…Gives him three mandates
Following the crisis of succession that rocked the Association of Registered Freight Forwarders Nigeria (AREFFN) recently, the National Executive Council (NEC) of the association has extended the tenure of the incumbent executives led by Dr. Frank Ukor for a period of six month.
The association’s NEC also mandate Ukor to within the six months period organize an Annual General Meeting (AGM) for the members of the association, reconcile all the members and organize election for the association.
It will be recalled that a section of the association led by a member of the Board of Trustees of the association, Mr. Innocent Elum had earlier appointed an interim executives for the association led by Alhaji Bala Lawal Daura in August last year, a development the NEC rejected out rightly.
Speaking to newsmen on the recent development in the association, AREFFN President, Dr. Frank Ukor said that the tenure of his executives that was supposed to expire in August 11, 2017 had been extended by six months with effect from November 6th 2017.
Ukor however said that although the NEC gave them a fresh six months to pilot the affairs of that association, he informed them that he would conduct election for the association and hand over in three months of the said six months.
According to him,” They said now that our tenure has expired and we are not contesting, that the best thing to do is to extend our tenure by six months starting from the 6th of November, 2017 but I told them that in the next three months, I want to conduct election and handover. I don’t want to stay more than three months but then there are a lot of things that needed to be done. One is that we have to call Annual General Meeting for the members and update them and see whether we can appoint more people to ratify the appointment made by these people.
“The other one is to try and reconcile all the members so that we can go for the election and everybody will be carried along for the election. These are the three critical issues the NEC mandated us to do; reconcile every member, conduct election and organize Annual general Meeting and these are what we intend to do in the next three months. That reconciliation is one aspect that all of expect that we are going to have problem because in the meantime, those ones are taking a difficult stand”.
On the circumstances that led to the appointment of an interim executives for the association by a member of the BoT, Ukor averred,” When we had a meeting on the 11th of August, they said that our tenure has expired; I said yes that as a matter of fact, it was supposed to expire that day but you know normally, we supposed to have organized an election but because of that trouble he (Alhaji Bala Lawal Daura) was making, there was a lot of distractions, funds were no more coming, so we couldn’t really concentrate to organize an election before this one happened.
“So, when it happened, they came up and said that we need to appoint somebody as the interim President, I agreed but it is not what our constitution said and I said that before we appoint the person, we have to meet with all the members of the Board because while they Mr. Innocent Elum and Mr. Ejike Metu) were in school, we appointed other people though their names have not been filed with the Corporate Affairs Commission but here, we are managing it. Any time we have any problem, they come in to solve that problem, any time we have financial constraints, they come in and help us raise that fund. So, we cannot wish them away.
“We will have a meeting, I will bring them and at the end of the day, we called NEC because National Executive Council is the highest decision making organ of the association anywhere but without doing all these things, these people went ahead and said they have made the appointments and before you know it, they said, they have been inaugurated. The whole thing is smoked with deceit. Do you know the person they appointed the interim President? That man that took us to court, that man that embezzled our money because he is a northerner and I said you cannot appoint any interim President without my input and that the NEC must know”.
On whether it would be right for one to say that AREFFN has been polarized, he replied, “That is what it is now, that is exactly what it means because we already have a faction and we are trying to manage the thing and bring everybody together”.
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