was hell bent that ANLCA under Shittu will not support the POF since Shittu did not support the idea when it was first muted with him as a member of the CRFFN governing council, Sir Elochukwu described the allegation as the figment of the imagination of the proponents of the allegation even as he stated that personalities are subsumed in the overall interest of ANLCA.
“For the avoidance of any doubt, the so called during my own time, it was not during my presidency that the idea of Transaction fee was muted. Since after the second council, nobody has been a member of the governing council again. So, it is not as if Shittu is now a member of the governing council at that point in time. That is how people create stories, they make up things, they sell it and it becomes so plausible in their brain.
“So, the issue is not about me neither is it about Shittu, the issue is that members of ANLCA in their meeting examined the POF and came out with a position that no, it is not right including what it was even being proposed to do”, he said.
He observed that people now form many mushroom associations looking at the POF as their lifeline which was what ANLCA stood against adding that the POF if adopted with that mindset would be counter productive to the motive of establishing the CRFFN which according to him was to sanitize the freight forwarding industry.
When asked if the sharing formular proposed by the CRFFN was the reason why the association withdrew its support for the collection of the fee, he answered,”I could say yes and no. Yes because. ANLCA did not see the issue of the proposal to find an alternative means of raising fund to run the council as an opportunity for associations to spring up and start demanding percentages. But more than that, we also did not look at it on the basis of oh people are now looking at it and are already calculating what they are going to get out of POF. We look at it as something that will in the final analysis will work against the overall aim of what we are doing.
“So, it doesn’t necessarily mean that there is a disagreement about the sharing formular, we are averse to sharing such money because the issue is about empowering the Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria to be able to execute its mandate of regulating the practice of freight forwarding in Nigeria. So, when people now move out of that to the arena of sharing money, ANLCA became uninterested”.
Asked if ANLCA will support the collection of the fee is sharing the money accrued from POF between the associations and the CRFFN is jettisoned, he said,” First and foremost is the approach and the issue. I have told you now that POF was not regulated by any council and the Act says that only the regulation made by the council that will be executed or implemented. Now, when POF was not regulated by the council and by some arrangements it was brought in, do we execute it?”
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