Even as stakeholders are beginning to see the need to intervene in the lingering crisis that has engulfed the Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria (CRFFN), one of the dramatis personae has placed its card on the table.
The Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA) has maintained that it would not sit down to negotiate with the CRFFN until the case with the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Offences Commission (ICPC) has been dispensed with.
Even as stakeholders are beginning to see the need to intervene in the lingering crisis that has engulfed the Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria (CRFFN), one of the dramatis personae has placed its card on the table.
The Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA) has maintained that it would not sit down to negotiate with the CRFFN until the case with the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Offences Commission (ICPC) has been dispensed with.
Speaking exclusively to Shipping Position Daily yesterday, the national president of ANLCA, Prince Olayiwola Shittu insisted that as much as ANLCA is appreciative of all genuine moves to resolve the face-off, it will insist the ICPC clears the association’s leaders before any reconciliation.
Shipping Position Daily recalls that the Acting Executive Secretary, Nigerian Shippers’ Council, Mr Hassan Bello had last week appealed to ANLCA to take the initiative and work towards early resolution of the crisis. He made the appeal while he received Prince Shittu and other leaders of ANLCA who had paid him a courtesy visit at the Council’s corporate head office in Apapa, Lagos.
Similarly, the crisis in CRFFN also came up last week when the Shipping Association of Nigeria (SAN) paid the Shippers’ Council a visit. The group which was led to the meeting by its chairman, Mr Val Usifoh equally called for a resolution of the deadlock.
But, yesterday, the ANLCA president insisted that since CRFFN took ANLCA to ICPC , there can not be any discussion until the issues that were raised are sorted out.
“They reported us to ICPC , but there can not be any further discussion until the ICPC issues rae resolved , we didn’t go there, they did”, Prince Shittu stressed, even as he insisted that ANLCA had bent over backwards and offered the olive branch.
He advised that CRFFN should come down from its high horse and understand that the odds are against it in the current face-off.
In an apparent reference to the association’s stand on the controversial collection of transaction fees, the ANLCA president pointed out that, “If they (CRFFN) want to collect transaction fees, let them go to the National; Assembly to seek for a law that will allow them do it”.
He argued that the CRFFN can be allowed to collect the revenue for ANLCA, but the sharing formula must be as agreed to by the parties concerned.
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