Mr. Ayokunle Sulaiman is the Senior Special Assistant to ANLCA National President on Media. He spoke with our correspondent recently on the inability of the Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria, CRFFN to pay its staff arrears of over six months salary, unionization of the Council’s staff, the election of the Governing Council members, appointment of a substantive Registrar and much more. Excerpts:
It was in the news recently that the management of the Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria, CRFFN has not been able to pay its staff in the past six months prompting the intervention of the leadership of the Maritime Workers’Union of Nigeria, MWUN. Sir, are you disturbed by this development?
We thought at the beginning of CRFFN that it will be a blessing to the industry, we saw the creation as a child of necessity and that its creation will be a blessing to the industry because all the freight forwarding associations were unable to come together and speak with one voice. But this is one of the major and cardinal area that CRFFN is supposed to fill in the gap.
Permit me to also say this, as far as we are concerned, our role is specific in the chain of freight forwarding, we are licensed customs agents just like we have other strata that make up the freight forwarding. Here, we have even the Nigerian Railway, they are freighters, the move cargo from one location to the other and that is the proper definition of freight forwarding. We are more of clearing and forwarding of consignments in the chain called freight forwarding but it’s like the concentration and the only thing CRFFN know is our sector only.
The industry is very large, we expected that when government was giving them allocation, funding their activities, it was improper because CRFFN can generate what could sustain it. I know you know that we pay POF – Practitioners Operating Fee, coined by CRFFN for practitioners but it is being collected per cargo. The practitioners have to pay, we have been paying just like using money to renew our license every year with the Nigeria Customs Service, paying to Nigerian Ports Authority to renew our port pass and now the Nigerian Shippers’ Council is coming up with registration and certification of licensed customs agents and that means we will be paying yearly. We are being over regulated.
What is CRFFN doing with the Maritime Workers’ Union of Nigeria when it is even supposed to be the mother of everybody? As per the Act that established CRFFN, imagine CRFFN going to hang out with the Maritime Workers’ Union of Nigeria. We don’t have issues with the Maritime Workers’ Union of Nigeria, in fact, they are good collaborators, they are partners in progress but CRFFN is missing it.
CRFFN is not taking care of the cause of challenges in the sector. So many times, we have asked them to itemize the number of interventions they have made on behalf of the practitioners. So many times, we have called them to tell us the number of seminar, workshops, trainings that they have done. The last one they were telling our members to go for a week training that will cost not less than N300,000. From my first year to my graduation in UNILAG, I don’t think I paid school fees up to N400,000 but for one week, CRFFN is telling us to pay N300,000 for a training, no matter how executive it is.
However, what we need most is a training that will be practical and will be useful for our boys, the people in the field. How an executive should manage a company is not an issue but the real angle where training is supposed to be domiciled is for those ones that will take care of the practical challenges that we usually face in the field. Ask CRFFN about the curriculum, it takes care of nothing like that. Check their curriculum very well, it will be difficult to tell you where all these practical challenges will be mentioned in their course outline.
So, if they are talking about not being able to pay their staff, it’s quite unfortunate. They should look inwards and see how they can generate IGR. With the gentleman agreement that we the associations had with CRFFN at the inception of POF at the Seaports, the arrangement was that a certain percentage would be paid back to both the practitioners and their respective associations, they have failed in doing that. That has already diminished the interest of members in paying the POF. However, they forced it on us through their connivance with the various terminal operators.
But I want to tell you that that of the airport, they have not been able to scale through because of this pending issues. I have already told you that we have eleven subsectors that are affiliated to the CRFFN which the customs licensed agents is just one of them. Incidentally, we are the only ones paying the Practitioners Operating Fee. I once asked the Registrar, how much is the Nigerian Railway paying for freighting those containers from the port to their respective destinations, they couldn’t give an answer, just like other subsections of CRFFN.
There was a time a meeting was held and one of our members from the airport stated that from 2019 to 2023, millions of Naira per year that is being paid by the freight forwarders. Imagine if we could have even half of that amount from other subsect of freight forwarding, who will be talking about salary? You will be talking about something more massive than salary because if they can’t pay salary, what’s the essence of their existence? If an organization cannot pay the salary of its workers, it means the organization is already bankrupt.
So, you mean to say that what is lacking in CRFFN is the idea to generate the needed fund and not the fund itself?
