Chief Ernest Elochukwu is a former national president of the Association of the Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA) and also a member of the embattled Board of Trustees (BoT) of the association. In this interview with Anozie Egole, he speaks on the origin of the crisis rocking the association and the way forward.
“The ANLCA that I am working for is the one that is responsive, active and where justice and fair play reigns”
Tell us about the crisis rocking ANLCA?
Well, if we can say it in one word, it is injustice. Injustice in the fact that the Board of Trustees (BoT) who are not actually involved in the day-to-day running of the association and whose leadership is not provided for in the constitution, it is just like convention that determines the issues of Chairmanship and Secretary-ship of the board and so on. Now because someone has decided not to allow democracy to thrive and because some other persons felt they were oblique to defend the indefensible that is the genesis of the crisis in ANLCA.
The crisis seems to have torn the association apart, how do you think justice can be brought back to the association?
You know there is always this syndrome in Nigeria, letting all sleeping dogs lie. Most times when it applies, it is for good but it appears that some people have come to believe that those who let the sleeping dog lie are the foolish or the weak ones. And so when people are now trying to address what is right they are now seem as maybe wanting problems to escalate; they will even be described as trouble makers. Now the path to finding solution will be – one, all the parties involved to come to realize that everybody has his own terms of fairness and let truth prevail. You know because maybe if you ask me who and who are involved; it is already in the public domain. The simple thing was that the leadership of the association; I mean the BoT was legitimately changed as agreed on the 13th of April 2018. Rather than abide by that change, because it is said that the only constant thing in life is change, so rather than abide by that change someone who has been the chairman for 10years running decided that he must continue being the chairman. And then every manner of logic was brought about including outright falsehood and half-truth.
For instance, there was nobody elected into the board of trustee as the chairman of the BoT of ANLCA, everybody that was elected into the BoT by the membership of the association was as a trustee. So the issue of creating chairmanship, secretary and vice chairman was initially an internal arrangement of the board members. So, what I mean is that in electing the trustees which is done by the general membership of the association, everybody was elected as a trustee only. Now as with many other establishments or institutions, outside the election of the members of the trustees by the individuals, now the trustee will go into their enclave to elect who will be their chairman or secretary for administrative purposes. In this case those provisions were not provided in the constitution of ANLCA. So when in another point in time the same members decided that there should be change of leadership in the board of trustees, people now came up with all manners of problems including that somebody was made chairman for six years. For instance, someone was elected in the House of Assembly and it was after the election that the members will gather and elect a Speaker. It will amount to falsehood if somebody comes to say that because he was elected Speaker at the convening of the House he must therefore be the Speaker even when the majority of the House said they don’t want him to be the Speaker again, that is exactly what happened in ANLCA and because it is for administrative purposes that is why it can be changed anytime.
So in the case of ANLCA, when Henry Njoku was changed legitimately, he refused to vacate and the national executives of ANLCA led by the president started supporting him; that was what brought crisis into ANLCA.
Do you think the president is doing the basic thing he should to restore peace in the association?
Yes, he has made a brief move which I believe will yield positive results, but I have also said that the only way it could yield result is for everybody to be sincere about it. For instance, it is a good movement he made by establishing a reconciliatory committee and this committee has been going around meeting with a lot of members who they believe have one thing or the other to contribute to bringing peace. And of course, they have met me and I have also told them that I have bought into the move of the president. But then, my own is that I will not want the peace of the grave yard and I also do not want a peace that has no root in justice and fair play. That I had worked for ANLCA, I had put in my resources for the growth of ANLCA, but then the ANLCA that I am working for is the one that is responsive, active and where justice and fair play reigns. If it is the one that will just massage the ego of one or few persons of the aggrieved, I am not working for that ANLCA.
We learnt that the tenure of the current BoT of ANLCA ended on 7th February 2020 and they had a meeting where they said the tenure has been extended for six years, what do you have to say about that?
I was in the meeting first and foremost and one of our problems we have is where people stay at the comfort of their sits and make pronouncements that are wrong and once such pronouncements are made people will start defending that position. The election that was done to elect the current BoT members that was done at Wellington Hotel in Warri on the 13th of February 2014, now I want to ask you when should be the exit date of that tenure. It should be on the 13th so for somebody to come up to say that the tenure ended on the 7th do you think that such a person is someone that you can now rely on the information he has given you. So this is something I also want you to go and hold some people responsible to explain to you how they came about to determine that the tenure is ending on 7th. The issue of what you see as tenure elongation was born out of an action.
