In this first part of this explosive interview, the national president of Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents, Prince Olayiwola Shittu opens up on issues that will interest stakeholders; especially freight forwarders. The concluding part will be published next week.
I think the natural way to start is asking you what you feel about the industry in 2012.
In this first part of this explosive interview, the national president of Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents, Prince Olayiwola Shittu opens up on issues that will interest stakeholders; especially freight forwarders. The concluding part will be published next week.
I think the natural way to start is asking you what you feel about the industry in 2012.
First of all let me say a happy new to you and I am afraid that the maritime industry will find its feet this year and the government is so particular about the industry in how it can assist the government to realize its goals. Remember that it was last year that Olisa Agbakoba (SAN) projected that government can realize N7 trillion alone in the maritime industry and the inability to realize as much or even less than half was as a result of the government not paying more attention to the industry by allowing people to give wrong information .After the last presidential retreat in the (Aso Rock) villa, when committee was set up ,we expect that the implementation of certain areas should be immediate ,but you know with the government style of setting up committees upon committees makes a lot of things to go under and people are likely to be and which at the end of the day leads to one step forward and five step backwards .
It sounds to me like you are really unhappy about how government runs the maritime industry?
I have never see anybody that is happy in the industry, the paper that I have been reading, all the interview I have granted, even on government policies on the maritime industry, in fact even the crisis that has rocked the Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria [CRFFN] should have been avoided, but because the foundation laid for CRFFN was faulty and whatever you build on faulty foundation cannot stand. We have advice that we should go back to the basis because if you build a house on a faulty foundation, the best thing for you is to bring down the house and build the foundation properly.
How?
We know that CRFFN was established for capacity building for individual practitioners in the industry which is their job and then to regulate how the activities are being carried out; most especially the companies that are operating in the maritime industry, the individuals who are working in the industry and the associations working in the maritime industry. But for the past seven years or thereabout, they have been more interested in how many people are in their register, how many companies are in their register, how many associations they have registered, how many people have paid money. That regulatory body that is; CRFFN is not supposed to be a revenue generator or fund raiser, but is supposed to be a capacity building institution and specific amount by companies or individual should be paid for maintaining their membership. In fact you do not even have to maintain membership because you have no job and it is not like the accountant where you have ICAN. But in building up CRFFN, then we also discovered that they didn’t take into cognizance the mode of operation in the port, there is no individual meant to carry out activities at the port. What I meant is that if there is no cargo there will be no port and if there is no port and no cargo there will be no individual and if there is none of these factors there won’t be a body called CRFFN, because there is nobody to regulate. What happens in the maritime industry today is that the corporate individuals that operate in the port, corporate body that are invited by the customs, the corporate bodies that the terminal operators deal with, the corporate bodies that shipping companies deal with and even the corporate bodies that NPA deals with, so the foundation need to take cognizance of those corporate individuals.
But you were a member of the governing council of CRFFN and you saw these things, what effort did you make to correct them?
I can tell you that I made tremendous efforts that singled me out to be vilified , because my colleagues thought that it was an avenue to have an alternative bigger association and since I became president of the this association (ANLCA) , my people have accepted me to be their leader. Now CRFFN was supposed to be a regulatory body which is a part time affair, it’s for people to go on meeting days and find out what the Registrar is doing and what he is not doing and go back, but people now saw it as a full-time job which it is not and they also saw it as an alternative to the association, so from the beginning, some of us who crave the sanctity of the association as even recognized in the Act were seen as saboteur; that association we want the associations to be too relevant and that we are making it to be too visible and so on. The council is not a welfare organization, the council is not an advocacy group, rather the council is to regulate and give guidelines and we were also misled that FIATA is the ultimate anybody can think of, but it is not because I have documents here which you can see .You can also wish to be a member of FIATA if you wish to, as far as I am concerned, FIATA is a platform for freight forwarders all over the world to exchange ideas. Let me encapsulate ,the CRFFN now became the place where the chickens and turkeys are put in one place and what you will see is bedlam and it is a problem .The only way you can have relative peace and get things to work naturally in that circumstance is to segregate them in the cafe. The Act specifies who are freight forwarders and they slashed it with licensed customs agents or customs brokers as one group among freight forwarders, transporters e.t.c. Now how can you call yourself a licensed customs agent,it means you must be licensed and if you are not licensed as an individual ,then the corporate company that you belong must be licensed; then you can call yourself a customs agent, but the situation we are ,85% of persons registered under CRFFN claim to be customs agent and out of that 85% persons, another 75% don’t even work in the clearing companies and that is the crisis we have today. In that council, I continue to tell them that let us the segregation which is already done in the Act, because all you need to do is that for every one that has registered with Council should simply identify what sector of the freight forwarding industry do you belong. Please ask them why that area was not emphasized because it is already in the Act and it is already in the gazette, so what they should have done is that if you are registering you must register according to the sector you belong. You can ask them, why that aspect was not emphasized upon.
