CRISIS HITS CRFFN

Less than two months after it came back from a retreat ostensibly to strategise on how to chat a way for the Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria (CRFFN), the Council has been hit by a crisis of confidence which has split the new Council along institutional and core freight forwarding lines.

This first came to Shipping Position Weekly via an e-mail received on Wednesday and an anonymous text message the following day.

Our correspondent confirmed last week that some members of CRFFN are accusing the Council’s chairman, Mr Tony Nwabunike of incompetence and lacking clear understanding of the mandate of the two year old Council.

Another group (although outside the (CRFFN) has accused him of taking side in the recent removal of the national president of National Council of Managing Directors of Licensed Customs Agents, Mr Lucky Amiwero.

This group expressed shock that Mr Nwabunike could hurriedly support the removal of Amiwero, they also alleged that he was part of the conspiracy that led to the removal and the subsequent remand of  the former president of Council of Managing Directors.

According to them, “Mr Nwabunike has no right to endorse the removal of the president of an association, except he has a vested interest or he is a part of the conspiracy”.

The rallying point for this is a foremost license customs agent who is very sympathetic of the travails of Mr Amiwero.  

Although, those behind the campaign from within the CRFFN pleaded anonymity for now, they nevertheless vowed to unearth what they have crystallised as the offences of Nwabunike.

Spokesperson for the insider- group who is also a frontline freight forwarder specifically alleged that Nwabunike runs the Council as a agency of the federal government preferring to address himself as executive chairman with police security detail.

The unknown group has succeeded in garnering support from institutional representatives and has threatened to catalogue the alleged offences of Mr Nwabunike at the next meeting.

Statutorily, the CRFFN is supposed to have about 40 members made up of practising freight forwarders, government appointees from agencies and academic institutions as well as relevant non government organisations. 

Attempts to confirm the depth of the looming crisis yielded little results as no member of the Council was willing to deny or confirm the development.

But when contacted, the CRFFN chairman, told Shipping Position Weekly that  nothing was impossible and that he was been falsely accused of masterminding Lucky Amiwero’s case.

“Lucky Amiwero’s case is not hidden, everyone knows where his problems started from, I am just been fingered wrongly, probably be cause of my position when it happened”, he explained.  

On the allegation that he is running the CRFFN wrongly and that he is incompetent, Nwabunike told our correspondent that these are handiwork of his detractors.  “You should no that from day one some of them have not been happy that I am the chairman”, he stressed with  a promise to dig into the development.