The National President of the Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA), Chief Tony Iju Nwabunike has said that he has put machinery in motion towards solving the crisis that has rocked the association in the last one year and to reconcile the warring parties so that together, they will build an association that they will all be proud of.
Nwabunike who disclosed this in an interview with newsmen in Lagos said that he came back from his sojourn abroad with good news which was that they were going to look for peace even as he advised that the said peace must come from both sides and that nobody should be looked at as if he was weak.
In his words,” We are going to quickly resolve this problem. I want you people to know this; ANLCA seems to be synonymous with troubles and problems because some people refused to be changed. There must be a change of character, there must be a change of the old way of doing things, there must be a change of we are agents, we need to be seen as more of professionals than agents. So, I want them to begin to realize this, that there is no way anybody can take you serious if you don’t keep your house intact and how do you keep your house intact? By washing your dirty linen right inside your toilet not outside.
“So, how do we do it? Like you rightly said, I have thought about it deeply and I thought it is important we take it from one segment to another. We call meetings, like I have started with SSAs meeting, NECOM meeting, I will call even the former Presidents meeting, I will go for elders forum meeting, I will meet Ndigbo, I will meet the Yorubas, the Ooduas, I will meet the easterners, I will meet the westerners and we sit down and see where do we get this thing wrong and we should correct it.
“If you don’t nip it in the bud, you start to make the same old mistake of cutting the tree and leaving the stem and at the end of the day, the tree will come up again. So, the issue is very clear. The issue that is very clear is that we need to have peace and that peace must be everlasting peace in this association. One needs to be the sacrificial lamb for this peace, one need to do it correctly.
“During the time of Kamba, there was problem, during the time of Inua Mohammed; there was trouble, during the time of Elochukwu, trouble, same with Shittu’s time. So, must we be troubled all the time? In fact, a very little relative peace we have during Shittu’s time was during his second tenure. He did his second tenure election by 7 O’clock in the morning. That will show you there was no peace. Shittu never experienced even a four year peace and again, peace that you allowed, you cover dirt and you felt it is peace, it is not peace, you need to clean it up totally so that you start from the scratch.
“This association needs to be sanitized; people need to be told that it is not the old way of doing things again. You must be clean because government is watching, everybody is watching you. It is not about bringing four or five members of the press and sponsor them, they keep writing about you, that is not the issue. The issue is if you want to tell yourself the simple truth, the inner conscience of yourself will tell you the truth. Are we really working well? Is the association coming up well? If you are coming to this association sometime two years ago, sometimes, you won’t see light, we have four lawyers here now, office is working, light, everything is functioning well.
“We must come together, we need to come together and fashion out a peaceful, everlasting peace, making sure that this association grow because this association must grow with the tendency of the maritime industry. Maritime industry outliving us and we must come onboard with it. The peace must come but it shouldn’t be a graveyard peace, it must be a peace that is rooted that people will see it and feel secure with one another. The good news is that all of us both A and B are looking for peace”.
Send your news, press releases/articles to augustinenwadinamuo@yahoo.com. Also, follow us on Twitter @ptreporters and on Facebook on facebook.com/primetimereporters or call the editor on 07030661526, 08053908817.
