… As CRFFN holds graduation ceremony for over 400 freight forwarders
The Minister of Transportation, Rt. Hon. Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi has said that the freight forwarding profession in Nigeria is changing for the best with the graduation of over 400 freight forwarders in freight forwarding and supply chain management.
Amaechi who stated this at the maiden graduation ceremony in Freight Forwarding and Supply Chain Management organized by the Council for the regulation of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria (CRFFN) at the University of Lagos on Saturday observed that the event was a landmark day for freight forwarding in Nigeria, the trading sector, CRFFN and the Federal Ministry of Transportation.
Represented by the Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Transportation, Dr. Magdalene Ajani, the Minister noted that the ceremony just marked the processes that cumulated to their being awarded their certificates adding that it was aimed at moving freight forwarding from just an all comers clearing agents to a professional freight forwarding industry.
According to him, “You will all agree with me that despite your experience in the industry, the training opened your eyes to the real dimension of freight forwarding in Nigeria and the world at large and having gone through this training, mixing it up with your experience at work place, you can look back now and say to yourself, we are doing it well and also doing it right. And I want to say that learning has no end.
“I sat down watching the graduands, some of them greyed, some well above the age of fifty but you realized and humbled yourself to go back to the classroom to learn. This learning is not just because you need the certificate or you want the certificate or that it is going to increase the cash flow in your pocket, it is definitely not it but because you want to make freight forwarding what it should be by international standard and I say congratulations for your determination, for your courage and for your resilience.
“With over four hundred of you today graduating, we are sure that freight forwarding in Nigeria is changing for the best. I want to say a big thank you to CRFFN and all our training institutions all over the country who has made this to happen and we pray that we continue to do this for the rest of the practitioners who would want to come in or already in to be professionalized, certified for proper freight forwarding practice.”
He, however, expressed the hope that the Ministry would continue to have the support of the training institutions in achieving the training.
“To the legislature, we want to say thank you. You are always behind us, we have enjoyed immense support from you as a Ministry and we pray that you will continue to stand by us. We look forward to having the revised CRFFN bill come forth to take care of the lacuna that was noticed in the first Act. It is better to have an Act than not to have any but having identified the lacuna, we are coming back to say, let’s fill it up and make it right and workable. So, we count on your support to achieve this for the freight forwarding industry and the Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria.
“To our graduands, I said learning does not have an end. You have a certificate, the world is going digital, technology is the way to go, let’s begin to look at more innovative ways of making freight forwarding better than it is. We keep talking about a contactless port and freight forwarding industry, you should be able to drive in with your container and pick up your goods and drive out just by having a card to let you into a control port and out in less than five minutes. It’s already operational, we can do it in Nigeria, we look forward to achieving it and we count on you to look at the innovative ways and deploy them in rendering this service to our great nation”, he said.
On his part, the Guest Speaker, Barr. Hassan Bello described the freight forwarding industry as the hallmark of the economic activities and the economic destiny of the country even as he maintained that the practice of freight forwarding was important as far as the logistic chain was concerned.
Stressing that it was an economic activity that cannot be toyed with, Bello who is the immediate past Executive Secretary of the Nigerian Shippers’ Council pointed out that “We need an efficient infrastructure; we need to have our ports, our roads, our rail and other modes of transportation to be efficient. We also need investment in soft infrastructure and we are talking about massive transportation models which we must evolve and if you look at all this, it is very important that the practice of freight forwarding is professionalized and the function of CRFFN, for me is nothing than training of freight forwarders.
“We have to look at the greater picture and see that the freight forwarders or the clearing agents who operate in the port are professionals because they perform very important function. They have relationship with the shipper abroad and also, the consignee here. They move goods from one point to the other, they deliver goods, they warehouse goods. So, they must be trained to avoid things that are negative as far as movement of cargo is concerned.
