Freight forwarders operating in the Nigerian seaport, airport and land border stations who are yet to register with the Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria (CRFFN) may soon lose access to the ports across the nation as they will no longer be allowed to carry on their businesses in the ports.
The Chairman, Governing Council of CRFFN, Alhaji Abubakar Tsanni who made this known in while addressing journalists in Lagos yesterday said that the Council would soon commence enforcement to rid the ports of unregistered practitioners calling on those who were yet to register with the Council to do so immediately.
In his words,” On the issue of registration, very soon, it is going to be enforced in all our ports and in the industry, anybody who is not a registered member of CRFFN will not do any business in the port and also with the customs. So, everybody must register with CRFFN, the Minister has already in his inaugural speech told us that he has already instructed the NPA and we are only going to create our committee, then we continue to enforce it.
“Anybody that did not register with CRFFN, will not have any business in NPA and by God’s grace, we are paying a courtesy call next week to CG of customs and we had already had a working relationship with them that anybody who did not register with CRFFN will not have any business with customs also”.
Tsanni further disclosed that the Council would embark on training of freight forwarders even as he insisted that it is only those who were in possession of the CRFFN identity cards would be allowed to do business at the ports saying,” once you don’t have ID card, you cannot go into the port. So, with that, we are going to reduce a lot of congestion in the port. So, that training we are going to give will assist a lot in what we are going to do”.
He stated that the Council had already embarked on courtesy visit to registered freight forwarding associations with the aim of discussing with them to ascertain what their problems were and how they would assist them in solving the problems that they presented to the Council.
On foreigners engaging in freight forwarding job here in Nigeria, the Chairman said,” We are going to form a committee and immediately we inaugurate our committee, we are going to start our work on that aspect and I believe we will work according to the law. What the law says about the position of foreigners in the country, at the end of that, we will come out with a decision on what we are going to do in respect to that. But I believe that we are going to do justice to the industry and to the country and also to the foreigners”.
He also said that the Council would hold three town hall meetings, one in Lagos, the other in Port-Harcourt while the third would be in Kano where they expect to meet with all of the freight forwarders, listen to them, they would know him and he would in turn know them.
Speaking on Practitioners Operating Fee (POF), the Vice Chairman of the Council, Chief Henry Njoku stated that the main assignment for the Council now was how to solve the agents’ problems adding that when they had solve them, they would still apply them.
He continued, “As our Chairman said, yesterday, we started from NAGAFF to ANLCA, each of them we have visited; all of them are insisting that we should go ahead and collect the POF. So, we don’t have any issue about it but the Chairman thinks that it is necessary for us to tackle their problems and then go ahead and do what the government regulation says. We are here to implement it and we have said that the different between now and before is that before, there are some other associations who were not here but now everybody is on board and then we can solve the problem of the agents and then go ahead and implement government policy as regards to CRFFN”.
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