There are indications that the crisis in the Board of Trustees (BOT) of the Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA) may snowball into a major ethnicity disagreement, this is even as some members of the Board have accused ANLCA National President, Tony Iju Nwabunike of taking sides with Henry Njoku.
The battle for the chairmanship of the ANLCA BOT is between AlhajiTaiwo Mustapha who is the newly elected -Chairman and Chief Henry Njoku who has been the chairman for about 10 years.
Meanwhile, Secretary of the board, Prince Taiye Oyeniyi in a chat with Shipping Position Daily at the weekend accused the ANLCA President of being tribalised and dancing to the whims and caprices of Henry Njoku. He said that Njoku has remained silent in the face of the BOT crisis.
Close sources within ANLCA told our correspondent last week that Njoku had gone to court and has also written the national president and warned him not to recognise Taiwo Mustapha as the Chairman BOT.
The source told our correspondent that legally, the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) does not recognize Taiwo Mustapha as the BOT chairman because the names of the present BOT members have not been submitted to CAC.
He said "The immediate past national president, Prince Olayiwola Shittu was supposed to send the names of the nine –member board to the CAC but he did not do so, Henry Njoku has been chairman for 10 years and his name was still the one at the CAC"
"Even most of the so-called board members including the National president, Tony Iju, they are new entrants into the board and their names have not been captured by the CAC".
Speaking with our correspondent, the BOT Secretary alleged that the ANLCA President has taken sides and that "he is the one that is engineering everything, we are watching him, and he may end up creating problems for his government"
"If truly he is not taking sides, he has called a peace meeting where 90 days was agreed upon, now that he has kept silence, it means that he is enjoying the issue, he has forgotten that if they should go to court and argued that the board is not registered with the corporate affairs, it is the same board that conducted his election, it then means that his election is null and void, maybe he doesn't know the implication".
While addressing the ethnic undertone in the BOT crisis, Prince Oyeniyi said "They are beginning to turn it into an ethnicity fight, the whole Lagos is solidly behind us, what they are saying is that whether we like it or not, we must release some chapters to them, which is not possible, there is no Yoruba man at the Port Harcourt area".
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