Dr. Frank Ukor is the President of the Association of Registered Freight Forwarders of Nigeria (AREFFN), since his association was accredited last year by the Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria (CRFFN) this is the second time he will be speaking with our correspondent Dapo Olawuni. In this interaction, Dr. Ukoh spoke on sundry pressing issues which are currently affecting the freight forwarding section of the maritime industry.
How will you appraise the freight forwarding sector for year 2012?
The year 2012 has its merits and demerits, there are some incidents that happened which were for the good of everybody, there were others that were not so good for all of us. Transaction fees, was a well intended thing that would have benefited everybody but the politics that was brought into it disturbed the whole thing. One of the area that was very good was the induction of freight forwarders at the early part of the year, it was a very good development, and you know I am very emotional with anything that concerns the CRFFN because I know that this is the body that will professionalize our industry and every other person that is involved in the practice, we are very emotional about it and that is why we give it our total support. Other areas that were good in 2012 was the aspect of CRFFN training, even though people complained about the cost, if you put the cost aside, the training is a very good thing. So far so good, the accreditation of our association is also a very good development, we were happy about it, you know all the struggles we went through and the efforts we put into it before we actually got it done. These were the good things that I can say about the year, the only bad one that I will look from the negative side is the position that was taken by few associations about the transaction fee, it was a development that could have helped freight forwarders. Generally, I will say the industry had a successful year 2012.
I want you to shed more light on the petition you wrote to the CRFFN which led to the ICPC intervention
I was also invited by the ICPC, the idea is that we have people that have been collecting money; practicing fee and that money is not accounted for, and that is why you see many of them anytime election is coming up, they are ready to kill themselves because of the money that is coming in, they know that the money is not being accounted for, this is why ANLCA and NAGAFF have sworn that no other associations can come in so that only two of them can be sharing the money. So, my reasoning was that if that is what they think, then let us call them to give account of all these money, by the time they start giving account of it, a lot of people will not take it so strong to get into positions because at the end of the day when government gives you money you must give an account of the money, so it won’t be a case of collecting whatever you like and nobody ask you anything, we want to bring sanity into this industry so we wrote to the CRFFN and requested that they look into this issue and let us know what is happening to all these money that have been collected. Let me give you an example, in November 2011 we had a meeting at Villa Park Hotel where all of us sat down and agreed to collect practicing fees under JACOFF, whatever is collected will now be shared to the various associations so that they can use it to run their affairs, but at the end of all the meetings, nothing happened, these people collected the money and shared it among themselves, they did not give NAFAC, they did not give Council of Managing Directors, they only gave the one under Lucky Amiwero, despite the fact that I am a leader of one of the associations, they will collect money from me with force, using bouncers to intimidate me, they even wanted to beat me up on one of the occasions when I said that I will not pay because when they collect the money they don’t give me from it, it took the intervention of the customs for me to pay the money, how long shall we continue to behave like people who don’t have any sense of accountability, we want sanity in this issue and that is why we wrote to the CRFFN for them to look into the issue.
Is this money collected at all the ports?
It’s being collected at all the ports; they are collecting at all the airports and they collecting at source, they are collecting at Port Harcourt, my coordinator from Port Harcourt wrote me that they are collecting money from their members, when they protested, the collectors insisted that they must pay, when they are giving a debit note, they write it alongside and from there they collect it, at the end of the day it is ANLCA and NAGAFF that share the money. They are also collecting at Seme and they are giving us a small thing, when they are suppose to give us 10% they give us 3%, they are collecting at the airport and they are not giving us, when I sent my executives at the airport, the chairman threatened to throw pure water at me, he said that is it because I knew him that I am sending people to him, and that if not that he knew me he would throw pure water at me, they are also collecting at Tin Can port, the one at Apapa is well organized, they know how to organize and deduct it from source, so they are collecting this money at most of the ports and they pretend as if they are not collecting anything. They have so much money, so much money is coming in and they are pocketing the money and we are suffering here, I am using my personal funds to run the association, chairman of the board will bring money from his pocket, the vice chairman brings, our members also bring, meanwhile the industry is generating money and few people are pocketing the money. If it was AREFFN that had seen one per cent of what these people have collected, we would have built a permanent structure as our secretariat.
How are you certain that the matter will not be swept under the carpets?
Well, we will leave everything to their conscience, or are we going to fight? We have brought the matter to the authorities so let them investigate it, but at least, even if they do not investigate it properly or they cut corners, the person that has been investigated will begin to tread carefully, he will not want to do all these things he used to do, so the idea is accountability, you give account of whatever you do. Also, this will probably also send signals to these people that fly containers, the last time we heard that 35 containers went missing from the port, it is still happening but very soon it will stop, maybe when they hear that the practicing fee collection is being investigated people will be very careful to fly containers because at any point in time they could be called upon to give account of that thing which they thought nobody knew.
When was this petition written to the CRFFN?
The letter went before the last governing council was dissolved by the Minister of transport.
Do you think the Registrar of CRFFN is right by engaging in exchange of words with some stakeholders?
He is trading words with them probably because of the way they were talking to him, he is a human being, he has his rights and he has his fundamental human rights, if you abuse him he has every right to abuse you, why would they abusive him? Because most of the words we heard were abusive, so the man has every right to retaliate or response to their comments.
What is your stand on the proposed CEMA Bill?
The law is not favorable to Nigerians because there are some aspects of the law that are very oppressive, if implemented it will put a lot of us into problems, and this is why some freight forwarders are not comfortable with the law, especially, there is an area that looks as if the customs does not want customs agents again, they want to have their own brokers whom they will be using, this area is not very good. Another area that is not very good is the area of customs not recognizing the CRFFN, whatever policy the CRFFN comes up with, the customs can say they don’t recognize it, a government agency cannot be fighting another government agency. So, if the law comes in, there won’t be licensed customs agents again. But on the part of its benefits to the Nigeria customs, the law will give the custom so much power, if they want to begin to implement it, a lot of us will be in problem because then you cannot talk to a custom officer anyhow or else they will arrest you.
What is your impression of the suspension of the PAAR?
The Nigeria Customs came up with this thinking in order to replace the RAR, but it has not been worked out, we just heard about it that they have brought out the formula, it has not been introduced yet, it was just mentioned since they were planning to take over destination inspection, I don’t think the formula has gone through the Central Bank yet, so they need to work it out first and understand it and let the people that will make use of it understand it before they can introduce it, if not so, it will bring a lot of problems for us. So I believe this was why it has been suspended for six months so that it could be studied very well. As result of this, the time of the destination inspection service has been extended by six months.
In 2013, what are your expectations from the maritime industry?
We expect things to work fine in this year; the CRFFN is doing a lot in trying to professionalize the industry so that there will be a lot of respect for practitioners.
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