“WE WILL TAKE ANLCA BACK TO ITS POSITION”
Prince Olayiwola Shittu has gradually become the issue in ANLCA politics and in the maritime industry. And just like we predicted, he is fast being the central figure in ANLCA. The venue of the flag off of his presidential campaign was jam-packed with freight forwarders from all dichotomies; it was also attended by non-freight forwarders who are friends and admirers of Shittu; including three traditional rulers and retired senior customs officers. Unlike our usual practice on this page, we present for your delight his eloquent presentation.
My journey into ANLCA politics
The journey started in 1986 when I became the chairman of Port Harcourt airport in the chapter of ANLCA, so I am not a small boy in ANLCA. I was also responsible for the unification of ANLCA under the leadership of Alhaji Sani Kamba between the Western and the Eastern zone to form the Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents, so I am in a position to know about ANLCA. ANLCA has come a long way; I will not repeat what has been said, it is not the issue of consolidation but the issue of clearing the rough edges that have manifested while we match on to reform ANLCA as a viable platform for our members to operate in the industry.
The story of my life
I was born in Epe some kilometres away; about three decades ago, I moved to Lagos when I was barely 19 years old, I started my working life with the Nigerian Postal Service; we use to call them P&T in those days, I was not distributing letters, but I was in charge of money order, adventure took me out of Lagos and I left for Warri in the year 1972 because I was trying to find out what is on the other side of the land called Lagos where I know some of my colleagues have never gone beyond the perimeter except when they go to their village. While in Warri, I faced a lot of challenges and I started work with the Nigerian Ports Authority in 1973, as a matter of fact because I was a bloody Yoruba man from no where, I was made to work in all the ports in the Delta including Burutu which is completely surrounded with water and though, yet they know I could not swim then. I also worked in Koko and Sapele ports; but I triumphed because apart from the adventure, I also wanted to learn. I left the Nigerian Ports Authority for the University of Ibadan, it was at the time of Idiagbon and Buhari, so they said those of us that left for school without a study leave should regard ourselves as discharged, when the story was going on, I quickly put in my letter of resignation and withdrew and I was given a certificate of good service which I still have till today. Then, I moved down to Port Harcourt in search of this same adventure, I was encouraged along the way even when I was at Ibadan by no other person than the man whom today is the chairman of Skelas Group, Retired Assistant Comptroller General of Customs ACG Igbogboa. He showed me the way and the road when I had already lost hope that there was no where to go. Why I need to give you this background is for you to know who I am because some people will say who is this Shittu, so from no where we started Skelas Group and that led to my becoming the chairman of Port Harcourt Area 2 chapter of ANLCA.
The beginning of ANLCA’s problems
Since then, a lot have passed under the bridge from the time of Alhaji Sani Kamba to the time of Sir Earnest Elochukwu, but I can tell you in summary that some of us who saw the horizon knew that if we don’t take time the personification of ANLCA will spell the doom for ANLCA; when we where at Otta during one of our NEC meetings where I wrote a report and sentiment was brought in by some people who said how can I be working for Kamba and be writing against him and that is when ANLCA started nose-diving. I want to commend Elochukwu because he has a train going down the hill and he has to use his back to stop that train because he could not jump start the train to reverse because of the multitudes of problems that all of you know. But what we know is that the train has stopped and with your help, we can kick that train to start climbing the hill again so that we can go to where we are supposed to go. ANLCA is an association of Nigerian license agents; it is meant to be an association of licensed agencies and it is the company that is supposed to send to ANLCA the names of their proxies which means that all of us as ANLCA members should be proxies or member companies of ANLCA, but I remember then and it started from the time of Kamba, the man liked crowd, he wanted to be anywhere and see a sea of heads and he opened the door wide, he jettisoned the idea of ANLCA being a corporate organization and made it the ANLCA of anybody provided you can clap your hands and hail ‘Up Presido’ and that was the beginning of our problems and that was how people who don’t even know the colour of licenses became our leaders, those who can not even sustain their licenses became chair makers. You may be very good and have your own license but you may not win elections in the association as long as a godfather wants somebody else who don’t have a license to go in there and be your chairman, we watched over the time; even after Kamba, nobody addressed the issue but it is something we must all address.
