Mr. Frank Ogunojemite, is a former member of the National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF). He is currently the founder of the African Association of Professional Freight Forwarders and Logistics. In this interview with Anozie Egole, he speaks extensively on the rationale behind the formation of the new association and what it has in stock for its members.
“Look at the exorbitant charges on the movement of the goods from the seaports to where is going, the cost is even more than what you will spend in moving the consignments from China to Nigeria”
“At APFFLON, we look at the welfare of the people and we have alliance with some of the hospitals around which treat some of our members on credit”
What is your general appraisal of freight forwarding in Nigeria?
For freight forwarding in Nigeria, I can say things are generally improving, because the era of the ‘long room’ and all that had gone people have moved to ASYCUDA and to NICIS 2. So freight forwarding generally is improving and we will get there, but we still have some impediments in the industry. The issue of multiple checks is one of the impediments; after settling with Customs in the ports, the same people will stop you on the road for checks. Does that mean that the officers that issued the valuation are not competent? These are the issues the government should look at, because such situation gets one annoyed. So we have to put our resources together.
What do you think is the difference between air freight forwarding and seaport freight forwarding and what are the challenges?
In air freight most of the cargoes come by air while the seaport comes by sea, they are the same thing because it is the same custom officers and agencies that work at the airport that still work at seaport and I believe they all went through the same training. In the area of challenges, there are discrepancies; if you look at the gridlock in Apapa it is worrisome before you can get your cargo out of the port and the empty container back; it is an issue. And as a freight forwarder your job is not complete until the empty containers are returned to the shipping companies and without that, all your deposits are gone. Look at the exorbitant charges on the movement of the goods from the seaports to where it is going; the cost is even more than what you will spend in moving the consignments from China to Nigeria. So the gridlocks are one of the problems we are facing compared to airport . But it is the same thing because there are also multiple checks everywhere, so the same thing applies everywhere, customs have to improve on this; a lot of things need to be considered.
What is your appraisal of the new governing council of the CRFFN?
For a very long time, there was no chairman, so by the time they came in there were lots of things to attend to. So I want to believe that there are internal work going on, I understand that they have constituted different sub-committees and they are working internally on that. Recently they have synergized with UNILAG to train operators. So let’s give them time and see what they can do.
Recently the Federal Government gave the CRFFN the go-ahead to start the collection of POF, what is your position on that?
I think we should keep our fingers crossed on this because we have heard about the approval, but there must be proper communication either from the government to the agency or from the government to the practitioners. But in most cases we do get the information from the media. So we keep our fingers crossed because we heard about that but we don’t know if the directive has been carried out. So specifically we will look at it as a rumor, until we know the money has been collected and what they are doing with the money.
Before now, you were a prominent member of NAGAFF, what informed your exit from the association?
Well, I am a member of NAGAFF and I tell you something I believe that I am still NAGAFF .I say this because if you look at the premiere association, which is ANLCA that was formed in 1954, all the other associations came out from there so if you look at NAGAFF; the founder was formerly a member of ANLCA and when NAGAFF came onboard you can see the differences in the industry. Now our APFFLON is onboard now and our vision here is looking at the welfare of our members. How do you look at the welfare of the members, we are the first association to think of cooperatives for our members which does not exist in other association. We also have what we call ‘APFFLON health plus’ and what we do there is that if we look at the industry, most of the practitioners don’t really have money and those who have are extremely rich.
What is unique about this new association?
At APFFLON, we look at the welfare of the people and we have alliance with some of the hospital around which treat some of our members on credit. So we have credit facilities for them, we don’t have a situation where people will just die because they don’t have good health facility or hospital to treat them. We also look at the situation where some of our members will have a job, but they cannot finance it; that was what brought about the issue of cooperative and all that. We know a couple of people that we have helped in this area, we are also planning to migrate to land schemes, having freight forwarding estate, we are looking at bringing ourselves together and appeal to the government which we have done. Why can’t we have land facilities for our members and without the cooperatives, you can’t achieve this and we are working on this for our members. We also look at health insurance, in less than six weeks we have lost about two freight forwarders at the airport here alone and people go about contributing for them to take care of their families. But if we have health insurance, it will take care of the person’s family. So we look at it that the insurance issue is very important. Not only that we have people who have worked for years here, there is no trust fund. So we look at ourselves as a body to organize these people on life after work. All the things that are necessary for our members were what informed the formation of this association. All these factors that I just mentioned have never existed in any of the existing associations. Our association is not just here in Nigeria alone, it is Africa and as I am speaking with you, we have offices in South-Africa and Ghana. We also have an alliance with Ecobank as a pan African bank; they are trying to give us their offices as a liaison office.
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