We publish the concluding part of the two-part interaction with the National President of ANLCA; Prince Olayiwola Shittu. We apologise for the few editing errors that were noticed in the first part that was published last Monday, and we also thank all those who sent their reactions on account of the interview
Why did you fallout with CRFFN?
We publish the concluding part of the two-part interaction with the National President of ANLCA; Prince Olayiwola Shittu. We apologise for the few editing errors that were noticed in the first part that was published last Monday, and we also thank all those who sent their reactions on account of the interview
Why did you fallout with CRFFN?
I did not fallout with CRFFN, the truth is that CRFFN is a baby after our heart, so we don’t have an alternative, but let me tell you that the former leaders of this association committed an omission and the omission is that they never thought about the future of ANLCA. And that is why you see that government never care that we contribute to revenue generation for this country and it is now that they are beginning to think about it. But then, the smaller associations can be louder in terms of noise than the one that is really working. If ANLCA had been chartered long before now, it wouldn’t have been included in CRFFN, because CRFFN is for freight forwarders and freight forwarding is primarily for export and Nigeria does not export except crude oil. Freight forwarders are more in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore; these are the emerging economies, freight forwarder are also there in America separately from customs brokers that is why when you go on the internet you see ‘select customs brokers and freight forwarders’ .By the book I have here which is a memorandum of understanding between FIATA and World Customs Brokers Organization and why do you need the MOU, it is simply means that they are two separate organizations that wants to work together and that was why we felt that CRFFN have ANLCA and NAGAFF. Thus what CRFFN should have done is to build around these two organizations to help them stabilize and have two sectors ready in place, then anybody that wants to come in must have to identify with either of the two in the areas of specialization. If an association comes later, we will say that we cater for licensed customs agent, which means under customs brokers there are two associations and under freight forwarders may be ,there will two or more associations and with that it will not have rebounded to what it is now because the council cannot talk to the individuals, because the individuals are waiting for what the association will say. I remember when CRFFN was tied down about how to do registration, it took ANLCA to use whatever it has to make sure it survived, so I did not fallout with CRFFN, but I fallout with the policies that were being executed, because they are for selfish reasons and that was the reason I fell out with individuals and not CRFFN, because I am a member of CRFFN,I duly registered, I have my certificate, I have not been deregistered and nobody can deregister me as long as I meet the demand of CRFFN. The fact that I resigned as a member of the governing council does not mean I am not a member of CRFFN, because that is the only law we have for now and if tomorrow that Act is amended and customs brokers are allowed to stay on their own, will I have to go back to CRFFN? But, I can tell you today that the industry was worst before CRFFN came in.
Is CRFFN a failure?
It is a failure because the policies are not well thought-out. Anybody can sit down in Kaura Namonda or in Oshogbo, you go on the internet, you pay money and they say you are a freight forwarder and now they are asking us to go to the office to collect identity cards which means once I have freight forwarders I.D. Card; irrespective of questionable background I may have, irrespective of the fact that I don’t have a company that will make me go to the port, I can still go to the port because I have CRFFN I.D card. I can tell you that there has been no background check and no verification of the people and all the companies registered that have been registered today, these are things I know because I was a member of the governing council and it has never been done. What is obtained abroad is also obtainable in Nigeria; that is the fact customs brokers don’t have to be in the port to operate; you sit down in your office and do your documentation online, you must have an office. One of our members cried to me and said with a penalty of N1.5 million a lot of people will go to jail, but it is stated that if you knowingly falsify, they are giving you N1.5million as penalty, in Nigeria people are crying when in America people are paying $50,000 fine plus 3 years in jail for the same offence. Why is it that people don’t want to be professional, does it mean that the type of job we should do is falsification in order to make money? Then, if that is the case that is why we have crowds coming in to the port make easy money.
Some people have accused you of taking side with the Nigeria Customs Service to pull down CRFFN?
