Chairman, Monitoring, Compliance and Enforcement Committee of the Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria (CRFFN) Mr. Timothy Awogbemi has been conferred with the prestigious fellowship award of the Nigerian Institute of Management (NIM)
Awogbemi received the award at the 2019 Awards, Fellowship and Spouses Day Luncheon of the NIM which held last week in Lagos.
While speaking with journalists after receiving the awards, he described it as the highest honor in the Nigerian Institute of Management which he claimed to have been looking forward to in a very long time.
According to him, "For you to be awarded as a fellow, you must be hardworking, you must be contributing towards the development of the Institute and towards the development of the community, this means you have to take social responsibility very important. I feel honored and I am very happy"
"I joined the Institute as an associate in 1986, and in 2002 I became a full member, and today, I am a fellow of the Institute. It is roll call of who is who in Nigeria, you don't just wake up one day and become a fellow, I will work hard with other fellows to see that else move the country forward and we move Lagos State forward".
While speaking on the recent ban on importation of foods and dairy items from accessing foreign exchange by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Awogbemi who is also a member of the National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF) commended President Muhammadu Buhari for placing the ban, saying that this would lead to food sufficiency in Nigeria.
"What the president is trying to do is to encourage the local farmers, it is not a total ban, what it means is that you cannot access FOREX but you can still import if you want to"
"The federal government wants to encourage the local farmers and I think this is good"
"We cannot wait until we have food sufficiency before policies are put in place, this policy will encourage the farmers and encourage more people to go into farming, and this is the only way we can be self sufficient in food" he said
On the closure of the land borders by the government, Awogbemi said the move could be justified as it has to do with national security.
"I quite agree with you that the border is a major point of entry but then, nobody should joke with security, because if anything happens, we would not be talking of whether it is a major point of entry or not"
"It is only when you are safe that you can begin to worry if the economy is good or not or that you want to go and do business, if the closure is of security interest, then it is okay", he said
