…Says you don’t run administration on pages of newspapers
Dissatisfied with the comments by the Registrar of the Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria (CRFFN) declaring the Presidential 100% Compliance Team set up by the National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF) illegal, the founder of NAGAFF, Dr. Boniface Aniebonam has warned that NAGAFF may back out from the Council if things are not done right.
Speaking in an interview with our correspondent in Lagos yesterday, Aniebonam chide the Registrar of CRFFN on his style of administering the Council warning that “you don’t run an administration through the pages of a newspaper.”
While pointing out that he was not in a position to say that what the Registrar had said was right or wrong as he (Registrar) had his freedom to express himself, he however reiterated that “as a Registrar of freight forwarders, if you run the administration of CRFFN through the pages of the newspaper, it is left for him”, even as he said “when we get his letter, we respond.”
According to him, “We are not captured people. I think some people need to call themselves to order, NAGAFF is a registered body known to the law, NAGAFF is 21 years in existence before the emergence of the Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria which you know NAGAFF was the major player for the establishment of the Council. We have overgrown this. The interest of NAGAFF is the members that are suffering at the port now and I know that it is the same thing with ANLCA and all other sister associations.
“Freight forwarders are suffering, you can imagine and somebody is somewhere telling us he is Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding, controlling and regulating us. For how many year? It is worse right now for freight forwarders.
“I am not in a position to go into all these now and when you say all these things, know that it is not a compulsion that we be regulated and controlled because we are known to law and if to the contrary, we try that in court and NAGAFF is in court to look at whether CRFFN is an agency of government or not and that is true democracy we are practicing. And we will get to the Supreme Court until we get it right. And we are not mincing words, we have nothing less than five lawyers in this compound, in the NAGAFF headquarters. There are things you say, we will go to court, very fast. We don’t need to do things as if we are in banana republic.
“But what I have told you is don’t run administration on the pages of a newspaper because what stops the Registrar of freight forwarders to write a letter to invite NAGAFF and ANLCA to ascertain what is happening and listen to them? I don’t expect that from him further and I am telling you authoritatively that I am very close to the Registrar. Some of us deserve more than this.”
Asked to comment on the claims by the Registrar that the Council had earlier written NAGAFF to stay action on the activities of the Presidential 100% Compliance Team, he said, “I am not joining issues with what he went on air to talk about, I am just trying to express myself, don’t drag me into any other thing further. But if you want to go further on that, whatever letter he is talking about, did he say that the letter proscribed our activities as illegal? Okay, if you ask someone to stay action on something for a while, does it make that thing illegal? Even he is a lawyer and I don’t want to go further, I spoke with the Chairman of the Council this morning (yesterday) and I know what he told me. I spoke to ANLCA top management this morning, I know what they said. So, let’s not go to a stage that if it gets worse now, instead of all these nonsense, we will back out from the Council.
“The Council has two mandates; to register us and control us, that is, if we agree. If we don’t agree, because we are statutory body, there are other organizations in this country that are not under the regulation of the Council. Do you know how many freight forwarding and licensed customs agents associations existing? They are not less than 100 now. There is Igbo Maritime, there is Oodua Maritime, there is logistics association and so on and if they raise issue, do you think government will not listen to them? If they raise critical issue, government will listen to them because government is for everybody.
“Now, NAGAFF and ANLCA are the two biggest organizations as far as freight forwarding and licensed customs agents operations are concerned. If you go ahead and do certain things, we will say no, don’t regulate us. Who will you regulate? Do you think everything is by force? You need to know how to work with people and carry them along.”
It will be recalled that the Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria (CRFFN) on Monday declared the Presidential 100% Compliance Team set up by the National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF) illegal.
This is even as the Council has said that it would write the leadership of the Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA) to suspend the activities of the Anti-Corruption Committee that it launched last week.
The Registrar and Chief Executive Officer of CRFFN, Barr. Samuel Nwakohu recalled that when NAGAFF came up with the idea of setting up a compliance team, after a discussion between him and the Chairman of the Governing Council of CRFFN, a letter was sent to NAGAFF to put on hold the activities of the Presidential 100% Compliance Team and was not aware that the directive had been reversed.
According to Nwakohu, “I am aware that NAGAFF came up with an enforcement team some time ago. My Chairman and I sat down and discussed this and eventually, a letter was sent to them to put it on hold.
“We are in the Covid-19 regime, let me say this, I am not aware that ANLCA has an enforcement team that deals with corruption. The same way you read it was the same way I read it. ANLCA is an association, so, if they want to do something without coming to us here, there is little or nothing we can do on that but if they go out without coming to ask us, we can stop them from doing it, yes, we can. As a government agency, we can.”
Photo: Founder of NAGAFF, Dr. Boniface Aniebonam.
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