The Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria (CRFFN) has exonerated the past administrations of the Council of financial irregularities as being insinuated in some quarters.
It will be recalled that the founder of the National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF), Dr. Boniface Aniebonam recently alleged that financial irregularities by the past leaderships of the Council had crippled the current Governing Council from executing its statutory mandate and called for probe of the past administrations of the council, a statement which did not go down well with the 2nd Chairman of the Council, Hakeem Olanrewaju who had sincere reacted.
However, speaking with journalists on the sideline of the 22nd Meeting of the Governing Council of CRFFN held at the Federal Ministry of Transportation building in Lagos on Thursday, the Chairman of the Council, Alhaji Tsanni Abubakar faulted the allegation saying there was nothing like that.
Abubakar informed that Dr. Aniebonam who made the allegation had since withdrawn the statement having realized that there was nothing like that adding that members of NAGAFF were in the Council and would have said something if there was anything to the contrary.
In his words,” There is nothing like that and I believe that they have withdrawn their statement because they realized there is nothing. If there is anything, their members are here, they are in the best position to say it. So, I believe there is nothing that is why they still remain silent. So, there is no issue of irregularities in the issue generally”.
On the outcome of the meeting, the Chairman said that meeting deliberated on so many issues that would bring about the progress of the Council adding that “with this, by God’s grace, a lot of things will be coming in for the freight forwarding in the country”, even as he assured that this second quarter would see a lot of changes that were coming into the industry.
On the achievement of the Council in the last six months of its inauguration, the Vice Chairman of the Council, Chief Henry Njoku noted that the Council came on board facing the challenge of recruiting a new Registrar and then getting some certain position of government in place informing that they that had been able to get a new Registrar and equally moved in to make sure that agents got some commission from their declarations which they had not gotten before in their life.
“This is the first time the Council is making it (POF) mandatory, gotten from government, gazette, that when they pay money, certain percentage should be given back to the agents and then in the second quarter now, we are going to set the standard for every agent including education and whatever to make sure that we are in the same page. We are taking it stage by stage.
“When the Task Forces came to Lagos here and blocked there, the Council got to the CG and immediately, all the representatives of the associations, the Presidents, all of them were invited to Abuja, that matter was resolved from the Council but the Council did not come to talk but associations went back and said they have resolved the problem but it is the Council that did it, I led the delegation but I didn’t make noise about it”, he added.
Speaking on why they have not organized a town hall meeting to interface with the freight forwarding since their inauguration six months age, Njoku said,” All the associations are being represented in the Council and they are Council members holding some key positions, Chairmen of Committees and when we finish here, we expect that they go back respectively to report back to their associations what is going on.
“But we are coming up, we have a forum where all the Presidents of all the associations will have interaction with the Council and we are taking off now, after the swearing ceremony, that is where we are going to and then we give them low down of what we are doing”.
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