…As Nwabunike dismisses contradicting his deputy on registration of port service providers
The Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA) has said that it will engage the leadership of the four freight forwarding associations in the maritime industry to come up with measures that will enable them solve the myriad of challenges facing the freight forwarders in the day to day running of their businesses at the nation’s seaports.
The National President of ANLCA, Chief Tony Iju Nwabunike who disclosed this in an interview with newsmen at the national secretariat of the association in Lagos on Monday stated that it was a better thing to be done if all the associations could come together and agree to do things correct.
Nwabunike who just return from over one month vacation abroad stated that he was aware of the planned withdrawal of service by some concerned freight forwarder to protest the excesses of the officers and men of the Nigeria Customs Service even as he regretted that they were not able to go on with the proposal adding that that would have been a better thing to have been done to register their displeasure over some anomalies in the industry.
According to him,” My NECOM told me that, then I was away out of the country but my NECOM actually told me and I sanctioned that. I believed that it should be looked into and I am sure that it would have been a better thing to have been done, if every one of us, I mean the associations come together and agree that we should do things correct because our members are actually suffering in the port and they need to know that they have leaders around. If they don’t feel us while they are working, they won’t believe us while we are talking to them.
“So, this time around that I am back, I am going to bring down some of these Presidents, let them know the reason why we should work together and get results. The most important thing is to get result that will be more effective to our members, the result that will cover our members from all the problems that they are having in the ports, the result that will make them have faith to do their job knowing full well that we are backing them legitimately.
“I have a good relationship with the President of NAGAFF, Increase Uche is my brother and this time around, what we are going to do is to the benefit and the interest of freight forwarders and customs brokers together despite the fact of wherever we are coming out from. We don’t have a synergy as in one association but we are working towards one goal. The goal is to make sure that our members are free to do their legitimate businesses”.
On his alleged reversal of his Vice President’s position on the registration of the Port Service Providers by the Nigerian Shippers’ Council, the National President said,” No, it wasn’t a reverse. I will tell you that Shippers’ Council, when I went through their gazette, I discovered that they can do that. So, the issue is very clear, if somebody has a legal right to do things and he wants to do it, even if it is to your own detriment, you need to sit down with him to discuss it. That is the way I function. You won’t be saying they won’t do that; it can’t be done whereas they have a legal backing to do that.
“So, it is all about sitting down with them to fashion out the way forward but we have not done that. It is not the issue of my Vice President was saying one thing and I am saying something else. They misunderstood it because the way the writer put it was wrong. I told the writer that I am going to meet with the Shippers’ Council and sitting down with my NECOM, we find a way forward because I know that going through the gazette, that these guys have the legal backing to do that but the procedure is what we are going to talk about and my Vice President understood it”.
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