“If CRFFN Does Not Register AREFF, No Problems, We Are Registered By The CAC, So How Can They Stop The Association From Functioning?” …..Dr Frank Ukoh (National President, AREFF)
Dr Frank Ukoh is an unusual freight forwarder. He came into the industry with a rich academic background; a PhD holder and a former school principal. His foray into freight forwarding was kindled in the 1990s following an invitation from a friend. Since then, he has responded to the pull. He is currently the national president of new – generation; Association of Registered Freight Forwarders (AREFF). In this chat with Dapo Olawuni, he speaks about AREFF, the CRFFN registration and other related issues.
As the president of AREFF, can you tell us what the membership strength of AREFF is
When we came in, the first thing we did was to start establishing branches all over the chapters, but you know, we cannot have it in all the chapters, we have a chapter in Lillypond, we have in Apapa, we have in Tin Can, we have it in KLT, Seme, Idiroko, we also have it at the Murtala Mohammed airport; though this one is not very effective, we are still trying to get somebody to build- up the membership there. So these are the places, and in the east, we have an eastern zone, the people we put at PTML are not forthcoming, it looks like they have not been doing anything, but at a proper time we are going to put in new executives at PTML.
What is the relationship between AREFF and the other associations like?
We have written to all the associations that we are going to pay them a working visit because I discover that sometimes when you go to see them they shy away, it looks as if this was the experience that NAGAFF founder had when he started the association, he had a lot of fights from the Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA) and the Council of Managing Directors, but eventually he succeeded and now NAGAFF is a force to reckon with within the maritime industry. When we came up there were lots of bickering, a lot of oppositions, but I told them that I believe in the principles of living and letting others live, the port is so wide that you and your members alone can not finish it, so why not allow others to come in, I don’t think you should be afraid, except you are not sure of your stand, the fear could be that they might probably outshine you, but for me I believe in everybody coming in and teaming up to work and make things happen in the industry to make this happen for our members in the industry and make life better for our members in the industry, and this is how it has been. So we do relate, we relate very well with NAGAFF, Council of managing directors, as well as other associations, but all the same, some of the associations that feel they are old, they don’t want to see your face, after all you were once their member and so they want to push you out by all means. One of the presidents was even talking and saying: “I will make sure that AREFF is not registered, on my dead body will AREFF be registered” and I said he has become God because it is only God that can say that this should be and this should not be, not a human being, a human being does not have that right, but if you insist, then I will put it to God that this person does not want to see us. But as far as I am concerned, I have a good relationship with all of them, except anybody thinks otherwise, but for me my hands are very clean.
Is AREFF a member of JACOFF? It was involved in the saga between Central working committee and the CRFFN.
JACOFF means Joint Action Committee of Freight Forwarders, how it came to being was when the Federal Operations Unit was disturbing so much on the road, when Shittu came into office he wrote a letter that they want to have a meeting with the customs. then, NAGAFF learnt about it and also the Council of Managing Directors (because at the time they were using NAGAFF headquarters as their office), but before I got the information that such a meeting was holding, it was late, so I got there when they had closed, it was at that meeting that ACG Saka who was the Customs zonal coordinator at Harvey road told them that they should form a committee that will work with customs to solve whatever problems that we have. So, the three of them were appointed as members; Olayiwola Shittu from ANLCA, Eugene Nweke from NAGAFF and Ejiorfor from Council of Managing Directors, they were all appointed into the committee, eventually when the minister of transport learnt of the committee, he adopted the three of them into the task force for the decongestion of the port, and that was how JACOFF started. If you look at their logo you will discover that there are three logos, while this was on, the CRFFN came on with the registration of members and then some of the conditions they gave for the registration of members were very cumbersome, we were talking about this when I went to Dr Aniebonam’s office and they told me they were forming the central working committee to address some of the shortfalls of CRFFN about the registration, and before then, immediately after our registration, I called Shittu who was the president of JACOFF, I wanted to relate with him and agree with him, but he ignored me, he said he would call me but he never called me, and I thought about it that where will I be? Will I be floating? So the best thing was to join the central working committee and that was what we did, when we joined, one of the things we did was to say that some of these conditions given for registration are too cumbersome, how can we leave our jobs here and go to trade fair complex to register, why don’t you bring it nearer to us, the CRFFN had a human face, they have ears and they listened and so they acted, that is why I say that there is no need fighting because they have granted what we wanted, but at a stage we had a problem, remember the popular saying that he who fights and runs away, leaves to fight another day. At a stage, I felt we had fought enough, so I said let us give peace a chance, if tomorrow there is need for us to fight