Dr. Frank Ukor is the President of the Association of Registered Freight Forwarders of Nigeria (AREFFN). He spoke with Shipping Position Daily correspondent Dapo Olawuni on sundry issues in the maritime industry including setting agenda for the President-elect, General Muhammad Buhari as it concerns the maritime sector.
The five associations recently held a meeting with the CRFFN, what was it about?
Dr. Frank Ukor is the President of the Association of Registered Freight Forwarders of Nigeria (AREFFN). He spoke with Shipping Position Daily correspondent Dapo Olawuni on sundry issues in the maritime industry including setting agenda for the President-elect, General Muhammad Buhari as it concerns the maritime sector.
The five associations recently held a meeting with the CRFFN, what was it about?
You know CRFFN gave us 35%, so we are discussing the best way to collect the money, we cannot collect the money by ourselves, we will collect from the CRFFN because they will be doing the collection, we are satisfied with the arrangement, the CRFFN is a government agency, the Minister will give instruction to them and they will carry it out, all they need to do is collect the money through the debit notes that will be paid by freight forwarders, at the end of the week, their consultants will look into what has accrued and pay it into CRFFN account, from there the Council will disburse it accordingly to the associations.
We gathered that the sharing formula is going to be according to strength of associations
I don't know what they meant by strength, what is strength? We have not reached an agreement on that, what we have discussed is the mode of collection, it is after the collection that we will talk about disbursement, we are supposed to sign an MoU which we have not done yet.
Are you bothered by the categorization of freight forwarders by the CRFFN?
You cannot force me to belong to an association that I don't want to belong to, even if you are categorising, if I don't like to belong to ANLCA I cannot belong to ANLCA, I will look for another association and join, must I be a broker before I can join an association? They should allow the existing associations to exist the way they are, but if any other association is now coming up they can now be registered based on the categorisation.
How will you set agenda for the President-elect, as regards maritime sector?
He should look into the concession agreement, there is a lot of loopholes in it, he should block these loopholes so that the concessionaires will not continue to take advantage of us, let the new government look into how we handle and clear goods at our ports and see if they can make it less cumbersome. The industry is next to the petroleum sector, it is the second largest revenue generating sector, more attention should be paid to maritime and ensure that shippers are made to be comfortable, it is when the shippers are comfortable that they bring in more cargoes and government can generate revenue, the Nigeria Customs Service should seize less goods, even if they seize goods, they should have a better way of auctioning it and not the way they are doing it by themselves.
What is your assessment of the administration of Goodluck Jonathan?
Jonathan has really tried, he did not pay attention on one aspect of the economy, he touched on all the aspects especially the agriculture, we have to give him kudos for this, if the country has sufficient food production and they are not hungry, whatever amount of money they are paid they will be able to get food to eat. The new administration should look into our foreign exchange; let them see what they can do to make the naira have value, we don't like the situation we have at hand now where one dollar is equivalent to N218, but I want to believe it is because of the elections that the naira went down so much.
In the maritime industry, Jonathan has the best of intentions for the industry but the people he put there are the problem, what happens to an average Nigerian is that once they appoint you into a position, when they get there, the utmost priority on their minds becomes how much they can make from the position without thinking of the value they are supposed to add to the system. So, Jonathan has the best intention for us, but the people at the helm of affairs are the problem.
Ports outside Lagos are still crying for attention, what will you advice them to do?
Government should diversify by opening up these ports and decongest the Lagos ports, if they decongest Lagos ports, some of the containers that come here will go directly to these ports, this will ease the traffic situations and gridlock that we always have at the ports.
On the case between terminal operators and shippers’ council, what is your take?
The terminal operators can only contest against the shippers’ council in court, but what I know is that they cannot beat the government, the court has given the verdict and it will remain like that, what I think should be done now is for the freight forwarding associations to join the shippers’ council against these people so that they can have more effect and make the case weightier.
How come no association has thought about this apart from the Shippers Association Lagos State?
We will do it, we have talked about it and very soon we will join in, it has been mentioned, somebody has suggested it and all of us are in agreement; very soon, action will be taken on it.
Once we begin with the collection of the practitioners’ fee, money will start coming in, it is when we have money that we can tackle them successfully.
For supporting shippers’ council, concessionaires are said to have stopped stemming containers to some bonded warehouses
If they refuse to stem containers to bonded terminals, this doesn't affect me or my association, it will affect owners of the bonded terminals, however. It is not because of the case that they are not stemming containers to those bonded terminals, probably it is because the volume of goods coming into the country now is very low, especially with the issue of the auto policy that has made less vehicles to be coming into this country, if you go to the ports now they are all dry, if my terminal is dry why would I now stem container to another place? So it is not because of the freight forwarders’ support that containers are not being stemmed to bonded terminals. However, the Shippers’ Council has done very well and we must continue to give them kudos, I thank them very much for coming up with that regulation that shipping charges should be reverted, the terminal operators have become so big that they can just wake up one day and decide to increase charges.
But for now, the terminal operators are not obeying the regulation
They will eventually return all these charges and all the money they have collected, I believe that.
We have not heard anything on MAAG, what is happening?
I discussed with the national Coordinator and his opinion is that we should wait till after the elections and I saw reason with him because we don't know the direction now; now that Buhari has won and not Jonathan, all the policies Jonathan has put in place, Buhari might not want to go with them, if we do anything now it will be counter-productive and without benefit, but we want to wait for Buhari to come in so that we will know his plans for the industry.
Is your association now having a smooth relationship with the Customs?
It is not customs that registered us, it is the CRFFN, as long as we have good relationship with the CRFFN that is all that matters, the only thing is that what we are supposed to get from the customs as a government agency we might not get it, but I know that no condition is permanent, very soon things will change.
Are you aware that customs is trying to reduce the number of licenses in operation?
They have been saying this for a very long time now, it is possible that they reduce it, but when they want to start it, they will focus on their critics who tell them the truth.
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