The Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria (CRFFN) has said that it is not yielding to the demands of freight forwarders that it's governing council elections should be carried out on consensus, basis whereby the 15 positions available in the Council is shared among the five registered freight forwarding associations.
Registrar of CRFFN, Sir Mike Jukwe however told Shipping Position Daily at the weekend in Lagos that the election which was earlier scheduled to hold in Abuja on 29th of June has now been shifted to the CRFFN secretariat in Lagos.
The CRFFN apparently bowed to pressure from the associations who have argued that owing to security concerns, it is not safe to gather 10,000 freight forwarders in a single location for the elections in Abuja.
Jukwe however told our correspondent that screening of candidates for the elections would end last Friday and that the CRFFN will also allow for questions, queries and protests before the final list of eligible contestants and voters would be displayed.
The registered associations had recently appealed to the Registrar Sir Mike Jukwe and suggested that the five registered associations should be allocated slots base on their membership and strength.
On this, the Registrar told Shipping Position Daily that: “There is no provision for sharing of positions in the CRFFN Act; the Act specifically stipulates that practitioner to be in the governing council must be elected”.
Four out of the five freight forwarding associations registered by the Council recently had held a meeting at NAGAFF Village and issued a communiqué, saying that the decision was taken in view of the envisaged logistics, crowd control, feeding, accommodation and security challenges that would be faced if the CRFFN insisted on holding the elections in Abuja.
The meeting was attended by the National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF), Association of Registered Freight Forwarders Nigeria (AREFFN), the National Council of Managing Directors of Licensed Customs Agents (NCMDLCA), National Association of Air Freight Forwarders and Consolidators (NAFFAC)
A communiqué signed by representatives of the four associations noted that the sharing formula was to be based on the numerical strength and spread of the associations as follows: NAGAFF 6 slots, ANLCA 6 slots, AREFFN 1, NAFFAC 1 and NCMDLC 1.
The agreement that was signed by leaders of the four associations also said that: “As a follow-up to this resolution it was also agreed that instead of the full rigour of elections, the candidates of each association should be chosen by consensus by each association and should then be the members of the Governing Council of the Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria (CRFFN)”
On the strength of the agreement, our correspondent confirmed last week that, all the associations had already penciled down the names of their nominees.
It was confirmed that even though it was not at the meeting, the Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA) had agreed and had also unofficially nominated six of its members, which included a former president, a member of the board of trustees and two serving national executives, among others.
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