Now while the issue of removal or changing of leadership was going on that is when majority of the members of the BoT voted to elect Alhaji Taiwo Mustapha as the chairman and then when they had done that and rather than comply, Njoku and his supporters decided that they won’t do that, one of them who happens to be a member of the BoT now went to court. One of his prayers in the court says that those of us that were newly elected because they were returned in the BoT, because they have been in the BoT before that election. So by that election of February 13th 2014, four of them were returned and those four are: Henry Njoku, Aare Sanni Shittu, Peter Obi and Taiye Oyeniyi, they were all returned. Now the newly-elected were five, namely, Tony Iju who later became the president, myself, Denis Okafor, Taiwo Mustapha and Dayo Azeez, so the five of us were the newly elected. It is not my duty or obligation that when I got elected into the BoT of ANLCA, I should be the one to go and start registering myself at the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC). Now somebody amongst the people who now started supporting that Henry should not go down as the chairman, Chief Peter Obih in the prayer he made at the court, he asked the court to declare that even though we were elected, but because our names were not registered at the CAC as trustees that we are imposters.
And the court after looking at it granted the prayers to say that even the person we are saying is the newly elected chairman of the BoT is not even a trustee by issue of his name not being registered at the CAC. So, to us it was a shock because like I said it is not my duty to have myself registered in the CAC, the association has machinery and that machinery should be between the then-National Electoral Committee who conducted that election and the trustees that were returned, certainly it is not supposed to be the duty of the newly elected board members to go and start looking for how to register. So when this shock of our being imposters came, what we did was to go and make applications to have ourselves registered even though it is not our duty.
In the cause of our doing it, we now saw more shocks. And the principal shock was that the same three persons because when Tony Iju contested and won the presidency, the nine-member board became eight members. It was 5 out of the 8 members of the board that called for the change of leadership. Now four among these members were declared imposters because they are not registered. So it was when we want to register ourselves that we now saw another shock and the shock is that three members including the man who was voted out had written to the CAC asking them to take away our files and put it in a caveat where they put troubled files and the idea was to make it impossible for us to get registered. The names of the people that wrote the letter to CAC to remove the file of ANLCA are: Chief Henry Njoku, Chief Peter Obih and Aare Sanni Shittu. And the implication of putting files into caveat is making it impossible for us to be registered as trustees. So all these years we were battling because ANLCA files are missing and as result we can’t get registered until when it was discovered that it was deliberately kept out of where it could be possible for us to get registered. So it took us long before we eventually got registered on the 16th day of January 2020. So the question is for a man who was legitimately elected by his colleagues as the chairman BoT and then he was told by the court that he couldn’t act in that position because some people have an agenda of frustrating him from acting in that capacity. Now he got registered 21 days to the expiration of that tenure, will it be fair on him to say okay, let it be whatever it is or for people like us to say let us legitimately regard him as the chairman only for 21 days out of the six years? That was the question.
The NPA recently gave a directive for some cargoes to be diverted to the eastern ports, have you noticed such development in Port Harcourt?
We have not noticed any, but then the truth is that there are many issues that are usually raised, some of the issues concern the effective utilization of the ports in the country. For instance, it is really unfortunate that in our port administration, the authority has made things like cargo to various ports to be a hanging issue. For instance, the ports where filled when they were under the control of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA). And even when they were now concessioned out, some interest came up that there must be an arrangement whereby cargo flow to various ports would be insured. However, as it is now the only way possible is cargo diversion; it is also an emergency measure. Because even for airplane, an airline carries passenger to a particular airport and when he gets there and he discovered that landing is not possible because of one problem or the other, there are provisions to go to the nearest airport. So that a cargo is diverted, yes when you look at it from one angle, it may violate the carriage agreement but then the maritime law just like aviation law allows alternative port of discharge. Because, for instance cargos that are supposed to go to Lagos landed in Port Harcourt then the owner may not have provided for the logistics but because there is congestion in Lagos, even that major issue which is transport difference you may not notice it. Because you find out that in the past you take one container in Lagos state with about N150, 000, now you start hearing about N1million which is almost the same amount for taking a container from Lagos to the east. Though I have not seen any, I think people should not over heat the system because it is a normal thing.
What is your take on the revenue target given to the Nigeria Customs Service?
This is one of the things in our national economic life. Many a time we claim to be in the 21st century, yet we are operating the politics of 18th century not even the 19th century. The issue of revenue target is in its entirety a misnomer. In fact, I recollect one incidence where we were at the FIATA conference in California and someone mentioned that one of the functions of freight forwarding in Nigeria is to help customs realize its revenue target and the whole world started looking at us as if we were from the moon. Because they asked us the meaning of target and then nobody could give an answer. Now it is only in a country like Nigeria where you cannot keep the standard because of target. So in other to meet target, issuance of notice and arbitrary charges becomes the other of the day.
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