A maritime industry activism group; the Save Nigeria Freight Forwarders Importers and Exporters Coalition has taken the founder of the National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF) Dr. Boniface Aniebonam to the cleaners over his recent statement that 99.9% of freight forwarders do not have knowledge.
The group also described NAGAFF academy as an illegal institution that lacks the necessary approvals from relevant agencies to stand.
The coordinator of the group, Dr. Osita Chukwu who said this in a chat with Shipping Position Daily in Lagos yesterday, also said that he never expected such statement from someone like Aniebonam being an old hand in the industry.
He queried Dr Aniebonam’s rationale before concluding that the practitioners lack knowledge.
"If you say that freight forwarders are not knowledgeable, what now brought about the industry rising from N900billion to N1trillion in revenue generation last year? Are they not people that did that job, what type of knowledge do you want from them"
"If you say they don't know the customs law, are they going to teach us the customs law, is he going to establish a university or college for freight forwarding?"
Osita added that the NAGAFF academy whose governing council members were inaugurated on Monday was done in error, stressing that the inauguration should have been done by the ministry of education.
"The NAGAFF academy is illegal because it has no license, how did they select their lecturers"
"The governing council that they inaugurated, who did that for them. Any school in Nigeria must emanate from the ministry of education and license must be granted"
"Then the tutorial staff or governing council members of that school must be inaugurated by the ministry of education"
According to him, "In fact, I can say generally that he doesn't know what he is talking about. Freight Forwarding in Nigeria and Africa generally is the best, education can not give you what you need as a human being to survive, but rather education will add value"
Explaining further he said that the academy is supposed to have got the required approval from the relevant agencies before inaugurating governing council members.
"Why should NAGAFF inaugurate academy governing board members before getting the certificate from the relevant authorized institutions?", he asked
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