Even though the National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF) had lampooned the immediate past National President of the Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agent (ANLCA), Prince Olayiwola Shittu, its President; Chief Increase Uche said the former ANLCA President is bridge builder who is worthy of emulation.
Both NAGAFF and its President were reacting to last week’s colloquium and book launch that was organised in honour of Prince Shittu in Lagos.
While pouring encomium on Shittu in a chat with Shipping Position Daily in Lagos last week, the national president of NAGAFF, Chief Increase Uche, charged other leaders of freight forwarding associations to emulate the former ANLCA President.
However, NAGAFF in a statement signed by its Head, Special Duty; Emma Agubanze accused Shittu of calling NAGAFF a mushroom association in a book that was written in his honour and launched last week.
In the statement, NAGAFF also warned the members never to have anything to do with the book.
According to NAGAFF, “for Prince Shittu to have been quoted as referring to NAGAFF in his book as a mushroom association is most disheartening, disrespectful, uncivilized and a high point of irresponsibility”.
It went further that, “based on the forgoing, the NAGAFF high command hereby directs that no member of NAGAFF and Freight Forwarders in general should have any business with the said book and should consign it to the dustbin of history because it is not only misleading but fatally blackmailing”.
But in a chat with one of our correspondents, NAGAFF President described Shittu as a bridge builder even as he charged other ANLCA leaders to emulate his leadership style.
“Actually he tried, I have to commend him because I have always referred to him as a bridge builder. If we have someone like Shittu in the saddle of leadership in ANLCA, I think things will get better because what is really limiting the freight forwarding sector from consistent development has been the issue of non-collaboration in the associations. If the kind of mindset that I saw in Shittu is the type of attitude that other leaders in ANLCA had exhibited we would have gone far”, he said.
Uche, also accused some member of ANLCA of no liking Shittu’s idea of collaborating with NAGAFF, even as he said that Prince Shittu should not only be celebrated on his birthdays alone.
“You discover when he was there he was collaborating with NAGAFF, he partnered with us severally for us to move the industry forward, but that created a lot of problems for him because most of his colleagues never liked it. They wanted a situation where ANLCA will be an island and NAGAFF has come of age after 19 years. We are the association to beat as it is now, find out what happened during the last CRFFN election and we have continued to maintain that lead”, he added.
Discussion about this post