The Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents, ANLCA will decentralize voting at the forthcoming Board of Trustees, BoT election to the different zones that make up the association, so says the Senior Special Assistant to ANLCA National President on Media, Mr. Ayokunle Sulaiman.
Mr. Sulaiman who disclosed this on the sideline of the National Executive Committee, NEC meeting held by ANLCA recently in Lagos said that the decentralization was aimed at minimizing and saving cost for members who may have to pay through their noses to pay for flight tickets to and fro Lagos just to cast their votes in an election which they could have participated in at their different zones.
He argued that it was cheaper to sponsor members of the Association Electoral Commission, ASECO who were few in number to different zones to conduct the election than to subject over seven hundred members to spend huge sums of money on both flight tickets, hotel accommodations and other sundry expenses.
According to him, “We want to decentralize it to different zones to minimize cost. If everybody has to come down to Lagos, you can imagine bringing over 100 voters from Kano, over 300 from Port-Harcourt to Lagos to and fro by flight, it’s not less than N300,000, accommodation inclusive. For only 100 voters, it’s N30 million and since we know we can save it and minimize cost, it is better we minimize it and fly our ASECO to Port-Harcourt to conduct the election on the condition that the election should be conducted at the same time in all the different zones.”
On how the association would work out the modality to achieve this, he said, “It is the responsibility of ASECO to do that, they are independent and I know they are equal to the task.”
On who is eligible to vote in the forthcoming BoT election, the SSA Media disclosed that the election guidelines stipulated that a voter had to be a Director in a licensed member company to be eligible to vote as contained in Form CO7, adding that voting in the election cannot be done by proxy nor by any social media platforms such as Zoom as over 700 licenses would be voting.
Pointing out that the emergency NEC meeting was summoned for the purposes of the BoT election, he said, “There were some slight moderation to the existing ASECO guidelines like who an ideal voter should be and who is eligible to contest because there are little grapevine about some misconceptions and misinterpretations of the guidelines. Those were cleared up in the meeting so that everybody should be adequately informed about the coming BoT election.
“There was the misconception about whether or not the ASECO has the power to draw up the electoral guidelines and it is there in Section 22 of the ANLCA supreme constitution that ASECO will definitely draw the guidelines for the election since they will be the ones to conduct the election supervised by the Board of Trustees. So, that is one of the issues we clarified for our members. ASECO has the power to draw the guidelines and to conduct any election in ANLCA as enshrined in our constitution.
“There’s no major shift, the only addition was about eligibility of the voters and the candidates. The emphasis was that the candidate must be credible, must not be bankrupt, must be someone of impeccable character, must be an exemplary leader, must not be a person of questionable character and you know that the Board of Trustees of any organization is an exalted position and since we have all agreed that ANLCA as a foremost organization in the maritime and aviation industry cannot do anything less than to improve on the game.
“Remember, we are just coming out from almost five years crisis and the BoT that we are supposed to have now must be a BoT that must take off and consolidate on what NECOM is doing. They are not for the day to day running of the organization, they are the fathers, people of wisdom, they are the custodian of the properties of the association and so, they are expected to be men of not just integrity but people above board.”
He thereafter informed that ASECO would soon roll out the reviewed timetable to accommodate the little additions and adjustments made at the meeting.
Photo: Mr. Ayokunle Sulaiman, SSA Media to ANLCA National President.
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