The Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria (CRFFN) has said that contrary to opinion held in some quarters, registration with the Council as a practicing freight forwarder in Nigeria is not limited to those who belonged to the five accredited freight forwarding associations.
The Registrar of the Council, Barr. Samuel Nwakohu who made this clarification at a media briefing in Lagos yesterday explained that one could register either as an individual or as a corporate body.
He said, “Where you will have a problem is where you don’t register, it will be difficult to do business. That N5, 000 he is dodging to pay would have cost him millions.”
On the fate of those freight forwarders who may want to resist the payment of the Practitioners’ Operating Fee (POF), Nwakohu opined that “In any given situation at all, you don’t expect everybody to comply. What we are doing is fully backed by law. There must be pockets of resistance here and there. In things like this, there will always be some people who will say ‘we no go gree’. So, in our own case, we are prepared, we are fully automated for this reason.
“I have been very careful saying this; it will be very difficult to do business as a freight forwarder if one is not registered with CRFFN because you cannot log in. So, the system we have structured is self-enforcing, we don’t need people to wear bullet proof vests with guns to go to enforce it. Technology will enforce it at the ports. If you don’t pay, you can’t exit your cargo.
“We have done everything humanly possible to make sure that the system we have put in place will work. There is no other thing we can do. There is a little App that has been produced and the whole idea is for it to support the freight forwarders in whatever they do regarding registration and POF. We have gone ahead to simplify this thing as much as it is possible considering that right now, freight forwarding is an all comers business but with time, it will cease to be an all comers business.”
On the security of the system to be deployed in the registration and collection of POF, he stated that “I know that the Central Bank system has been hacked not just that of Nigeria, in other places of the world. If a CBN system can be hacked, then any other system can be hacked. Other question I will like to ask you is, how often are these systems hacked? Will you because there is a possibility of a system being hacked, you will not do business? People on a regular basis attempt to hack the CIA system. To answer your question, the system we have deployed is good enough for the purpose it has been designed.”
On whether the POF collection would cover only the seaports or extend to airports and land border stations, he submitted that “It is intended to cover the airports and land borders but like every other thing you do in life; you need to start from somewhere. We are phasing it; I am not ashamed to say that we are phasing it. Our focus right now is the seaports, when we are done and we start generating money, we go and sort out the NCAA end of it because it is investment. Whatever income we get from here, we use it to administer the other ones in due course.”
Speaking on what the Council aim to collect annually from POF, he said, “Annually, the full business case which ICRC prepared projected N5 billion per annum but with the technology we have on ground, it is my belief that we will surpass that. In the first year, we may hit that N5 billion actually, because we expect that there will be challenges here and there like in every other thing. As the challenges come, we fine-tune them.
On the sharing formula, the Registrar noted “Don’t forget that basically, POF is an IGR thing, 25 percent automatically goes to government towards nation building. The claimant is encouraged to keep I think either 30 or 35 percent. That is why we keep saying that this thing is a win-win thing for everybody. For the one that comes to the Council, that is what we will use to train them, to run the Council, to look into their challenges and make sure that all industry threats are addressed.
“CRFFN gets 20 percent of whatever we collect, it is IGR. 25 percent will go towards nation building, direct to TSA, the other ones go to claimants, to consultant who has over the period were doing all these. So, principally speaking, it is IGR. We will use the money for the benefit of the industry. The people, who have also worked hard for this money to come out, will get something in return. As for budget, when we make a huge success of this, I would want to be knocked off the Appropriation Act. I will personally seek permission to be knocked off. In fact, if I go tell my Minister that I want to be off the Appropriation Act, he will dance, he will be very happy.”
While explaining that SW Global was not just there to collect POF, he however explained that there were other things the firm was supposed to do for the Council other than just collecting POF.
In his words, “SW Global is not just for collecting POF, it is not a secret document, it is a document that has been approved by the Federal Executive Council. They get 20 percent of it (total collection) not just for collecting POF. They are our technical partners; we have been through a whole lot from inception. There are things that they are supposed to do; training, retraining, funding of most of the transactions like we went throughout the country, they were the ones funding it. They built the portal, they funded most of the integration that we did. So, it is not just for collection, it is a whole package that we have.”
Photo: CRFFN Registrar, Barr. Samuel Nwakohu.
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