What is lacking is a man or woman of ideas, the political will, the idea, the concept to develop revenue sources from other subsect that are affiliated to CRFFN. Once they look inwards, look closely into the Act that established CRFFN, because whatever you want to do must be in line with the law establishing the Council, there are so many other subsectors that are related to CRFFN other than looking only to what is happening in one subsect. Once they expand their revenue net, they know them, so why is it difficult to reach out to them?
Would it be right to say then that the federal government has forgotten about the CRFFN looking at the recent developments around the Council?
I don’t want to say that the federal government has forgotten the CRFFN, you know CRFFN is under the Federal Ministry of Marine and Blue Economy, the Minister, definitely, knows that CRFFN exist which means that the federal government is still aware that CRFFN still exist. The woman happens to be an insider even in the then Ministry of Transport which of course we believe that she is able to midwife the CRFFN to success but she needs to do more. There’s a lot of revenue sources for CRFFN lying fallow… (cuts in).
What are they sir? Can you give instances?
For instance, the area of IGR that I am talking about, the challenges facing our industry, relationship with our counterparts in the industry, relationship between us practitioners in the industry and other subsectors in the country. Again the relationship between the importers’ interest and that of the Ministry of Industry because if you don’t protect the tax payers, then don’t expect to survive with their taxes in the following year. Their interest too, must be protected for them to survive.
But I don’t think the CRFFN is looking into any of these because it shouldn’t just be about collection of money but to regulate as well. And you cannot regulate what is not in existence and if you allow these people and their businesses to die a natural death, what will you regulate? There can’t be a leader without followers and your company can’t survive without your clients. We are like clients to CRFFN. So, if our interest in other areas of challenges are not of concern to them, then, who will they regulate? From where would they collect the POF?
And our own clients who are the importers, if importers fail to bring in consignments as a result of challenges which has been escalated, where will CRFFN see containers to charge? We continue to pray that our importers continue to grow and CRFFN too should continue to pray for us to grow for them to have more money. So, CRFFN needs holistic and total overhauling for it to survive.
Sir, do you think that this total overhauling includes election and appointment of the Governing Council members for the CRFFN?
The Board members are supposed to serve as technical advisers to the management of CRFFN. I am talking of Board members elected from among the practitioners because they wear the shoes and they know where it pinches. But since they have been dissolved, they have not been able to elect new ones to come onboard and that, of course, in no small way is affecting the fortunes of the CRFFN.
However, even while electing the Board members, they must be people who have the interest of the industry at heart, away from their personal interest and that includes electing or appointing a Chairman who is a freight forwarding practitioner. It is a vital point, even the Act provided that the Chairman of the Board must be a freight forwarding practitioner. You remember that the two former Board Chairmen of CRFFN were practitioners – Tony Iju Nwabunike and Hakeem Olanrewaju. But after them, what we heard was that the other man that was brought in was a practitioner in export sector, that some of us were in doubt as to its veracity. But that was what we were told.
Talking about getting a substantive Registrar in place, you know that may not happen until we have a Governing Council in place. This is because the Act provided that the Council and no other person appoints the Registrar. Now that there’s no Council in place and there’s no plan, at least for now to elect/appoint the Council members, does it mean that the practitioners have to wait longer to get things right with the CRFFN?
The Ministry of Marine and Blue Economy has to answer so many questions. There are so many information gaps which need to be fill in. Even the CRFFN could not make ID cards for practitioners, the people they regulate. This you know will confer integrity on the practitioners, showing that they are up to date morally, financially and are real practitioners.
You remember if you want to relate with the Nigerian Ports Authority, you must have their port pass, if you want to relate with some shipping companies, you have their authority. At PTML, you must have an access card to show that this is a bonafide practitioner. Having done all the needful as a member of CRFFN, you make your subscription because apart from POF, we make subscription every year that supposed to stand for the Practitioners Operating Fee other than payment per cargo.
We even do those subscriptions but ordinarily, a plastic ID card is not available, no data and what it means that CRFFN cannot even tell us the number of its registered members in their kitty as a regulator and there’s nothing to identify them.
But all the registered members have registration numbers assigned to them for easy identification?
Only numbers? We can’t paste numbers on our foreheads and be going around and be saying that I am RFF this or that. So, if you are RFF this or that, it means you must carry number because that numbers will make it numerical for them to be able to even actualize the number even at a press of a button.
Photos 1-3: Mr. Ayokunle Sulaiman, SSA Media to ANLCA National President.
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