ANLCA and other associations
There are differences amongst us, let me say for the umpteenth time that the three major associations in the maritime industry representing the interest of freight forwarders today are: Association of Nigerian License Customs Agents, NAGAFF and the Council of Managing Directors, all other ones have faded out, but there are differences in the three associations and I need to seize this opportunity to let us know that there is no reason why I cannot be Shittu of ANLCA, NAGAFF and Council of Managing Directors. I will tell you why I can, ANLCA means association of corporate members, you can choose anybody to represent your company in the body called ANLCA, it could be the general manager or the managing director, the council of managing directors was a ‘rogue establishment’ that was meant to truncate the affairs of ANLCA by deceiving the group of managing directors of the same licensed company to come to meeting and represent the same company that already has proxies in ANLCA and that’s why till tomorrow the managing director of Skelas has never been a member of the Council of Managing Directors because the mind of establishing the council was not meant to serve the interest of everybody, it was designed to serve the interest of one man who pulled out of ANLCA and decided to have a rogue association to compete with ANLCA, that is the fact and we must face it.
NAGAFF was born out of necessity, the centre could not hold because ANLCA was seen as not serving members’ interest and NAGAFF was born, NAGAFF was meant for freight forwarders and not for license customs agents because freight forwarding is a total logistic system and ANLCA concerns itself with licensed customs agent, don’t let us look beyond our nose as if ANLCA is competing with NAGAFF, there is nothing like that, rather than compete we should collaborate in the interest of our members who are licensed customs agents and who in the same process have decided to provide total logistics services and decided on their own to be in NAGAFF; if they so wish, association is not by force but once you are a license customs agent, the only backbone you can use is ANLCA, unless we want to deceive ourselves. So, a lot of people are busy chasing shadows and I bet you when we come on board we are going to streamline all that so that the thin line that is dividing us may eventually be obliterated so that we can have a common focus, that is my agenda.
Alleged Sponsorship
A lot of people have insinuated that I am being sponsored, yes by whom? By all of you who wanted me to come out, I did not come out until we heard that Elochukwu has decided to sustain the institution and when we looked at the modality, we discovered that those who don’t have any contribution to make in ANLCA are the ones who wanted to inherit the leadership and I listened to yearnings of the people who called me. I am telling you that as far back as two years ago among our members and 10 years ago among MARAN members, I can stand up to say that. I have always believed that it is when the time comes then you can step in, I am not an ambitious man that wants to kick the table so that I can go in there, the ultimate in life is not president of ANLCA, but then I cannot sit back for God’s sake and allow the labour of those past and present to be high jacked by individuals who need agent’s complementary cards to look for business and do nothing for them. If that is sponsorship, I accept, but let me tell everybody that I came out to contest out of the conviction that I have garnered enough experience, I know the problems of ANLCA, I can solve these problems to reposition the association so that all of us can match ahead and make ANLCA to benefit everybody.
The challenges are many
Our challenges are many, but indeed Rome was not built in a day, if we put our hands together we can cause the train of ANLCA from going down hill again to start moving until we get to our destination, it might not be easy in the beginning but we all have it and I am sure you must have seen the note presented to everybody where the agenda I intend to pursue is already written. I can tell you that even though it coincides with the Nigerian 7 point agenda, it is an achievable agenda, because it will work simultaneously. I can tell you our intention is to train people and to strengthen the institution, I have come to realize that a lot of our people don’t have source of sustenance, I have seen some of our members that I have known as far back as 1990 but they cannot even sustain their license and that is why we introduced these agenda, it is essential that I tell you what I am going to do, I am not afraid of competition, I am not even afraid if any of the past presidents wants to come back as president, I am ready to face the person, what I want to tell you is what I will do for ANLCA let them tell you what they will do, they should not be telling you that ‘Shittu was the immediate chairman of ASECO , he has put his stooges in place’, if the people that are going to vote are the stooges then they should check themselves if they are a stooge, but they should please do the right thing.
My Agenda for ANLCA
Professionalism
The first thing is professionalism; let me use this opportunity to congratulate Dr. Aniebonam even if I call his name a hundred times there must be a reason, that is the only association that has been nurtured from nothing to the point that they did their10th anniversary recently. Don’t be disillusioned that I am mentioning NAGAFF because some of our people have been so trained and conditioned to the point that when they hear NAGAFF they see it as an enemy. No, NAGAFF was a child of ANLCA that decides to go somewhere else, don’t be surprised tomorrow that Dr. Aniebonam could also vile for president of ANLCA; after my tenure.