again we can still come in, but if we allow the government to bring a hammer down on central working committee, it will not be good, so I said let us make a truce with the CRFFN but at that stage, I fell off with the central working committee because I told them that I believe in harmony, there should be harmony where we work, some of them towed my line and that was how Aniebonam came up with going to court, but I told him I don’t want to go to court with him, even though we know that what he was doing was a good thing, he wants to streamline and straighten things for the future because if this thing is not streamlined now and handled properly, tomorrow it’s going to be a problem, and that was why in a way we supported him, but we said the way he was going about it needs to changed and that was how the central working committee went back. Haven seen that the central working committee is no more there, Shittu now came up again with JACOFF because formerly we had denounced it and said we didn’t want anything to do with it, he has seen the mistakes he made and now he decided to call all the associations together, and when we went to the Villa park hotel in Festac, Lagos where we had a meeting, the five presidents of the associations were there and we took a decision on the collection of a cargo clearance due, but now it is only the three of them that are staying on the road to be collecting the fee, what they have done is to try and sideline us;( NAFAC and AREFF) that we are not important and that they are the only ones important and I say it is not true, I have the same recognition from government as you do, you could be 57 years old and I could be three years old, it does not matter, but the young shall definitely grow, look at most of our members, we are most interested in the young ones because they are the leaders of tomorrow, and so we want to bring in the young ones, train them and give them a standard, tomorrow they will be the voice of the industry.
So what is it like with AREFF and JACOFF now?
With what JACOFF is doing now, they are trying to sideline us and I am not comfortable with it, if all of us agreed on the collection of the cargo clearance due why is it that only the three of them are collecting it, and when you ask them they will say they are not aware, they have started collecting it and I have even paid it before, I had that there was a meeting they held recently where they decided to consult somebody to collect this dues for them without carrying us along, and that is why I said it is time for us to revive the central working committee, the committee is made up of the board of trustees of the various associations and not the presidents, but what they are doing now in JACOFF, it is only the presidents that are there, they are not carrying everybody along, why should it be so? It is supposed to be a joint action committee of freight forwarders and my association is one of the five associations that were registered by the council so why wouldn’t we be allowed in, he that wants equity must go with clean hands.
Is the CRFFN justified for not registering AREFF considering all the laid down requirements?
I will not say Yes or No, from the beginning, CRFFN advertised for applications from associations and they gave the conditions: you must be registered, you must have members in all the chapters and so on, they never talked about vehicles, and they never talked about having functional offices and the rest of it. So we all applied, they looked through our applications and they felt that out of those that have applied these people met the criteria and they gave us provisional accreditation, and they formed a committee to come and verify us, we expected that when they came to verify which means to look into what you said you have; maybe they are true or not, the documents we submitted are photocopies and we expected them to check it with the originals as we claimed it, but when they came it was not what they verified, they started talking about those who have chapters in the north, in the west and so on, which was not what they told us earlier, they did not tell us about functional vehicles. As a matter of fact, I was on my way home on the 24th of December when somebody called me from the office that there was a letter from the CRFFN talking about the new requirements, as far as I am concerned, the CRFFN is right, but the only place where I have my grouse is that if they had told us about all this, we would have provided them before this time, but they did not tell us, only for them to come now and say that we are not qualified and that it is only ANLCA that is qualified. All this while, it had been rumored that they want only one or two associations, but I said it is not right, look at our fingers, they are five in number, is God foolish to have made it so? And just as five associations applied, look at the five associations, they are not all equal, there are some that have very large number of members while some have low number of members, but all the same, it is keeping with nature, they will all have to move side by side, each has a function that it performs. I am not saying that the CRFFN has done wrong for not registering us, but what I am saying is that they should have told us earlier, now they have given us six months, but six months will not be enough, at the end of the day we will ask for more time, it is capital intensive to run associations especially if there is no money coming from anywhere and you are asking us to provide this and that, where would the money come from? Suppose the members don’t want to pay, what do you do? If they had given us money and asked us to provide these things and we failed, then they can sanction, if they give us N5 million now, you will see that this association is the best because we have prudent management of resources, and this was one of the wars I had with the association where I had been a member. So I said I want to build an association that is based on love, when I see you I will be compassionate to you; an association that