… Says signatory abused his office
As the controversies generated by the letter allegedly written from the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation rages on, the Concerned Accredited Freight Forwarding Association (CAFFA) has petitioned the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Offences Commission (ICPC) urging him to investigate the authenticity or otherwise of the said letter.
In a two paged petition addressed to the Chairman of the Commission and copied the Secretary to the Government of the Federation and five others and signed by the National Presidents of the four Associations that make up CAFFA, the group disclosed that its further investigation into the authenticity of the letter, it discovered that the signatory of the letter compromised his position to write the letter.
The group noted that the intendment of the said letter was to bring chaos and cheating into the well thought out government policy that was duly gazette adding that it was a clear case of an abuse of office on the part of the signatory and was done with impunity.
CAFFA therefore said that the action in its view was a form of system corruption which was against the relevant sections of the ICPC Act referring the Chairman to section 19 and 25 of the ICPC Act 2000.
The petition read,” We write this petition to your commission to investigate the authenticity of the attached letter purportedly emanating from the Office of the Secretary to the Federal Government of Nigeria. When this letter first surfaced in the Freight forwarding arena, we were indeed suspicious of its authenticity more so as the addressee is not a member of the Council for Regulation of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria (CRFFN)”.
“Our suspicion was further heightened when we had a closer look at the letter headed paper on which it was purportedly written. We thought that a letter coming from the Office of the SGF would definitely not be in such an untidy and disjointed letter headed paper. The contents of the said letter are false and misleading”.
“We therefore decided to carry out a preliminary investigation into the letter’s genuineness especially when we know that at the time the letter was written, the SGF was in transit out of government. Also, we are aware that any correspondence between two or more government organizations has a process. The CRFFN is an agency of government under the direct supervision of the Ministry of Transport, we felt that such a letter ought to have been sent to the Ministry of Transport who would then forward it to the relevant parastatal directly under it”.
CAFFA believed that if Nigerians must fall in line with the change agenda of the present administration especially with respect to corruption in any ramification, this case would be a germane point to start from.
“This misleading statement should be fully investigated to serve as a deterrent to other Civil or Public servants that might want to do the same thing in future”, the petition stated.
It will be recalled a factional Deputy President of the National Council of Managing Directors of Licensed Customs Agents (NCMDLCA), Mr. Uchu Block recently released a letter to a maritime based newspaper allegedly written to him from the SGF’s Office claiming that in the absence of a statutorily constituted Board of Council, to which the power to exercise function under the Act was conferred, no staff of the CRFFN has the power to exercise any function pending re-election of the Governing Board, an action which has generated a lot of heat in the freight forwarding industry.
Also recall that CAFFA had earlier petitioned the Commissioner of Police Western Ports Police Command, Mrs. Hilda Ibifuro Harrison over the same issue and the outcome of the Police finding is still being awaited.
