The recent open disagreement by notable members of the freight forwarding profession over the correct nomenclature for practitioners in their field and who is qualified to be a freight forwarder once again brought the sharp division to the fore.
The recent open disagreement by notable members of the freight forwarding profession over the correct nomenclature for practitioners in their field and who is qualified to be a freight forwarder once again brought the sharp division to the fore.
The quartet of Dr Boniface Aniebonam, Mr Eugene Nweke, Mr Lucky Amiwero and the immediate past chairman of the governing council of the Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria, Mr Tony Nwabunike preferred no other place than the first year anniversary of an industry television programme; Port Gist and Event to maintain a parallel stand on the main essence of their profession.
Understandably, both Dr Aniebonam and Mr Nweke (founder and incumbent president of the National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders respectively) were on the same page, while Mr Amiwero a factional president of National Council of Managing Director of Licensed Customs Agents took a different position. There position was not quite different from that of Mr Nwabunike.
The position of both Aniebonam and Nweke is that once you have anything to do with cargo, you are a freight forwarder, while that of Amiwero is that there is a clear difference between a licensed agent and a freight forwarder.
However, Nwabunike submitted that in an emerging world of professional freight forwarding practice, the nomenclature of customs agent is no longer acceptable.
Quoting some references, Nwabunike stated that a freight forwarder, "is responsible for the collection of goods and the entire documentation from export point to the final documentation. A custom broker on the other hand provides just the logistics and fills the documentations for the freight forwarder to operate"
But Amiwero maintained that, by the provisions of the Customs and Excise Management Act (CEMA), licenses are issued by the minister of finance to agents to be involved in three key areas; import, export and excise, and that if you don’t have the license, you cannot practice in the port.
Amiwero also described the freight forwarder as an ordinary transporter of goods who cannot come into the port, unless he is taken there by a licensed agent.
These sharp disagreements are some of the things that the CRFFN was created to nip in the bud, sadly, even though it is in its fifth year, the CRFFN has not been able to get the associations and the freight forwarding practitioners to see themselves from a more global perspective as players in the global logistics chain.
Authorities in the profession define a freight forwarder as “a person or company that organizes shipments for individuals or corporations to get large orders from the manufacturer or producer to market or final point of distribution.” The same source explains further that “a forwarder is not typically a carrier, but is an expert in supply chain management. In other words, a freight forwarder is a "travel agent," for the cargo industry, or a third-party (non-asset-based) logistics provider.
They also define freight forwarding as the process that guarantee “that products will get to the proper destination by an agreed upon date, and in good condition. The freight forwarding service utilizes established relationships with carriers of all kinds, from air freighters and trucking companies, to rail freighters and ocean liners. Freight forwarding services negotiate the best possible price to move the product along the most economical route by working out various bids and choosing the one that best balances speed, cost and reliability.
Going by the above definitions and explanations, one can safely conclude that majority of those who currently parade themselves as freight forwarders are at best, licensed customs agents who only scratch the surface of the freight forwarding profession.
There is also no doubt about the fact that more than 70 percent of those who have been registered as professional freight forwarders by the CRFFN are actually ‘clearing agents’ or customs broker s (according to ANLCA). The only certificate they hold is the customs license, while the only business that they know is clearing of imported consignments from the ports.
Curiously, rather than fight over the correctness of the nomenclature ‘freight forwarder’, it is our candid opinion that the CRFFN will need to do more than it is currently doing to make Nigerian licensed customs agents to step up and become freight forwarders in the correct meaning of the nomenclature.
We maintain that there are very few individual freight forwarders in Nigeria. In line with modern trends, we align with those who have been clamouring for them to be called customs brokers, because all that they do is customs clearing and not freight forwarding.
Discussion about this post