A former President of the National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF), Dr. Eugene Nweke has described as ambitious, the Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria (CRFFN) amendment bill 2017 as packaged by the Chairman, House Committee on Ports, Harbours and Waterways, Hon. Patrick Asadu.
Speaking in an interview with Primetime Reporters in Lagos, Nweke decried the lack of consultations of the critical stakeholders in the freight forwarding industry on the areas of amendment before the bill was put up by the sponsor.
He recalled that the Act which was signed into law in 2017 which incidentally clocked ten this had only four years out of the ten administered by the elected Governing Council members leaving the succeeding six years without any administration thereby accusing the federal government of truncating what he called a learning process.
According to him,” That document was packaged out of ambition, it was an ambitious document. In 2007, professionals gathered, did wider consultations, presented a bill at the national assembly as professionals and having presented this bill, the public hearing was consistent from lower house to the upper chamber and after much work, it was enacted and signed into law by president Obasanjo and by 2008 as established in the third schedule, an election was organized from the registered freight forwarders that was sampled then in order to midwife the process as also provided in that very Act.
“Now this is a profession that has existed as old as the Nigerian waters have been but there has never been any form of professional regulation, now overnight, regulatory aspect comes in, it becomes a new order and because it is a new order, there must be resistance ad there must be a process of trying to fine-tune and get real professionalism and reform. By 2008, the first council came, they have only tenure of 4 years and the Council is now ten years and out of these ten years, only four years was effectively administered by the professionals and it was like a learning process for them which over time as professionals, they will improve on it and consolidate. It is not automatic and we are not going to import any specialty from anywhere to come and give us leadership.
“Government truncated the process, our learning process. Democracy is a learning process but in this case, we saw a democratic government through a Minister who truncated the same learning process. People were elected, there was no coup, their tenure finished and government created a vacuum; that was a coup they introduce from the immediate past Minister of Transport, Senator Idris Umar.
“So, what are we saying? Other than government organizing an election, the council has been submitting and defending budgets every year, does it mean nobody has seen the need to include the election in the budget for good six years? But to our chagrin, we woke up one day and heard that a bill had been presented to the National Assembly for amendment without any consultation, where cases are still in courts and they have not been entertained and before you know it, the next thing is public hearing. We attended the public hearing because the sponsor of the amendment is a gentleman; he felt that the Act is due for amendment and that the freight forwarders should be given prominence; that was why he went for it.
“But what was embedded in it becomes a different ideology because in that very bill, other than saying as it were under section 2, that from the register of the registered freight forwarders, an election will be organized for the freight forwards to elect among the contestants people that will serve in the governing council while the government makes the necessary appointments including those that will represent the zones, we now saw that they say that election will be organized only for ten, then that the government will now appoint a chairman while the Vice chairman will now be elected by the governing council. Then the Registrar will now be appointed by the President to now become Executive Secretary of CRFFN and we said no. Our profession is not different.
“The Registrar we talked about by the people who put this Act together was not out of question, there was every vision in that. A Registrar is that person who have the in-depth understanding of one; how to keep a register especially as it affects the freight forwarding profession and he must be a freight forwarder with a freight forwarder’s background. Two, freight forwarding is not carpentry, it is an international profession regulated internationally by a bigger body called FIATA, they set standard and their standard is universal. So, FIATA has a standard not to recognize incursions by government. So, going to appoint a chairman and a Registrar by the government, that is no longer the professional freight forwarding that FIATA recognizes. So, there was the need to tell the Honourable chairman and members of the committee of the implications of what they were about to do which was the beauty of the public hearing that we went for that took place on Monday and Tuesday.
“Some other sections that they were trying to change and make it government agency, an all-inclusive, there is nothing wrong with government being involved to give direction, government has the duty to show and encourage leadership. That is its priority, they have to encourage us, by the time we test run and garner our experience, we become practical and professionally inclined, that is the essence but for the government to hijack, then tomorrow, you wake up and look at one Agricultural farmer and make him CRFFN Chairman or you go and look for one horticulturist and make him Registrar, no! What we are doing is for professionalism sake”.
The former NAGAFF President continued,” We said that as it was contained in the old Act, the Minister should appoint either one person or two persons from each region but preferably one person from each zone to represent each region in the council as provided before. Then in section 2(g) where in the old Act says that five persons shall be appointed each from Airports, Land borders and Seaports, these are the three arms; that mean we are looking at 15 people. So, that 15 people should be the norm and not just saying only ten. On what basis did they come about ten as proposed? 15 freight forwarders should emerge to join the hall of fame of the government agencies in the council so that there can be equity and beauty of democratic process which is embedded in raising of hands.
“Then one other aspect we also pinpointed, before now, while the present Registrar can stay on and on because there was no provision in the Act that talked about tenure, so, right now, we are saying that three years is enough for a Registrar. After those three years, we will assess his performance and if he impressed us, his contract can be reviewed for another three years. That is six years in all and another person should come in. The amendment is saying four years but we don’t want four years because we need to test run as much as possible.
“The tenure of the elected governing council members is still four years of two years spread; that is what it should be. We are in support of calling it the Governing Board if that is what they want but we had reasons why we chose governing Council in the first place so that the council will send a message to the government that this is not like any other board. But using their thinking now that it should be government agency, they are now using the word Board but it supposed to be Governing Council”.
He contended that the Practitioners’ Operating Fee (POF) which hitherto was the bane of the CRFFN was diversionary adding that “sustaining the learning process in the CRFFN governing council would have addressed this issue of POF because the immediate past governing council was already at it before their tenure wound up.
He maintained that if government was committed to the principle of democratization and learning process, they would have ensured that election was conducted a year after so that other people would come onboard and continued from where the first council stopped.
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