What is professionalism? We have the Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding established by law as a compulsory platform for all of us to become professionals, but we agree that only a viable ANLCA that is focused can complement the council in realizing the objective of professionalism. I can tell you that I have the magic wand and know what to do to make all of us responsive to the yearnings of that council and become true professionals. I don’t want to tell you the nitty-gritty of seminars, trainings collaboration of other stakeholders and essentially we cannot be stagnant, we encourage our members to go for weekend lectures, go and enrol somewhere, that time you use for parties, use it to go to school and it will be good for you, we will let them know the advantages and make sure we enrol some of them.
Modern and functional National secretariat
There is the notion that we don’t have a functional secretariat, but I will tell you we don’t have a secretariat at all not to talk of being functional. I will like to thank one of our chapter chairmen in the name of Kayode Farinto who had the goodwill in mind to keep the left over of our secretariat for us. How can an association work when there is no office, there is no place you can drop a letter for ANLCA and it looks like Apapa chapter secretariat headed by Ofobike now became the national secretariat which is not right. Our pledge is to introduce a secretariat, within the first month of our coming into office. We shall have a secretariat and within three month after coming into office it will become functional, we must get it.
Harmony with other stakeholders
The fear of any ANLCA man is Nigeria customs; we complain that customs don’t like us because we have made ourselves like that, when NAGAFF was giving awards some few weeks ago, the ACG in charge of the zone boldly came out with a microphone and said all the frauds in the ports are being perpetrated by ANLCA members, we all know that there are corrupt agents everywhere but I can tell you that we can achieve what we want to achieve without being corrupt, being fraudulent or doing ‘MO’, I have never done an ‘MO’ in my life since I became an agent but I made money doing the right thing, we shall teach our members how to make money doing the right thing, we can not be making money into the pocket of importers who will collude with customs and at the end of the day call you thieves, if the government money is going to be a common wealth, we shall either have equitable distribution or else, we pay it to government, we shall work on that. Anything I am telling you today, please take it from me because that is the part we are going to thread.
We are not going to fight customs, but we will let them know that we are equal partners and if we are not equal, we cannot be partners, they need us more than we need them. From the first day I become the president we shall invite all chapter executives to a retreat where we will start our orientation, its not proper for a chapter chairman to enter a CAC’s office and be trembling as if the man is God, we will make sure that no chapter chairman goes kneeling down and prostrating because you want something signed.
Effective Customs-Agents relationship
We will initiate the move to have that relationship cemented, but when we discover that we are going to lose in that relationship, we shall take a stand and we shall force them looking for us, take my word for it because we know how to go about that.
Life insurance and welfare of members
When I was the chairman in Port Harcourt in 1986, whenever we have a member who died, we will go and get a register and start tasking all our members to contribute between N100 and N200 naira, at the end of the day, when you pay for transportation to the man’s village and back nothing is remaining. We should not do that, part of the constitutional provision for ANLCA is that the welfare of members must be enhanced, so any member who pays his membership dues regularly will be entitled to insurance which will be monitored by ANLCA such that in case of any mishaps something will get to the family.
Unity
You can not preach unity when there is injustice; no officer of ANLCA will be unduly penalized or intimidated without going through the provision of the constitution. Once we re able to come together and do the right thing, the sky is our limit, this agenda is to take ANLCA out of the woods that we have found our self and prepare a part for harmony. I see no reason why an agent cannot get up somewhere and introduce himself as a licensed customs agent, so we shall redefine ourselves, take a common stand, work with our brothers in the maritime because it is what we say that they will do.
Establishment of National Membership Registration and Mobilisation Committee
One of the causes of the problems of ANLCA is election, anytime we have elections that is when we have problems, all the problems and troubles we had in the past one year is due to elections. As soon as we come in, we want to establish membership registration and mobilization committee, the job of that committee is to go to the chapters every year to obtain the record of membership, so anytime there is election, they take the record to go and vote, and unlike now when we don’t have a register of members, this is time when they will ask ANLCA who are your members and we will bring out the register for the different chapters and the only way we can do it is with your corporation.
After this flag off, we intend to embark on visitation to the chapters where we will sit down with you and discuss the peculiarities of the problems of each chapter so that it can form an agenda for us also to add to this agenda and solve all these problems as soon as we come in. I am soliciting for your vote; I am not unmindful of the fact that you have the right to vote for anybody that you want, I am not asking you to sell your vote for me, but I want you to give your vote to ANLCA of the future, that is why I see myself as an alternative to all those other people who may not have this agenda to sell and I promise you today that I can deliver and I am ready to serve as your next president.
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