Are these not teething problems?
For a child to have teething problem for seven years means that the parents are not serious. There are people who do not want that segregation, they just want a platform to enter the ports, make money, and walk away.
Do you think that segregation will solve the problem?
It will solve the problem to an extent, if in an association, you ask association of what ,we are the association of licensed customs agents and if another association comes up to say that they are licensed customs agents, there is no problem, there is no problem, but I want you to take note that the COREN which deals with engineers regulate engineers; which means the standard for one to be an engineer has had the input of COREN right from the university level, this is what the CRFFN would have done to individual. But when you come out structural engineer or electrical engineer or civil engineer ,there are associations you belong and so far I have not seen two or three associations for civil, electrical and mechanical engineers. The area I am going is this; if you want to go and work in the port today as a freight forwarder, what do you want to do in the port? This are some of the questions we need to ask ourselves, it is like such a person wants to be a jack of all trade and master of none? Don‘t also forget that many people you see who parade themselves as leaders of some of the associations do not even work in companies that have a customs license.
Are you advocating that there should be one licensed customs association?
No, we belong to the International Federation of Customs Brokers. Whether you are working with licensed companies or you are working with a licensed company and you believe that ANLCA cannot fulfill your yearnings and you join another association identified to cater for the interest of customs brokers and their welfare, no problems. Like I always say, the sky is big enough for all birds to fly. As for proliferation, why were we put under CRFFN? Is it not to put a stop to the proliferation of association, whereby they said that before you can be registered this is the standard you can meet. At what stage is ANLCA and to a lesser extent, NAGAFF become a threat to CRFFN whereby they just take everybody who is registered into the council. I can count the number of people who belong to NAFFAC.NAFAC is an airport organization, even when you count them, they are not up to 20 and they are elderly people who just belong to one corner doing their things, but the CRFFN regulation says that you must have presence in the three zones of the federation, how come NAFAC did not have a branch in Port Harcourt and in Kano airports to have a national speared. We know ourselves all those who are claiming that they are opening offices all over Nigeria, let them give the press the list of their offices for verification, but it will look as if we are after them because I believe that association is meant for professionals .You cannot say that you are just coming up therefore you must be at par, even as I speak, ACCA is still not at par with ICAN for number of years, but our people in the maritime industry believed that creation of associations is the platform to make money and how do they make money ,they go to customs whenever they have issue, lobby their ways and this is what we have seen because they beg Areas Controllers for help and even for money for rent .To me, that belittles the purpose of association. I am just thinking that ANLCA is not only association for the future, but an association that have experience to back up it status. We don’t see people that left ANLCA to form association (with the exception of Dr. Aniebonam) who had a focus that there must be an alternative. I am honest to tell you this – all other people are just looking for platform to be relevant and make money. They were all members of the association who one way or the other fell out either as a result of indiscipline or when they wanted to be punished, they get up to register another association. I want to say that underneath now we have nothing less than 20 other associations that are already registered for the future.
Discussion about this post