“Members of the Taiwo Mustapha-led faction were not at the AGM”
“That designation of the acting National President is unknown to the constitution of ANLCA”
It appears that the peace accord or reconciliation has broken down.
We can say that there was never a peace accord. What has happened all along was an attempt to force something that cannot stand any litmus test on some people, in favour of some people. There has never been any resolution, if you consider what has happened.
But some people attended the meeting, they were appointed as BoT members and were sworn in.
As I have said previously, the methodology of arriving at any particular action determines the propriety of that action. An action that was supposed to be a good action was done in a wrong way, of course it remains wrong. Let it be also known that for me and Chief Dennis Okafor, we have explained our position.
Are you not part of the new BoT?
I don’t really know about the new BoT. But we are part of the BoT and then we did not participate in whatever was recorded to have happened. That is to say we are neither part of any discussion nor part of the so-called AGM.
Were you not contacted?
We can’t entirely say we were not consulted. Chief Dennis Okafor said he was not called. But I know that Alhaji Abubakar Tsanni called me on the 14th of March because I had called him earlier on. We heard what was going on initially when this whole thing started; I made efforts to get his number and called him with the mind to talk, so that I could probably know where he was coming from. I called way back in 2022. By my record, it was on the 12th of September, 2022. I sent him a text but he didn’t call back. By February 15th, after trying to call several times, I sent him another text. He replied that he would call back but he never did. On the 16th February I sent him another text. On the 14th of March, he finally called me. He said he has been trying to call us to resolve the crisis in ANLCA. I told him if that is his intention, I am in Port Harcourt and I don’t understand what he was saying because the issue goes beyond that. I told him according to the Act (establishing the CRFFN), the Minister can only give general directives. This is because the CRFFN is supposed to be a professional regulating agency. He later asked what should be done and I told him that they went about the AGM the wrong way and a whole lot of things about why it should not be done that way.
Was this discussion after the AGM?
It was before the AGM. I told him that he shouldn’t have been dealing with one side of the factions all these while and just at the eve of conclusion they want to involve the other side. I suggested that the meeting should be put on hold and that by the following week, I’ll be in Lagos so that we can talk. But he said that was impossible. So in that case, why did he call me? He called me so that I can give him approval for what he has been doing without bothering about my input. In that case, he should go and look for such approval elsewhere. I communicated this to Alhaji Mustapha. He knew how he arm-twisted, cajoled, bamboozled and intimidated Alhaji Mustapha, Taiye Oyeniyi and Taiwo Azeez. He went to discuss something with them which he assured them in his private discussion. When they finished their negotiation he convinced them to go down and show face. The question that has arisen is, if there is a crisis, it presupposes that there will be factions. Alhaji Mustapha, Taiye Oyeniyi and Taiwo Azeez are not the complete faction. So claiming that you talked to them or are part of whatever you did is a lame claim. I am not even talking about myself or Dennis Okafor. If you are even talking about representation, the population of ANLCA is over 2,000. We are talking about 17 chapters. Common sense would have said where are the members of the other faction?
Are you saying members of your factions were not at the AGM?
I mean members of the Taiwo Mustapha-led faction. They were not there.
The CRFFN gave guidelines for those eligible to attend the AGM. Don’t you think this was what barred members of your faction?
Do you think the agents with customs licenses that are members of ANLCA are around 200 or 250? So when I said one faction did the AGM, I don’t know what the contention is. CRFFN does not run ANLCA. It is a regulatory agency. What they are regulating is all about the main purpose of the Act. To ensure that standards are maintained for the practice of freight forwarding. To prepare and keep register of those that have met the standards. The issue of association is another kettle of fish and it is something that should be handled with care, because I happen to know that that issue became contentious towards the end of a bill that was signed into law. When there was harmonization between the Senate and House of Representatives committee on that bill, somebody thwarted it at the end. It was later allowed to be signed and amendments will be done later. The point I want to make is that the association was established under CAMA and CAMA is an Act. The issue is that the essence for establishing the Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria is to bring out professionalism through application of standards in the freight forwarding industry and it does not in any way encourage personal whims and caprices; interpreting laws to suit a predetermined agenda.
The action of your group presupposes that you are casting aspersion on the competence of CRFFN to mediate.
Oh yes! Totally and absolutely. This is because when we talk about CRFFN in this case we are zeroing it on the Chairman of the Governing Council. So if he represents CRFFN, so be it. But then he has shown manifest bias.
Bias is different from legal competence to do what he is doing.
First and foremost, neither you nor I can have a last word on legal competence. So we shouldn’t go there. We are talking about what has happened and what has happened is very simple. Over eight months ago the CRFFN established a committee headed by one Alhaji Abba to look into the ANLCA crisis and that committee interacted with many of us and they said they were going to make their report. Months after that, we didn’t hear anything about the report. We heard that the report of that committee did not favour the expectation of some persons including the Chairman and that is why the report was put in the archives.
