Following the statement by Mr. Ojo Peter Akintoye in the media last week where claimed to be the Chairman of the Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA) having followed the constitutional provisions to emerge as the Chairman, Mr. Mohammed Mojeed has come out to counter the claim saying that he (Mojeed) is the authentic Chairman of ANLCA in Tincan Island port chapter even as declared the election that brought Akintoye to office as null and void.
Reacting to the publication made by this medium on Saturday last week, Mojeed said, “I am the authentic Chairman of the Tincan Island chapter. When I read the story about Ojo Akintoye, I was laughing because if you find out the real story about the Chairmanship thing, you will know he is on the wrong path. His election is null and void, election conducted in the dead of the night, you know what is happening about such election.”
He disclosed that there were court injunctions already that they (ANLCA NECOM) should not conduct any election within the Western Zone; they went ahead and did that because they wouldn’t want to come to be part of him within the chapter.
“First, the BOT (Board of Trustees) that conducted my election is the authentic BOT. There are lots of court injunctions on ground. The current NECOM, our national executive body, there is a court injunction that said they should not be parading themselves as the national executive of the association about two years ago. They are still flouting the court order, the same time they went to do election on the night of 16th February, 2021.
“And that particular day, around 3 o’clock, they got a court injunction where Mikky Babatunde, the Secretary of the national body, he had the information, he got the court injunction that the election should not hold and at the end of the day, they went and did that election somewhere in the midnight to forestall court action. So, his (Akintoye’s) election is null and void, he cannot say he is Tincan chapter Chairman. Come to think of it, where is his secretariat if he is the authentic Chairman?” he submitted.
Reminded that Akintoye has said in the briefing that ANLCA was going about recovering the Secretariat through legal means, he said, “Someone who has no legal right? Before you can become a Chairman of a chapter, you have to go through a process which I did. You know he was saying he went here and there before he became the Chairman and who are those people that conducted that election? If the election is genuine, why was it conducted in the midnight? We did our election at the Villa Park with all our BOT present. The issue of secretariat, my predecessor handed over to me this place. The man that left this place handed over to me and the person who has a place to sit to receive correspondents; that is the person you know as a Chairman. So, I don’t know where he got his own Chairman from.”
On why he has not taken step to stop him from parading himself as the ANLCA Chairman of the chapter, he said, “If we want to take the laws into our hands, then there will be a serious crisis but the law of the land will take care of that. It is a court process and the Judge and others are seeing what they are doing. We are going to court by 23rd of this month; there they will know the gravity of the offence they are committing. Some of them will go to jail for flouting court order. So, we are just watching because anything we do, we have to do it in legal way. Though he is a distraction, we don’t even see him as anything because he is a traffic warder. You know you can see him controlling traffic up and down.
“As a Chairman, has he been able to penetrate the real people in the system? What does he know about clearing? He is charge and bail, Oga come and help me do this work from customs. He has no customer, tell him to show you his customers in this field. I can mention about five companies that I work with, let him come and tell you one company he works with.”
Asked why he and Akintoye who belonged to the same club championing the welfare and prosperity of ANLCA could be leading different factions of ANLCA in the same chapter when they should have worked together, he retorted, “You know, when someone is over ambitious; that is always a problem. The last time he wanted to contest an election with Segun Oduntan my predecessor, I supposed to contest that election but because as the President of the club, our members called us together and said, president, why can’t you allow OPA to go. As at that time, I have one hundred per cent assurance of victory.
“May God forgive my Oga’s soul; that is Kayode Oyinlola, he was ready to support me to win that election but by the time I conceded for my club that OPA should go, he (Oyinlola) was so mad. Till he died, he did not forgive because he said that I betrayed him because what he wanted was not what he got from me. I decided to step down being the President of the club for this OPA and I gave him my honest support. At the point of the election, I was the electoral officer that even guarded the box but you will be surprised seeing what he doing now.
“Even when I wanted to contest this election, I called him and said, look OPA, I am going to contest this election from the BOT, he said I should go, that he will not do anything, that in as much as I won the election, there is no problem. That if I win this election, if he does anything, may God almighty punish him. He swore for me and removed his shoes from his legs that very night. But you know, when somebody is too ambitious, he will find a way or the other to… I don’t know what he wants to derive from this Chairmanship of a thing. If we say we have a common ideology, we should be able to think together like you said.
“You know when he contested the election with Segun Oduntan and lost, he went and joined IFFA and because our leaders are not focused, somebody gyrating from here to there is not somebody who has a vision for the job because he left ANLCA to go IFFA. Must he come back to contest an election? By law, he supposed not to come back after five years before he can become anything in ANLCA.”
On the impact of the fractionalization of the chapter on members of the association in the chapter, he said, ”I want to alleviate our people’s problems, I believe if I am doing what I supposed to do to help our people, what they needed most is assistance from us. We have so many problems at the shipping companies, we have so many problems at the terminals and we are tackling all those issues. So, we need to help our people on that. The issue of faction or no faction; in as much as I am doing what the people want, I believe they would definitely follow. The faction issue cannot be a challenge to us.”
Photo: Chairman, ANLCA, Tincan Island chapter, Mr. Mohammed Mojeed.
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