The National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF) has faulted the current provision of the Act establishing the Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria (CRFFN) which gave more slots to non-professional members over the freight forwarders which the Council was established to regulate.
Recall that Act 16 of 2007 which established the CRFFN provided that seventeen people comprising of government appointees from relevant government agencies and representatives of geopolitical zone and fifteen elected members from the freight forwarding practitioners which altogether make a total of thirty-two member-Council.
However, speaking during a courtesy call on the Customs Area Controller of the Murtala Mohammed International Airport, Lagos, Comptroller Jane Shoboiki recently, the National President of NAGAFF, Chief Increase Uche described the development as an anomaly which should be corrected.
Uche pointed out that efforts were already on to correct the imbalance such that the freight forwarders in the governing council would outnumber the government appointees adding that he was confidence that the current provision of the Act would be overturned.
According to him,” Election was conducted recently and fifteen members of the freight forwarding family were elected. Of course, the Board is made up of thirty-two members, Customs is there, Shippers’ Council, that is under section 2 of the Council Act made a provision that there should be appointed members from the government establishments that are critical to the logistics supply chain and few other ones from institutes of higher learning. So, making thirty-two, seventeen from the other side while freight forwarders are fifteen and of course, we saw it as an anomaly.
“Last year, I was privileged to be part of the technical session under the National Assembly Committee that looked at the maritime bills to harmonize them after the public hearing, we discovered that the Act actually has problem and it was among those Acts that were slated for amendment. So, the composition like I said, thirty-two members, seventeen from non-professionals and fifteen from the professionals, we saw it as an anomaly which we are now pursuing to correct and by the special grace of God, it will be corrected so that the number of practicing freight forwarder will outnumber the non-practicing members in the Council”.
He further pointed out that when the Governing Council members were finally inaugurated, there were areas they would want to tackle immediately which according to him include; “National Committee on Trade Facilitation that is not doing anything in this country, National Committee on ICT, International Chambers of Commerce, these are areas where we take decisions that will help to speed up the recovery of the economy”.
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