The President, National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF), Chief Increase Uche has announced the preparedness of the association to take part in the forthcoming Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria (CRFFN) Governing Council election scheduled for September 23, 2017.
Speaking to newsmen in Lagos Thursday shortly after his confirmation as the substantive National President of NAGAFF following the demise of the former President, Uche said that they had asked NAGAFF members to start making preparations for the election.
He also said that the association strongly support the collection of the Practitioner’ Operating Fee (POF) scheduled to commence on August 1, 2017 by the CRFFN saying that the fee was to help them run their respective associations.
According to him,” There is no two ways about it, POF is a government position and we are not countering it. POF will be collected; we know the purpose for which it was created. We ourselves, the freight forwarders under JACOFF created the avenue to collect that POF though it was formerly practicing fee and the purpose was for us to run our respective associations until government converted it to POF. For now, it is to be collected and we are very much in support of it.
“Let government do the collection, let CRFFN function effectively and then provide the services for which the council was established. That is the position; we are not being selfish about it. Those who are speaking from both sides of their mouths, we don’t want to be party to that. So, the collection of the POF that starts on August 1st, it is left for the government, it doesn’t concern us, if they are picking it from the source or we are to pay as practitioners, whatever modalities that were put in place, by the grace of God, we will key in.
“Then on the election, we are ready, we are prepared to ask our members to start preparing”, he said.
On whether he is contesting for the Chairmanship position of the Council, he replied,” Is there any crime for someone to aspire to be the Chairman of CRFFN Board? Before you make the Chairman of the Board, you must first of all win the election. So, if by the special grace of God I contest and win, CRFFN is for freight forwarders, I will always aspire to get to the apex of any organization that is linked up with freight forwarding and logistics services. By the way, it is a bad person that hides himself in the society. As long as I am a practitioner and I have the requisite qualification, whatever the game states, I will try my best”.
He continued,” So, we are not afraid, in fact NAGAFF is even supposed to be the first Chairman of CRFFN Board by right if not for the gimmicks and all that played out. So, nobody is afraid, any time they called for the election, we have the registered voters, we have qualified members that can contest, the funding is not so much a problem although we know there is a recession but by the grace of God, when we get to the river, we think of how to cross it”.
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