It is always a delight to have an encounter with Dr Boniface Aniebonam, whom can be described as the enfant terrible of the maritime sector especially when issues like freight forwarding and port operations are concerned. He spoke to maritime reporters at the press centre of the Maritime Reporters Association of Nigeria last week. We serve you details of what transpired in the encounter which was indeed uncensored.
The Council for the regulation of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria is drifting, why is this so?
The leadership of the Council is now nearer to the NAGAFF high command and that is why we now see traces of improvement that you are getting now. We have the key, it’s our idea and we know how it is going to work and so we have started making inputs, it’s not by arrogance or by making noise, we had the dream, but unfortunately the election went the way it went and we cannot destroy a baby that we gave birth to and that is why you see that we kept quiet. Already we are having a very good relationship with the leadership of the council; we are beginning to open up and giving some tips on how to go about the full operation of the council and a lot is beginning to happen. So, I will not want to agree with the word that it has been docile, it is not docile because it is not so easy to take off when an organization is new, a lot of things have to be put in place and I believe they are doing that especially the help they are getting from the honourable minister of transport and Captain Adamu Biu of the Nigerian Shippers’ Council. We will not border so much about the council for now because they are steadily moving and I believe that very soon some of these things will manifest. I will however move further to say that there are things that we really need to be careful with, I am talking about the CRFFN law itself, Article 19 of that law needs to be strengthened, I am talking about the licensing regulation of the Nigeria Customs Service so that it does not continue to be in conflict with the provisions of the CRFFN Act. The concept of the Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria was specifically to address the issue of professionalism through capacity building and training and some measure of independence just like any other professional body. I hope that the expected amendment to the Custom law will look at the section 153 and 154 of that CEMA and possibly delete it completely.
The way you talked about the CRFFN and made reference to the position of both the transport minister and the executive secretary of the Shippers Council further strengthens the impression of some people that the council is being run like a government agency?
The transport ministry is there in the law to midwife it and give it direction; maybe for the first three years. There is no Act that does not have government’s presence and also don’t forget that our business is tied to the gateway.
The Council’s office is at the ministry of transport and that may presuppose that it is leaning too much on the government…..
It can never and it will never. I have told you that in the law itself, there is provision for the transport ministry to midwife the Council through the office of the executive secretary of the Shippers Council. They are not particularly interested in that, what they needed was to kick-start us and we will get sailing. It is a favour that they are doing to us and we must appreciate that.
Can you sincerely say that NAGAFF is not involved in the crises that engulfed the National Council of Managing Director and the controversial removal of Mr Lucky Amiwero as the presidnet?
NAGAFF is not involved. You can never mention Dr Aniebonam or mention NAGAFF in criminality. If I am involved in any criminal activity, remove NAGAFF from there; NAGAFF can sue or be sued.
Is spite of all that happened to him, Mr Lucky Amiwero still parades himself as the president of the association, how comfort table are you with that?
You can take the authority of Lucky from the Nigerian constitution; he is at liberty to make an expression, again there is no pronouncement from the court to say that Lucky has been removed because the court has a force of coercion. But, what we are saying is that the founding members of the national council came together and took a stand that 13 years of leadership by one person over an organization is detrimental to Nigerian constitution and it is even detrimental to the constitution of the Council of Managing Directors itself and we cannot continue this way. One would have thought that Lucky Amiwero should be civilized enough, I led NAGAFF for six years and I went out, so why is Lucky there for 13 years? You cannot continue with illegality and we have no reason to support illegality. As far as we are concerned as practitioners, Lucky is out and out for good. What we should all be doing for him now is to render prayers so that he doesn’t go to jail because right now he is being prosecuted by the police for criminality on a four- count charge: stealing, abduction, assault, obstruction of lawful duties, they are all criminal charges brought against him by the police; before a court.
Lucky is our brother, he is our friend and colleague, he should be told to follow the part of peace, he should go and apologize to the police because he hasn’t got what it takes to fight an institution.
Let us take Lucky now as a friend and a brother, if for any reason he heard that Aniebonam, Kelly, Tony Iju and so on were behind the scene, he has my phone number, I have his and he has every other person’s number, did he ever pick up his phone to call and ask what is going on? He kept parading himself as leader and they have now passed a vote of no confidence on him, what is the different between the removal of Lucky and Alhaji Sani Kamba (a former president of ANLCA? He is just making noise, but he is gone and gone for good, what we are even talking now is for him not to go to jail because he is fighting an establishment, blackmailing an establishment like the Nigerian police? They provided you with security and genuine advice, even when you went to Zone 2, they created a platform and we all made statements and exhibited evidences including pictorials as at 1996, we saw the master list of the founding members and my name as number 82 on the list, I was in the same professional group with Lucky Amiwero when we started the Council of managing directors , the police saw all these and asked him ‘do you know about this’ he said what he is having now is a new council, Kelly now exhibited the registration form which the Corporate Affairs Commission gave where his (Kelly) name, Akide, Lucky and (Raufu) Ladipo were submitted to Lucky with passport to take to CAC, but he disappeared and went ahead to register the council in his name, somebody must be the board of trustee member but that does not make you the owner of the council. What we need to do now is to advice him to soft pedal from that high horse which is very shallow and empty, talk to us so that we will help him address these boys, so that they will quietly ease him out, do a ceremony for him and pull him out and then we will join him to go and appeal to the police so that they will withdraw the case from the court.
