The factional President, National Council for Managing Directors of Licensed Customs Agents (NCMDLCA), Chief Festus Ejiofor in this interview with Shipping Position Daily expresses his anger on how the port concessionaires are treating Nigerian freight forwarders. He also supported the Lagos State Government on the new law of the movement of container- laden trucks and other sundry issues. The duo of Roland Ekama and Oluwakemi Ojo spoke with him (unusually) in the presence of his lawyer and other members of his association.
The factional President, National Council for Managing Directors of Licensed Customs Agents (NCMDLCA), Chief Festus Ejiofor in this interview with Shipping Position Daily expresses his anger on how the port concessionaires are treating Nigerian freight forwarders. He also supported the Lagos State Government on the new law of the movement of container- laden trucks and other sundry issues. The duo of Roland Ekama and Oluwakemi Ojo spoke with him (unusually) in the presence of his lawyer and other members of his association.
How would you access the recent election of the Igbo maritime forum?
The election was fine and it went well, they did the election according to the rules and constitution of the Igbo maritime, and so it was.
As president of the National Council for Managing Directors of Licensed Customs Agents, NCMDLCA, what have you done to empower your members in the area of training?
Well, we have been giving lectures to our members in freight forwarding business most especially those in the World Trade Organisation (WTO), and don’t forget that we are under the Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria (CRFFN), they are the ones regulating us; and in terms of training, our members have been going there for trainings and you can call that capacity building, they are going through a lot of training, you don’t mind others that are not registered freight forwarders in Nigeria who are giving trainings. The training that the CRFFN has been giving is the main training because it cuts across the World Trade Organisation, and so many international organisations best practiced in the freight forwarding business, so if our members go to CRFFN to receive training, can’t you call that a good training?
What is the relationship of the National Council for Managing Directors of licensed Customs Agents and NAGAFF, people see your association as an appendage of NAGAFF?
There is nothing like such relationship, we all relate with every freight forwarding association, we relate with Association of Nigeria Licensed Customs Agents, ANLCA, I had been a member of ANLCA before, NAGAFF is just a sister association, we don’t have any special relationship with them, as you can see right now, did you see any NAGAFF person here or did you see me in the NAGAFF village? That doesn’t mean that I don’t go there, but we don’t have any special relationship with them, we have had relationship with Association of Registered Freight Forwarders of Nigeria (AREFFN), relationship with ANLCA, our relationship with Lagos State Chamber of Commerce, we relate with every associations.
As the president, how far have you gone to ensure that your association is registered by CRFFN?
They came for inspection that is to show you that CRFFN is a clean body and not biased, those that were given accreditation were perceived to have met the standard, and they have come for second inspection and we are waiting for them to give us their verdict whether we have met the requirements or not, we cannot convince anybody or force anyone because if we meet the requirements we will be registered like any other associations.
How many chapters does the association have?
Nationwide, anywhere you have sea, air and land borders we have our offices there, if you want to verify as a press man, I can give you the phone numbers of our members or chairmen at Abuja airport, Kano port, Calabar Port, Seme Border, Tin Can, Apapa, anywhere you want , we have chapters everywhere like every other associations.
What is your take on the case in court between you and the other faction leader, Mr. Lucky Amiwero?
You called it the case in court; I cannot speak about the case in court because of contempt of court.
It was alleged three months ago that you wrote a petition against Mr. Lucky Amiwero, why did you write such a petition?
Like I told you, I cannot answer you because we have cases in court and I do not want to face contempt of court. I can’t answer that for now because the last time we went to court, the judge warned us about contempt of court, so I am very careful right now as not to talk about anything that is still in court.
You talked about contempt of court; there must have been reasons for you not to commit anything that has to do with you breaching the law?
I don’t work in Court, I am not a lawyer, I am just an ordinary freight forwarder and once you have been warned not to speak about anything in the court, I don’t think I can go above my wings and discuss it because I don’t want to go to jail all because I breached the contempt of court.
It is assumed that we have too many freight forwarding associations in Nigeria, what is your take on that?
My take on that is that we will continue to have them because we travelled to Kenya sometime ago, and discovered that Kenya is having about 18 associations, we also travelled to Senegal, we also found out that they are having so many associations, I also went to Ghana some time ago and discovered that they are also having so many associations, now you talk about Nigeria as a giant of Africa of more than 150million people, is it only two associations that will cover the whole freight forwarding industry, we will continue to have them as long as freight forwarding business exists in Nigeria.