That is wrong and I will tell you that it is the same people managing CRFFN, like I told you they wanted to take advantage of the platform that they were elected into the Council to substitute it for the association .Let me reveal to you maybe you have not heard it before, there was a plan by the council to cancel the names of all associations and force all of us to come under one platform to be supervised by the Council, have you ever seen that kind of thing before? Even the Nigeria constitution allows freedom of association and that is why we don’t worry ourselves about these mushroom associations, because it is their people that said that NAGAFF and ANLCA want to clean out their names, their idea was to form a body which all of us will belong to. When that one did not work because we vehemently said no, I was not mandated to do away with the name of ANLCA .However they now brought in people who are not also qualified to be there. If anybody is telling you that I went ahead to parley with the customs, what does customs have to do with CRFFN? For four years customs was exempted from the board of the Council, when the chairman then said that with the presence of the CRRFN, customs will no longer give license to anybody to work, is there anywhere in the world where customs brokers are not licensed by customs? Let me tell how relevant the CG of customs is that people are saying they want to fight an institution. In the customs law of America, it states that the secretary of the treasury shall delegate all functions to the C.G of customs and what does that mean? It is not discretional, and people are crying about CEMA, that C.G wants to take over the job of the President, they are just calling a dog a bad name and what is my responsibility with that of the Customs .If CRFFN has been focused doing their job, before customs will renew or issue license they will say where is the approval that you have registered with CRFFN, but when you say that customs is no longer relevant is there any institution that you will challenge that will cooperate? The only meeting ever held by the council with the whole management of customs was facilitated by me and we requested for a follow up wherein the council will have a team to interface with the customs, so that they will know what is being done and then the head of CRFFN will have personal relationship with the head of customs, but nobody bothers because they were all thinking on how to raise money and not until recently that I was shouting here that council said that they do not have money and I told them that they have more than N200Million outside, is it not then that they decided to publish and call people to come and renew .The council has never sat down to articulate what they want to do ,the amount we want to spend and so on, what they do is to report to us after they have done what they want . I have been keeping quiet to allow some of the things to go, but people have been trying to rubbish my name. I have never dreamt of becoming the chairman of the council because being the president of ANLCA to me is much more relevant to the industry; to give direction to the people, train them to the professional level and let them work with the Nigeria Customs Service, so if anybody in the council continues to shoot his mouth and address the press that CRFFN cannot perform, am I responsible for that? Well, if you ask me I am not?
The governing council has been dissolved by the minister of transport, so what is the way forward?
I have also advocated that as soon as possible they should have election and the idea is that everybody should be represented in the council. In fact I have been telling our members to get ready to participate in that election because that is what we have now and if tomorrow the National Assembly enacts the law establishing Customs brokers, then we will come back home and face our own professional body to see what we can do about it, but for now what we have is the CRFFN and that is why some of us continue to cry that the council is not being run properly .It is faulty for you assume what you do not know. When Tony Iju took us to the ministry, only some foot note in the CRFFN Act shows our relationship with the minister of transport, but Tony took us there because he has a vehicle assigned to him with green plate number.
(, thus they are seeing that position which I believe is wrong because they are only relevant when they are in the meeting of the council and it is only the registrar that they give on tiny car that nearly had an accident they were riding Prado because they have seen another platform ,that they got it wrong and it is became a matter of shame that when the minister of transport is having a function and you the chairman of the council want to go there and sit down on the high table is ignored as if he is in the same level with NPA or NIMASA .In the ministry that you say you belong nobody is assign a vehicle except certain category and the road to CRFFN there is no official of the association because the act state that you are a member of the council does not confer on you employment of the federal government which automatically means you are a private person. Does it mean as a without been a member of that council or a leader of that council you cannot do be what you are going to be so we already have different perception and I am not saying that they should buy my own view because I stayed in that council for four good years and we have done another four years so have not seen enough ?I when to the council to represent my association and I am a member of the council before I became president of the association and if by the time I will finish my tenure come next year and the people say no enough is enough let somebody else takeover thus it is when you want something to be permanent that is becomes a problem. Whatever it is we have to let that council survive and that faulty perception we have must be revisited or else discussion will continue to be in the port because some people are still claiming today that there is no need for customs license before you operate and I want them to give me an example anywhere in the world where such happening then I will join them.)
Some people have alleged that you clamoured for tenure elongation, what is your reaction to that?
