Contrary to rumours that he was one of those who sought for the extension of the tenure of the immediate past governing council of the Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria (CRFFN), the National President of the Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA); Prince Olayiwola Shittu has exonerated himself from the move to extend the tenure of the governing council.
Contrary to rumours that he was one of those who sought for the extension of the tenure of the immediate past governing council of the Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria (CRFFN), the National President of the Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA); Prince Olayiwola Shittu has exonerated himself from the move to extend the tenure of the governing council.
The ANLCA president told Shipping Position Daily exclusively for the first time after crises of confidence rocked the CRFFN, that it was a deliberate attempt to tarnish his reputation.
He said he had contributed his quota to the CRFFN as a member of the governing council, and that the Council is standing on a faulty foundation that must be corrected before it can move forward.
“They are being mischievous, I kept quiet for long because I thought people who are supposed to know the truth would, but how wrong I was”, he said, even as he maintained that the tenure of the former council expired on August 14, 2012.
He disclosed that the meeting of August 27, 2012 had no prior agenda, even as he opened up on what transpired at the last meeting of the governing council where the decision to extend the tenure of the governing council was taken, he stated that; the first agenda that was brought up was about the money that the CRFFN wanted to start collecting.
He also confirmed that he had to truncate the desire of CRFFN to solely collect and share the transaction fees, because according to him, what CRFFN did was tantamount to become the sole beneficiary of an idea that didn’t emanate from the Council.
“The second agenda was about tenure elongation, chief Peter Obih got up to say since the Council does not have money now, we need an extension of one year in order to conduct the election, I cannot sit down in that Council and keep quiet, I now said that if the council does not have money, it should not take the council more than 90 days to conduct elections and that people outside will understand, and that in the meantime it means that our tenure would have expired and we will use the 90 days to conduct the elections, that was my contribution”.
He added that another member of the council suggest six months tenure, and maintained that “tenure elongation was one year and six months, the time to conduct election was 90 days, that was my contribution, and then they voted, I abstained , because I was neither one year nor six months”.
He also told our correspondent last Friday that it totally erroneous that Customs license is not needed in the port by freight forwarders to operate.
According to him,” you need Customs license to transact business with Customs, NPA and other regulatory agencies, and the terminal operators, who do shipping companies and terminal operators relate with; they are companies that have customs licenses, will shipping companies release to you if you are not licensed “.
He lamented that the CRFFN is not helping matters at all.
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