Are you satisfied with the charges by the concessionaires?
The issue of shipping companies is a different one entirely, they are ripping us off, and they are adopting what is called “chameleon theory” in dealing with people. Don’t forget that we have what is called Joint Action Committee of Freight Forwarders (JACOFF), before we were on their neck to make sure that they charge according to the services rendered, at a point they saw JACOFF as a threat and don’t forget that the power that build, maritime industry minus the customs and other people are mafia- based organisations, they succeeded in making sure the so- called JACOFF is irrelevant so they brought in divide and rule system so that they can continue perpetrating their obnoxious charges. In fact the shipping companies and the concessionaires are the ones causing problems in the ports, why I say they are the ones causing problems is that Inland Container Depots, (ICDs) are being starved of containers thereby creating congestion at the port. The shipping companies will block-stack your containers; they will continue charging while these containers are still at the block-stack, the terminal operators will be charging and the containers would still be at the block-stack and we have shouted by doing all what we could have done according to law to make sure that they are doing what is right but they are not. We as law- abiding citizens, the Federal Government sees the port as second highest revenue generation point second to oil, they don’t joke with the port and we as associations are learned people and we don’t want to bring in hooliganism in the port business, otherwise we would have caused strike in the port because we are really suffering under these shipping companies and the terminal operators.
From what you have just said, don’t you think there is the need for the freight forwarding associations to come together to fight this cause?
We have done that severally, like I was telling you if I open my cabinet over there, you will find series of minutes, letters sent to the shipping companies and the terminal operators, but all to no avail. We have written to the presidency informing them about the problems, we set up a presidential monitoring task force on the port reforms, what is being reformed, same thing stands as we used to do, the minister of transport then brought the ministerial task force on ports eficiency and charges, with all these, nothing happened and what do you want us to do. We have done our best, by allowing the shipping companies and the terminal operators to have a their field day, if we go on strike, they will say we have introduced hooliganism to the port business, we are begging God to come and rescue us from the jaws of shipping companies and the terminal operators, they are the cause of the huge cost of doing businesses in Nigeria. If they had been doing well like customs, I believe things would have been improving in the ports operations because customs has been having listening ears as a result of the Comptroller General of Customs and its management team. If customs does anything wrong, you will cry to them and they will listen then, they will solve the problem but that is not with the shipping companies because they don’t want to behave like customs, maybe because they have some people giving them back ups. Customs will accuse you wrongly, if you cry to the CAC, whereby you have your permit, you know your value and also you know that the business you have transacted is of the same value, you go to the customs controllers or any other management leaders, they will listen, they will call the officer in question, but it is not so in the shipping companies. They just feel like they are Italian mafias whereby they can give you any charge and nothing will happen.
Are you in support of the new law enacted by the Lagos State government on the movement of container laden trucks?
I am in support of it because the other day we went to Kenya, trucks only moved at nights, there was this programme I watched on BBC where they talked about Lagos State, one of the presenters said that somebody dropped a friend at the airport, before he got back to his house, the person he dropped at the airport was already in London. So you can imagine the issue of trailers, the chaos they are causing on our roads, if they can move at nights, it is a welcome development and I want to thank the Governor, Babatunde Raji Fashola, the man has been fantastic , he has been doing well, if other governors can be like Fashola, it will be a good thing. You know Lagos is populated; to manage Lagos is not an easy thing. Reiterating what the BBC programme I watched, that Lagos is the fastest developing city in the world; talking about how Fashola has been able to transform Lagos Island, so the man keeps bringing new innovations to alleviate the suffering of Lagos masses, so if they introduced trucks leaving at nights and early morning, certain hours before daybreak, it is good, if all trucks leave the roads for commuters and car owners, the roads will be free.
From what you have just said, don’t you think it will bring back congestion in the ports?
Even without trucks moving at nights, have there not been congestions, what is the condition of the access roads, are they good? You finish your paper works and at the time of loading you will find out at times that there is no available trailer to load, because those loaded cannot offload their containers, go to Tin Can Port, you will see them pile up, at times they block the roads, so if they bring in their containers and discharge at nights, by evening they will load again, now you can finish your paper works, write your TDOs, ready for delivery, no trailer to load and trailer owners are catching-in to deal with agents and with that they increase their charges arbitrarily. In a nutshell, it is only when they start something then you will know the benefit of that thing, so let us give it a trial.
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