A member of the Board of Trustees of the Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA), Prince Taiye Oyeniyi has challenged the leadership of the association to come up a proof of the said money released to him to update the membership of the association’s Board with the registration of the new members of the Board with the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC).
The National Vice President of ANLCA, Dr. Kayode Farinto had recently told newsmen in a press briefing in Lagos that Oyeniyi’s name was mentioned at the National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting held in Abuja where it was discovered that money was given to him twice after the last BoT election in 2014 which held at Warri to regularize the names of the newly elected members to be on the Board of Trustees’ list which he failed to do.
He said,” You know, the normal thing is that when you have a new BoT, you will regularize with the CAC. Immediately after our BoT election, Prince Taye Oyeniyi collected money two times to regularize these members’ names to be on the Board of Trustees’ list but he didn’t do that and it is unfortunate.
“In view of that, the NEC has directed that he has to face the Disciplinary Committee and let me take you people to the role of the Vice President so that it will not look as if it is being personalized. The Vice President shall be the Chairman of National Disciplinary Committee of the association, that can be found in section 7 subsection 2b of our constitution.
“I have told the NS to write to Prince Taye Oyeniyi to come and explain why he had to collect money two times and he would not register the new Board of Trustees members. The funniest thing among the whole thing is that out of the five members of the BoT that are parading themselves, it is only Prince Taye Oyeniyi that is registered and that is mischievous, it is wicked, it is an affront and it is fraudulent”.
Responding to the allegation, Oyeniyi maintained that the Vice President has no right under ANLCA’s constitution to question how the Board expended monies appropriated to it saying that the Board operates as an entity under the constitution even as he said “if they give money to any of the NECOM members, he can go ahead to summon them for accountability”.
He went ahead to say that anybody claiming to have given him money should go ahead and prove it while challenging a factional Chairman of the Board, Chief Henry Njoku to provide a counterfoil of the Cheque issued to him in that regard.
“Administratively, if anything was given to me to either do the printing of the letter heading or to do any other thing through the Secretariat, that one does not translate to registration of new Board members. It will interest you to know that the former Board Chairman, Henry does not want to go because for instance, he has been there for ten years and after his two tenure, we agreed that the tenure of Chairman should be restricted to two years, I am the Secretary then where the first Board members were registered of which I am one of them. So, nobody should tell me that if I know that I am going to benefit from that registration and I will not do it.
“He (Henry) has collected money, he failed to do it and during the period we are talking about, between four years ago up to five years plus and now, April last year, they forged our letter heads, Henry, Aare Shittu and Peter Obih and wrote a letter to the Corporate Affairs Commission to Caveat Emptor our file, it was in this problem that we were trying to regularize it that we discovered that there was a letter. A petition was written to the Inspector-General of Police and I petitioned Corporate Affairs Commission, as I am talking to you now, our file is out caveat and they have invited us to come and regularize our membership.
“If there is no crisis, would he have brought it up that he gave me money? So, he should please give the press the figure of the money that I collected, when I collected it and where. The fact of the matter is that if I exercise my duty as the Secretary of the Board in doing follow up of some things…. Before we can register new Board members, it was discovered that ANLCA have not send any return over ten years ago to the Corporate Affairs Commission. He (Henry) was there before me as a Board member, why didn’t they send annual returns to the Corporate Affairs Commission?
“After working all the penalties out, is that the money they now claim that they gave me? That was why I said that they should give you the figure that was given to me and bringing it out before the NECOM, the constitution specified how an erring member can be tried. Let Farinto put up a letter to me inviting me because I have never seen any letter.
“The fact of the matter is that when people don’t do things properly, they will not get any good result. So, it is a blackmail and I believe in principle that by the time letter comes, when we get to the bridge, we know how to cross it”, he explained.
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