will look into the problems of members and help them grow, if you look into our association now and the kind of people we have, they are men of timber and caliber, men of proven integrity, men who are lenient, men who can look at you straight in the face and tell you that your eyes are red and why should they be red? We have looked at the problems we have in the industry and we are addressing these problems one after the other, we don’t want to make noise, we don’t want to come and shout, what matters is your input in the industry, the Shippers’ Council is aware of this association because we are writing them regularly on what should be done to better the live of our members, do you know that there are so many billions of naira that belongs to Nigerians, but it is stacked in the shipping companies as non- refundable deposits? These are monies that should have gone back to them to better their lives but they are left with the shipping companies, we want that money to come out so that those who own the money can use them. You spend about three hours from Mile 2 to Apapa, these are some of the problems that we are trying to address, the shipping companies can have holding bays outside this place where they will off-load their empty containers and stop lining the roads with empty container trucks. Before port concession came, trailers were parked inside the port, but with the concessioning now there is no more space and they have to park along the lane which is the cause of all these traffic, just about the loss we are having, these are the problems and that is why we are thinking of resuscitating the central working committee which will be an avenue to make these demands, with this, it will have more effect because this time we are talking about the owners of these associations, the custodians of these associations, they have something at stake, not the people we voted in as presidents who have nothing at stake, most of them only go there to make money for themselves, so the CRFFN is doing its work well, the six months they gave us we will try our best to meet up the demands if we can not we will write them to give us more time.
If CRFFN refuses to grant an extension, what option will you consider; will you comply or go to court?
If we go to court, how many cases have the courts resolved? It is not about going to court, if you don’t register us today, tomorrow you will register us. I will keep on functioning, but it then means that whatever rule they make I will not pay attention to it, they cannot stop me, if they say they want to stop me from being a freight forwarder, there are other businesses in Nigeria to do, another thing is that we are registered by the CAC so how can they stop the association from functioning?
Are you satisfied with the composition of the verification committee set up by the CRFFN?
There is a Latin proverb that says that “nobody is a judge in his own case”, if you say you are verifying members, we won’t have any objections, but verifying associations is the problem, when the Nigerian Shippers’ council midwife the Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding and called on members to register, they registered only corporate members, ANLCA is for corporate members, so if you work there you must register, and that is why almost everybody in the council are members of ANLCA, except one person from NAFAC, we should live and let others live, let there be a healthy competition, if NAGAFF had not come into existence, this council will not have come into being, because it was NAGAFF that spearheaded the formation of the council, but unfortunately they were not given the chance to come into the council and I am very happy when the minister appointed Eugene Nweke who is the president of NAGAFF into the council, we are not in the council and we are not complaining because everybody can not be in the council at the same time. When they formed this committee to come and verify associations and they put only members of ANLCA what do you expect? The right thing should have been to bring in a neutral body, in the council there are some people that are not members of ANLCA, they should have got them to go and verify at least those ones would have been unbiased, because this committees already have bias in their mind about which association should be registered and which should not, as a matter of fact anybody that has interest in associations should not be present when the matter will be discussed at the council, they should get neutral people to discuss the matter because definitely if he goes there he will be biased, whatever he says will also be out of bias. This is my opinion, when it comes to verification of associations let the people who have interests stay away, and this is the only way we can have a credible council. And as for registration, I will keep working to make sure that I meet the conditions and by the grace of God, I will meet them.
And how do you intend to muster the resources to meet the demands?
I will tell my members, those who have money can bring it, I will put in my own and also tell members of the board so that all of us will contribute the money, if it is possible to get loan from the bank we will get loan, it is one of the things in our constitution, but I don’t want to put my members into a burden, things are hard and so I don’t want to add to their problems.
Are you happy with the way the CRFFN is running its affairs?
Well, for the now, Yes, I am sure the council would have gone further than it had gone if not for the litigations here and there, Lucky (Amiwero) took the council to court and because of that, it couldn’t take off on time. The freight forwarders consultative forum would have taken place also and a lot of other things that have been planned, if not for the litigations, but all the same while this is going on we should be working as an association, and that is why I am advocating strongly for the central working committee, central working committee should be revived.
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