As the freight forwarders go to the poll today to elect their representatives into the Governing Council of the Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria (CRFF), the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport (CILT) Nigeria has said that the sharing formula adopted as a means of choosing those to be elected by the freight forwarding associations will defeat the essence and spirit of the Act establishing CRFFN.
Recall that the accredited freight forwarding association under the regulation of CRFFN came together and opted to share the 15 positions allotted to the freight forwarding among the 5 registered associations ceding 6 positions each to NAGAFF and ANLCA which are the two leading associations in terms of membership and spread while allotting 1 positions each to AREFFN, NCMDLCA and NAFFAC.
However, speaking on the development, the National Executive Director of CILT Nigeria, Mr. Paul Ndibe who was speaking in an interview with Primetime Reporters in Lagos yesterday, recalled that the Act provided that people should be elected into these positions adding that those who put the bill which subsequently became an Act of the National Assembly did not look at the various freight forwarding associations while putting the Act together but rather individuals, even as he wondered what would happen assuming there were 20 freight forwarding associations in the country.
“If you are a freight forwarder, you are a freight forwarder, if you are licensed to operate as a freight forwarder; you are licensed to operate as a freight forwarder, once you meet up with those criteria. CRFFN might now provide an elimination process where people either in terms of size, in terms of age, in terms of experience, in terms of volume of activities, even turn over, you can say those who have turnover of may be N20 million a year are eligible to contest, they can set up such criteria and if they set up such criteria, those who meet up such criteria can contest.
“But the idea of allocating seats to various associations will defeat the essence because it is not a representative position as such, they looked at the freight forwarding as a unit and allocated those positions to them but not to be divided and sub-divided, otherwise it will breed the establishment of various associations under the CRFFN and that will distort the intentions of government.
“It is by election, so, all eligible candidates, I terms of eligibility, there are certain conditions you need to meet to become eligible and that has to be set by CRFFN and if that is set, whoever meets the conditions should vie for the election.
“It is not a local government positions, it’s not Federal Account Allocation Committee, so, people should be discouraged from doing that”, Ndibe stated.
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