The Board of Trustees (BOT) of Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA) is now under a new leadership headed by Alhaji Taiwo Mustapha as Chairman, Chief Dennis Okafor as Vice Chairman and Prince Taiye Oyeniyi as the Secretary of the board.
This is even as the new leadership has condemned and queried ANLCA's participation in the just concluded elections into the Governing Council of the Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria (CRFFN)
The board blamed the ANLCA national executives for allowing a sister association, National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF) and its Founder, Dr. Boniface Aniebonam to be the one dictating and calling the shots for ANLCA and the rest of the associations.
Addressing journalists at the end of the inaugural meeting of the board at ANLCA national secretariat in Festac Town, Lagos yesterday, the new BOT chairman, Taiwo Mustapha assured that the board under his leadership is all out to assist the National Executive Committee (NECOM) of ANLCA to take over its mantle of leadership in the maritime and freight forwarding industry.
Mustapha also said that one of the focus of the board is to join hands with the incumbent president of ANLCA, Tony Iju Nwabunike to move the association forward by consolidating on the achievements of its immediate past president, Prince Olayiwola Shittu.
"It is not a half-baked issue, if it is not good enough then it is not good enough, what we want after Olayiwola Shittu is to perfect whatever he has done, and wherever he has left ANLCA, in the next few months we want to see it growing beyond that"
"Let me restate it categorically that as far as we are concerned there is no crisis in ANLCA, what we have is a kind of misunderstanding within ourselves and which very soon it would be resolved"
"Let me also clear that as against the impression that this board leadership is against the leadership of ANLCA President, Tony Iju, we are not in any way against his leadership, rather, we are there to solidly support him and move ANLCA forward"
"We need to let you know that from 13th of July, this new leadership under my humble self, Alhaji Taiwo Mustapha and my Vice Chairman, Chief Dennis Okafor and the Board Secretary, Prince Taiye Oyeniyi has taken-off. Whatever impression anybody may be having against it, the fact remains that this is democracy and it is a game of numbers"
"Five of us have agreed that we need a change in leadership after 10 years of Henry Njoku as Chairman, by the grace of God, we have held the election and there is no reverse. I also want to let you know that after the April 13th election at Golden Tulip hotels, we are not holding any other election until future time when we now meet to decide to conduct another election"
"We are out to move ANLCA forward, wherever the previous administration of Olayiwola Shittu must have stopped, our focus today is to join hands with Tony Iju to move the association forward "
The immediate past chairman of the board, Chief Henry Njoku as well as two others; Aare Sanni Shittu and Chief Peter Obi were absent at the board meeting yesterday.
Reacting to this, Mustapha said that their absence notwithstanding, the trio were aware of the meeting and the new leadership of the board, but that they chose to stay away.
He assured that steps would be taken immediately through a meeting that would be called between the ANLCA president and the three aggrieved BOT members on how to consolidate and move on.
He said "We are not running a parallel board and we are not sending anybody out of the fold, Henry Njoku, Aare Sanni Shittu, and Peter Obi are all part of us and we are making efforts on how to bring ourselves to the round table to be able to talk more and agree, but then you cannot force anybody to agree to an opinion"
"We have a platform where we usually communicate whenever we have a meeting, so three of them are aware of this meeting"
"For every organization as big as ANLCA, there is tendency for misunderstanding at one point or the other, we have seen worse than this in the past and we came out of it stronger, and I believe that this one is just a question of a little more time and we would come out of it stronger"
"One thing I have seen is that once there is a crisis like this, the president who happens to be the overall leader of the association is to be open minded and be objective when there are issues on ground"
"As a board, we intend to hold another meeting with the President very soon and we intend to as well ask him to invite the other parties and let us sit down and talk. There are stronger issues to be resolved in ANLCA beyond all what we have been talking about"
Also speaking at the press briefing, two members of the BOT, Mr. Dayo Azeez and Prince Taiye Oyeniyi took a swipe at the leadership of ANLCA for its show of shame at the just concluded CRFFN elections.
"Look at the recent election of the Council and the calibre of people that emerged, the association's reputation is dwindling, ANLCA that was number one in the industry, NAGAFF is now dictating the pace, just because of the kind of leadership that we have. How can ANLCA candidate be scoring one vote in CRFFN election?"
Wondering why NAGAFF founder Chief Aniebonam should now be a rallying point dictating the pace of the CRFFN election, the duo stated that: "Aniebonam was just a welfare officer in ANLCA, what caused the problem was that he went and started collecting 'step down money' and we removed him"
"As fathers who are custodians of the assets and liabilities of ANLCA, we have been stomaching it, but it is not good" the board members stated.
Discussion about this post