Barely one week to the National Executive Committee (NECOM) election of the Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA), one of the contenders to the office of the National President of the association, Hon. Tony Iju Nwabunike, has spoken glowingly of the outgoing National President, Prince Olayiwola Shittu.
Nwabunike who was speaking at an event to round up his campaign at the Murtala Mohammed International Airport Chapter of the association in Ikeja, Lagos on Friday said President Shittu did well in in terms of administration which saw the association having a permanent National Secretariat which hitherto was not there before his assumption of office eight years ago.
While pointing out the achievements of Shittu to include bringing the association to the limelight of the international standard as well as reintegrating the association back into the world customs brokerage, he however added that something was lacking in his leadership.
According to him,” Every leader comes with his own vision, every leader comes with his own ideas, the ideas that we got from our outgoing president is purely administrative ideas. Our outgoing president has done a great job when it comes to administration, he has actually put in a good secretariat, he has actually put us in the limelight in the standard; he has made sure that we are all reintegrated to world customs brokerage. He has done well in administration but I think somewhere is lacking. Where he is lacking, I think and our group is actually thinking alongside with us is where we call operation. Operation is lacking, we have to do so many work in operation.
“If you look at the concessionaires, arbitrary charges, if you look at the shipping companies, the kind of charges they are being churned out, if you even look at Apapa port today, I am very sure you are not happy going to Apapa all the time and if you look at the welfare of our association, it has not been met and I will tell you, if you want to know, even when everybody is holding us to ransom including the transporters, when they take your containers, bringing it back, everything is collapsing.
“Most importantly, the jobs, our jobs have been taken away by foreigners and serving customs officers. Customs has taken away our jobs, other government agencies have taken away our jobs, Quarantine officer is now a freight forwarder, a customs officer is a freight forwarder, a NAFDAC officer is a freight forwarder even the transporters are actually practicing customs brokerage. So, we believe that in administration, our predecessors that are going to go very shortly have actually worked very well but on purely operations, we will need to move forward, we need to actually work harder because we know where the problems are and we want to fix them up”.
On why he was vying for ANLCA President, Hon. Nwabunike who is the pioneer Chairman of the Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria (CRFFN) said that he was in the race to fulfill the people’s wish for him to come and lead the association.
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