“And I am talking about delay, now in Nigeria, we have a port that has a 21 days dwell time and if we have sanitized, professionalized freight forwarders in Nigeria, they would, to a very large extent shorten the dwell time of cargo. So, we need to paint a picture of vibrant freight forwarding institutions. They can’t but be professional, the image that we have of freight forwarders being some touts or full of quackery has got to stop and there is no time than today.
“From now on, as you graduate and move on to handle what statutorily is your responsibility, Nigeria will march with the international community in institutionalizing professionalism, honesty, dignity in that very important profession called freight forwarding. I have always called them the philosopher king of the maritime industry.”
He posited that it was a thing of pride for stakeholders to see that CRFFN which had suffered pains of birth and produced a child that was almost sick and had defect now recovered from that saying “it is moving on but you have to be professional like lawyers who have distinct nature of being professionals and they would flaunt it to everybody because they are regulated by bodies and they take their regulations seriously.”
“So, I congratulate the CRFFN for making this leap today. This is the beginning; this is the heralder of what is to come – training. As the representative of the Vice Chancellor said, if you don’t train them, then, don’t blame them. I hope this we have started today”, he added.
Earlier in his welcome address, the Registrar of CRFFN, Barr. Samuel Nwakohu stated that nurturing CRFFN and ensuring that each registered practitioners were professionals had been a challenging one where coming from a background of stereotyping, the average practitioner of old saw himself or herself as a clearing agent whose responsibility begins and ends at various terminals in the port.
He observed that this was the narrative that the CRFFN had succeeded in changing insisting that today, freight forwarding was no longer restricted to the ports alone as it was a long chain.
“We cannot regulate an uninformed body of practitioners; certainly, we cannot preach and promote standard to an illiterate body of practitioners. This consciousness led us to further activate one of our agenda which is to promote freight forwarding as a career by ensuring its integration into tertiary education curriculum in Nigeria. These gentlemen and ladies who will be graduating today are proud product of this partnership with higher institutions in Nigeria. We are, indeed, very grateful to our partner institutions for their favourable disposition to this relationship initiative.
“It is our plans that the manpower development programme which is evidenced by today’s occasion and which CRFFN is currently pursuing will crystallize to a mandatory continuous development programme for all freight forwarders in Nigeria. Our determination is to continue to create an evolving crop of educated and empowered practitioners who can hold their own anywhere in the world. Freight forwarding can no longer be practiced by the uneducated.
“As a Council, we urge practitioners to embrace information technology and continuously seek knowledge. To those who are graduating today in freight forwarding and supply chain management, I am quite aware of the great sacrifice this entails. It is instructive that most of you are senior practitioners, who though, have garnered years of experience in freight forwarding but still sought knowledge; you are, indeed, role models and Ambassadors of CRFFN”, he submitted.
He, therefore, hoped that their participation in the rigorous academic process would ginger others to seek relevant training and qualification to practice freight forwarding.
Highlights of the ceremony was the award of Executive Certificate in Freight Forwarding and Logistics, Executive Professional Diploma in Freight Forwarding and Supply Chain Management and FIATA Diploma in Freight Forwarding and Supply Chain Management to over four hundred freight forwarders since inception of CRFFN in 2008, presentation of special awards to some deserving Nigerians as well as goodwill messages from the National Assembly, training institutions, sister agencies among other stakeholders.
Photo 1: (L-R): Representative of the Chairman, Senate Committee on Ports and Harbour, Senator Akor; Registrar of CRFFN, Barr. Samuel Nwakohu, Representative of the Minister of Transportation and Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Transportation, Dr. Magdalene Ajani; Representative of the Vice Chancellor, University of Lagos and Deputy Vice Chancellor, University of Lagos, Prof. Oluwole Familoni; immediate past Executive Secretary of the Nigerian Shippers’ Council and Guest Speaker, Barr. Hassan Bello; immediate past Chairman of Governing Council of CRFFN, Alhaji Abubakar Tsanni and the Managing Director, Nigerian Railway Corporation, Mr. Fidet Okhiria during the maiden graduation ceremony in Lagos on Saturday.
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