Six months after the National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF) inaugurated its Presidential 100% Compliance Team to monitor and enforce compliance to trade by members as well as government agencies operating in the nation’s maritime industry, the National Council of Managing Directors of Licensed Customs Agents (NCMDLCA) yesterday follow in that line by inaugurating its own version of the compliance enforcement team.
This is even as the freight forwarding regulatory agency in Nigeria, the Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria (CRFFN) has declared the Presidential 100% Compliance Team set up by NAGAFF illegal and effort in top gear to write the leadership of the Association of the Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA) to disband its Anti-Corruption Committee as it run foul of the Act establishing the Council.
However, inaugurating the team in Lagos yesterday, the Chairman, Board of Trustees (BOT) of NCMDLCA, Dr. Rafiu Ladipo said that they were inaugurating their own version of compliance team which according to him was still the same thing with what ANLCA and NAGAFF were doing adding that it was not anything different.
Ladipo said “What NAGAFF is doing is what we are doing, what ANLCA is doing is what we are doing. I have met with NAGAFF, I have met with ANLCA, all we are trying to do is to make sure that things are done properly by first and foremost, agents and freight forwarders because if you don’t do the right thing, you can’t accuse anybody of not doing the right thing.
He noted that all the leadership of the five accredited freight forwarding associations namely; NAGAFF, ANLCA, AREFFN and NAFFAC and the National Council were in agreement to come up with compliance team in their various associations and later on meet to harmonize and work together towards one goal.
In his words, “We are bringing all our nominees together and then we distribute them to the various terminals to do the same thing like every other one. It is not like NAGAFF will be doing its own, ANLCA will be doing its own, National Council will be doing its own, what we are saying is that all the members of these five various bodies will fuse together and we move them to different terminals, APMT, the PTML, the Apapa port, Tincan Island and the rest and they will work together with the same directives and guidelines giving to them from the national and the centre.”
Asked to comment on the declaration of such move illegal by the CRFFN, Ladipo who is also the National President of the Nigerian Football Supporters Club (NFSC) has this this to say, “They won’t say that to us. We are the people who have been doing the job for so many years now. The Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding is our own; it’s just there recently, not too long ago. I have been in clearing in the last 51 years and so there have been people even before me. So, what we want to do is to work with them to put things straight and correct.
“We are not indicting the CRFFN. CRFFN, ANLCA, NAGAFF, National Council of Managing Directors, AREFFN and NAFFAC, we’ve got to work together to be on the same page and do the same thing, the right thing, all at the same time.”
On whether the motive behind the establishment of this compliance team was not to enrich the leadership of the association as a means of negotiations, he said, “Have we charged anybody anything? There is no point enriching anybody when we are saying that the right thing be done. I am not in that line, I have been in the clearing industry for 51 years plus and I have been the first National President of the Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents, no other person before me and if I have not in the last 51 years engaged myself in trying to enrich myself, I don’t think anybody will do that.
He therefore called on members of the compliance team to work to see that they do the right things advising that they should have their names written in gold.
“If your name will be written in gold, of course, you have to do the right thing. So, my advice is that they should go to the ports and do the right thing. The right thing is making sure that all the clearing agents, all the importers, all the freight forwarders are paying correct and appropriate duty and that no customs officer will intimidate them after they have paid the correct and appropriate duty. We will not accept that”, he said.
On why only seven out of the twenty member team was being inaugurated, he replied, “Because of the exigencies and urgency of the situation, seven of them have been inaugurated, there will be an another thirteen people to be inaugurated because we must get all the chapters involved, not just Tincan and Apapa, we have Ikeja, we have PTML and so on. We want all of them to be involved. That is why we are reserving thirteen other names to be inaugurated very soon.”
Also speaking, a member of the CRFFN Governing Council from the association, Chief Austin Kelly said “What I am trying to make you understand is that good or bad, we are still going to withdraw those people in CRFFN Enforcement team. We have up to 40 to 45 of them. We are going to withdraw like 25 of them. When we withdraw them, we will now pick five persons each from the five accredited freight forwarding associations and add them up to the Enforcement team of CRFFN and we will wait for you at the gate, 500 meters from the gate, you have not paid us POF, you will do it.
“We are Council of Managing Directors, we decide, government has given us approval to collect our money. So, any agent that is waiting until government come and says where is your money, no! We are the government now; we are now trying to, all the five accredited associations wanted to bring them in, then withdraw 25 Enforcement officers that government has been paying for nothing, all of them are armed with laptop, with cap doing nothing, wearing apron. Let them come to the field with MOPOLs, 500 meters out of the gate; we will say, where is your money? Have you paid? If you say you have not paid, okay now, pay it here. You see, we can enforce it because we are freight forwarders, we were elected, I don’t see why I cannot have money.”
On his part, the Chairman of the newly inaugurated compliance team, Mr. Ifeanyi Anakweze pledged the commitment of the team in achieving the mandate given to them without compromising.
Photo: The Chairman, Board of Trustees, NCMDLCA, Dr. Rafiu Oladipo
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