They are been mischievous and this is the first time I am addressing this. Like I told you, I kept quiet for long thinking that people who are supposed to be respected are not telling lies. We were supposed to have had the governing council meeting by August before the tenure would have ended and I still believe that the tenure was suppose to expire in August, then they said they did not have money. Nobody knew the agenda of that meeting, so what happened was that the first issue they discussed was the issue of money for the council. Let them go and bring the recorded tape and play it for you journalists ,so that you will know who is saying the truth because CRFFN records all meetings, so the first agenda they brought was ,the money that they wanted to start collecting, this the collection of money that was initiated by me and we now brought in NAGAFF and you remember we had a town hall meeting when we convinced all the freight forwarders to please contribute for the survival for our industry and we all agreed on N1000 and N2000 and it was we that mooted it to the leadership of the council – that if the council collects this money on our behalf ,council will get and the associations will run and we will remain where we are. How will you invite a man to come and eat with you and then the person bites your hand behind your back, I mean you will use your legs to kick the plate!
Was that what you did?
Of course, let me tell you there was no way it would have happened, because there plan was to stifle the associations and make them irrelevant. And then I started hearing argument about the monies involved; who to share what, that we should write to the government for subvention at the end of the year and I looked at the same council that call for subvention from government only twice before it stopped. So, automatically the same thing can play out because I have an organization to run and I cannot ask our members to contribute this money for every job I do ,including the one I do and there people in the council incidentally who cannot do what I am doing ,we collect this money and share and we find out that it is not government money, which made me to understand that something was going on and can you imagine as the president of ANLCA nobody put me into confidence on what the agenda will be .
On the issue of tenure elongation…
Yes, the second agenda was about tenure elongation ,Chief Peter Obih got up to say that since the council does not have money now, we need an extension of one year in order to conduct the election, I can n ot 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. Another member of the council suggested for 6 months tenure and maintained that tenure elongation was one year and six month ,the time to conduct elections was 90 days that was my contribution and then they voted ,I abstained because I was neither one year nor six months, I am not a foolish person and I believe I have the experience about life than to play to the gallery and when they said six month, I filed it as what I am going to report because there is nowhere in the Act that says you should increase tenure and even in doing that, the Freight Forwarders Consultative Forum would have been the one to propose it.
Why did you resign?
I resigned because the tenure has expired and everything they were doing was based on illegality and I was convinced and when I mentioned it to our people at the National Executive Council meeting they told me that I should think twice, however it is in the CRFFN Act for one to resign if he feels so and if I didn’t resign then, there must be something that I am looking out for.
On the issue of Transaction Fees, names have been called, some figures have been mentioned what is your reaction to that?
The only time transaction fee was ever mentioned was when we used it at the Joint Freight Forwarders meeting that we had which can be referred to as JACOFF which we all are members and it was this same council people that felt that the Joint Action Committee of Freight Forwarders [JACOFF] was too powerful and they did all they could to make sure that we withdraw, thus we were persuaded and I listen to the leadership of the council that if JACOFF continues with the way it was going then it will rubbish the idea of the council and I told our colleagues ,however JACOFF during its existence was bankrolled by ANLCA through me .No body or no association donated one Naira, so we said in ANLCA that how can we continue to carry this people along and they are not contributing to JACOFF; no matter the percentage and I can tell you that one of the mushroom associations when I told them that let us share responsibilities according to the size and that ANLCA is ready to do 60% then they should share the remaining among other association, but the guy said no that it must be equal because when something come out of it ,it will be equal to all and he did not contribute a dime. So when that transaction fee was muted and I told him that it was my idea that if we start collecting money in the port, people will say that they do not belong to us, that it is better for us to have sanity, in order to assist the council to make sure that it is sanitized. My focus is on who is accusing people of embezzling over N200Billion because we need to find out what he contributed and we are not afraid of ICPC, because only a member of ANLCA can write petition against it, same goes for NAGAFF.But when you talk about accountability ANLCA is more accountable. And that part of the money the collect at the port, some of these agitators were beneficiary, every Friday they give them money and those who give them are still alive. Even when they became president; I am using Frank Ukor as an example, after all even in the election that we are conducting in ANLCA, Frank Ukor’s company is there, he applied. What people do not know is that ANLCA is not a one-man association. The only thing that we get from the chapters is the stipends we get through the chairman to run the secretariat and I can tell you that it is below N2million a month and I spend my personal money to help the association, all the presidents of ANLCA till date spend their money from their pocket because the president of ANLCA is enviable and that is the envy they are seeing. What I am saying is that envy is part of it because we have focus and direction and the records are there for people to see and unknown to them ,we just audited all our chapters for these elections in the western zones, that of the eastern zones have been audited, so audit reports are there and we will give it to ICPC.
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