It was said that the mediation that they concluded through the AGM was part of the recommendations.
I happen to know that members of that committee were not part of this exercise. That report was never discussed by the Governing Council. If they are making the world to know that they are mediating, then the question is, it is at the whims of one man?, The other part is that after this whole thing of the CRFFN died down and we didn’t hear anything, on 12th January, 2023 the then Area Commander at Festac called both parties and informed us that it was in the desire of the Police Authority that this issue gets resolved. In fact it was a meeting that lasted several hours. The Area commander said there was need to go and talk as members of the same family. Based on that a subsequent meeting was held on the 13th. At that meeting, we all agreed that the action we need to take to avoid a vacuum in the association was to jointly raise a five-man ASECO to conduct the NECOM elections. Tentatively, we agreed that an AGM will be used for the election. There was a consensus that we should stop monetizing ANLCA positions because it is making us not developed in terms of leadership. When we have somebody who can do it, but because he doesn’t have a big pocket, they deny him. We also told them that if the members if their board are recognized by the CAC as the authentic Board of the association, our board will step aside and give them full support. But however, if our Board is recognized as the authentic one, the offer to bring their four members still stands. After a while, we didn’t hear from them and I called them, but I was told they were planning for an AGM. But we agreed that the AGM will be for the election, so why the AGM? So the question is what happened at Owerri? The same AGM that was attended by just one faction, and now you want to force is on everybody. It was later we heard about CRFFN. Why will the CRFFN establish a committee eight months ago? The committee has done whatever and suddenly we didn’t hear from them. When will the Police consummate the moves that the Police has started? They also elected an acting President. If Farinto was elected as the Vice President in 2018 and as far as I am concerned their tenure expired 2022. That designation of the acting National President is unknown to the constitution of ANLCA. All we are saying is that the whole process was flawed.
Why did it take this long for you to protest, now that election is due?
Funny enough, we wrote a letter to the Chairman of the Governing Council to say the directive is wrong. And that if he really wants to do it, he should bring both sides to it, but it was ignored. What we were seeing was a threat on how the CRFFN will deal with trouble makers.
But the industry believes that ANLCA has come to reconcile.
It is the industry’s belief. Who are the industry? Who are the stakeholders? If I am not part of the industry or part of the stakeholders, so be it.
So what do you want to be done?
I have said it all. As far as holding a position in ANLCA is concerned, I am not given to being boastful. Maybe my record in ANLCA has not been looked into. No one has been a Chapter Secretary, Vice Chairman, Chairman, Zonal Chairman and then a National President. I am yet to know those who have achieved that. So what else? What I am looking for is that there must be sanity and decency. For too long have we operated a country where anything goes and it has almost become our natural way of life.
How do you want this current issue to be resolved?
It is by going about it in the right way. The right way is by involving all the parties involved.
Do you feel betrayed by the actions of the leaders of your faction?
No, nobody betrayed anybody. The people were hoodwinked. They were called for a private meeting with delegates from the other side. They were called into a room where the other party had already arranged their members for the so-called AGM downstairs. They kept on negotiating because they wanted them (Mustapha faction) to listen to them. They agreed to sharing formula and the next thing was that they were asked to go and show their faces. That is how they were hoodwinked.
Those gentlemen were adults, not kids.
Adults can be misled or cajoled. There is power of intimidation. If they call the attention of someone that he has gone through something fraudulently. That is intimidation. We believed that they were cajoled
What is the way forward?
The way forward is simple. They should involve both parties equally and at the same time. It is a simple thing. We should not forget what has been done because we want to have peace. Maybe people were afraid to talk, but as a past President nobody can ever associate me with cowardice. Whatever that will be resolved should involve both parties and if there was sincerity it would work.
If you don’t have your way now, what happens?
We don’t have any way. I can assure you that people on my side are not interested in having our way. Nigeria is known for impunity. I have a right to say I don’t agree. I am not threatening that I will go to court. I am only giving you the options that are available to anybody who is dissatisfied. There could also be an option of having a parallel body if need be. These are the possibilities. At the end of the day, it will mean that everybody has wasted his time on something that could have been done and done well. As for me, I don’t personally say this is what I want in NLCA. The only thing I want in ANLCA is as the arrowhead of the associations in freight forwarding, CRFFN should be on the part of doing things right.
How true is it that you are going to step down as a member of the BoT even if peace is restored to ANLCA?
You have to be wary of this information. There is no special thing in or against for me. If the issue of stepping down should arise in the future, definitively it is a decision that I may take without consulting anybody. This BoT was elected in 2014, ordinarily ought to have elapsed in 2020 and it didn’t elapse because of some activities and actions of individuals. In other words, back in 2011, I could recollect that the BoT was not registered but there was harmony because everybody was in tandem with what was going on. The question is why we wouldn’t they start from where the problem originated from. If that never happened, nobody will begin to ask for a legal interpretation of when his tenure starts.
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