What is your take on port concession and other issues that are associated with port operations?
We can look at the idea of concessioning the port and the intentions of government; the government intended to achieve productivity and an efficient port that is competitive in terms of the cost of doing business and the injection of the technical know how in terms of equipment and cargo handling facilities. I would rather say that I had hoped that the government would listen more when people make genuine contributions, but be that as it may the general assessment is that the port has been concessioned, there is progress being made, but the cost of doing business is still very high and that seems to affect whatever we are doing because when the cost is too high, it will lead to other issues like Nigeria- bound cargo. However there is something that is worrying us in NAGAFF village now which is the number of missing containers now with the security implications. A lot of containers are missing on transit when they are being transferred and this is not good for the economy in terms of revenue, the worrisome aspect of it is the security implications, but I do know that this has been highlighted at the appropriate quarters and I know that some of the government operatives have swung into action, I am also aware that we have established contact with the Comptroller General of Customs in that regard and something meaningful is being done because it is wrong for somebody to import into the country and at the end of the day, he can’t find his container anymore. But the area we must be very strong now is that of security implication, you can see what happened in Apapa recently and the number of ammunitions found there, so these is another aspect of concession that I think we need to focus on.
As a freight forwarder, are you not worried that eastern ports are not enjoying as much a[patronage as Lagos ports?
I wouldn’t want to be dragged into whether eastern ports is viable or not, I am a business man, those operators in the eastern ports do not provide goods for me to clear and I have a limit as to how I can advice them to have cargo. NAGAFF is an organized body of freight forwarders and if those that operates in the eastern ports wants cargo to come there they should approach us, it s basically business, if they need our services then they will have to talk to us. This matter came up at the Shippers Council and I told them that you can’t drag somebody into an issue you don’t know, we are to direct the importers who are our clients where they should direct their cargo to, that is the essence of concessioning. If the eastern ports operators want to be in business, then they need to talk to us so that we can begin to talk to our clients to go there. We will let them know the conditions, now that amnesty is working; some of the fears are wearying off.
What do you think about the rampant allegations of smuggling; especially coming from the Importers Association of Nigeria?
Smuggling in customs parlance is any attempt which you make to invade customs duty or importation of prohibited items, which is why I have said severally that smuggling is ongoing at the seaports, airports, approved border stations and un-approved routes. So when we use the word smuggling is when somebody conceals, makes false declaration, or when you under value, over invoice, then it is smuggling because the intention is to invade customs duty. In the process of doing that, you may import goods that are under prohibition list, what we are trying to tell the whole world is that the Nigerian border is so large and that is why goods are coming through unapproved routes, that is what we take to the public because somebody wants to defend his inability to do his job, that’s a matter that has to do with the conscience of the stakeholders as to their own knowledge of the law, to fight smuggling is about us respecting the regulations. Our grouse is with agents of the government who are under oath; that is why I replied earlier that I am a business man and a business man will always be thinking of anyway he can smuggle and evade duty, if there is any way, then I can go ahead because that’s why I went to do business, but government knows that we are going to behave this way and that explains the presence of the customs, police and so on. But for them now to turn around and connive with us to cheat the same government that they are under oath to serve and respect under the Nigerian constitution, then something is wrong, which then means that they are disloyal and therefore the government machineries must focus on its agents to protect the interest of the government. The naked truth is that if you think you can start shouting about us, you are just wasting your time. If the agents of the government can put a standard on what you must do, these things will reduce. For example: one of the biggest problems in our ports is lack of standard procedures in the terms of rules of engagement, that’s the way I look at it.
What is your reaction to the allegation of certificate forgery that is levelled against the CG of Customs?
My answer to this is no issue at all because if it is, the government would have come in. But let me use this opportunity to say that I am not a lawyer, but I believe that when a matter is in court a lawyer should have known that we do not make comments on the pages of newspapers. I will also make a remark that people like late Gani Fawehinmi, Olisa Agbakoba, Femi Falana, and Mike Oshekome are all activists, let us look at their practice and compare it with our brother Festus Keyamo. The matter is before the court and it is more civilized for us to allow the court to go into that matter, on the other hand if our brother is complaining that he is getting no response, he should have known that Mr. President is not the chief officer in a matter that has to do with criminality, it is the inspector general of police. So at the time he was writing to the president we can see that somebody is playing to the gallery. If the idea is to remove Dikko I think it’s not important, but I will also use this opportunity to tell you that I was in court when the matter came up and I discovered that Festus Keyamo was not even a party to the suit, he was not even the lawyer to the so called Ibrahim. From my vantage position I think its no issue at all.
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