As the deadline given by the Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria (CRFFN) to all freight forwarders to acquire at least a diploma in freight forwarding or be flushed out draws near, the Africa Association of Professional Freight Forwarders and Logistics of Nigeria (APFFLON) has doubted the ability of the CRFFN management to enforce the directive.
It will be recalled that the immediate past Governing Council of CRFFN had fixed December 31, 2021 as deadline for all practicing freight forwarders in Nigeria to acquire at least a diploma in freight forwarding or be flushed out of the profession.
However, speaking in an interview with our correspondent in Lagos recently, the President, APFFLON, Otunba Frank Ogunojemite stated, “I do not see what they are saying coming into reality”, adding that the CRFFN has not had any impact on the life of an average freight forwarder.
He frowned at the current trend where the management of CRFFN in conjunction with the University of Lagos (UNILAG) charge as high as N200,000 to N300,000 for practitioners to enroll and acquire Executive Diploma in freight forwarding in this country where the welfare of the people was in bad state insisting that it would not work.
Ogunojemite further contended that most of the people that attended the Executive Diploma course at the UNILAG were well known in the industry such that they don’t even need this certificate adding that the programme was originally packaged for professionals who had put in ten years and above in the industry.
“But most of the people that attended the course have put in 30 to 40 years in the industry, so they don’t need this course. Let me be realistic with you, the way the whole thing will work is you know the benefit that will come out of it if you get registered. If there is no benefit, nobody will go and register. There must be some attractions.
“If not because in APFFLON, we organize trainings for ourselves through Redeemer’s University, we don’t have any correspondence with CRFFN on anything except the ZOOM meeting we had twice that was certified. And when I look at the attendance, no one had more than one hundred and ten people. Is it a positive development?
“So, to me, instead of them to politicize everything, we need somebody that will be straight forward without any attachment to any godfather to preside over the affairs of CRFFN. Most of the things they are doing were done in the name of ‘we did training’, not because they want to make impact. Look at most freight forwarders, some have worked for 30 years and they are going nowhere, they work and die there. How many even get jobs? Take myself for instance, how many jobs have I gotten this year? What is going to be the benefit for these individual freight forwarders? It is not that your training will provide pension and gratuity, you are not talking about their welfare, you are talking about training which some of them had to pay.
“If CRFFN want to do something, they have to start from Secondary School by introducing freight forwarding to them as a course just like any other course of study. It is either they make it an elective course or a core course. From there, they take it to higher institutions. That is why we have University of Maritime. You can’t just come to the top. You can only do a refresher course with attractions for people because even most big people I know in the industry, when they go for a course, they have something that they collect.
Customs officers that go for training, why do you think they do that? It is because they know that that could earn them promotion. Would that (executive diploma programme) give them air ware bill or bill of lading? Don’t look at the academic sentiments, would that pay for this office for our association? That is about individual decision. If government wants to do something, there must be a way to attract people. You can’t force people. There must be some attractions to get people interested”, he said.
Asked if he would encourage his members to attend the Executive Diploma programme, he replied, “Of course, by next week (this week), we are going to start a programme here with Redeemer’s University. We are doing a lot, even we are organizing foreign trainings for ourselves. Some of us have passed through the training, about eight of us have obtained the training through the Redeemer’s University because it was the Redeemer’s University that was organizing this training for CRFFN before they switched over to UNILAG and they are still doing it, they have not stopped and we are processing our affiliation with them because we have a mission in APFFLON, it is not because of what they are saying.”
Photo: APFFLON President, Otunba Frank Ogunojemite.
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