DR BONIFACE OKECHUKWU ANIEBONAM

Dr Boniface Aniebonam first came into limelight in the late 1990s when he became chairman of customs agents’ relations committee of the Apapa chapter of association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA) under the then- chairmanship of Onyebuchi Katsina Uzor. He was to be elevated; albeit with the same position at the national level of ANLCA by the then- national president, Alhaji Sani Kamba.
Things were rosy between ANLCA, Kamba and Dr Aniebonam until he jumped ship in 2000 to float the now- popular National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders, owing to what he would later justify as the need to liberate freight forwarders from the claws of an ANLCA which should ordinarily only be concerned with the affairs of licensed customs agents.
Dr Aniebonam is loved and probably hated by many (albeit not in equal proportion). He sure has many admirers than loathers, but one thing that this newspaper has come to notice is his determination to empower his followers.
As at year 2000, when he conceived NAGAFF from his one- room office at the old NPA commercial building in Apapa, not many gave him or the pet project called NAGAFF the faintest chance of survival, but today, the idea has turned  him into an institution (of sort) in the nation’s maritime sector and in the freight forwarding profession.
Dr Aniebonam‘s NAGAFF gave the Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents enough reasons to buckle up. Were it not for NAGAFF and the challenges it gave, ANLCA would probably have been a dead association by now.
No matter who wants to take the credit, Dr Aniebonam’s NAGAFF took  the battle for the formation of the Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding to heart; providing intellectual and logistics backing at the National Assembly.
Dr Aniebonam’s NAGAFF acquired the now famous NAGAFF village and made it a rallying and meeting point for different stakeholders in the maritime industry.  The NAGAFF village is always a beehive of activities; always home to dozens of young freight forwarders.
When he first dropped the hint that he was calling it quit with freight forwarding association politics, it was perceived as too unprecedented to be true; especially in an industry where practitioners graduate to become patrons and godfathers, where no one retires, where 70 year olds still engage upcoming practitioners in the ‘good, the bad and the uglies’ of the industry.
Dr Boniface Okechukwu Aniebonam vacated the office of the national president unprecedentedly and against all expectations about four years ago to assume the office of chairman, board of trustees of NAGAFF.
Without any prompting, he has again promised to relinquish that office come March 31, 2010 and we can only wish him well and recommend his approach to leadership to Nigerians and indeed members of the nation’s shipping community.
It is shameful that gerontology is the in-thing in Nigeria, nay the maritime sector.  If the older ones don’t exit, how easy will it be for the younger one to mount the saddle of leadership?
The emerging leadership of NAGAFF should be conscious and also appreciate the enormity of the responsibilities which the exit of Dr Aniebonam will foist on them and prove sceptics who may have expressed justifiable fears about the continued sustenance of the association after the exit of the man who has symbolised the association for 10 years.