The crisis currently rocking the board and member of the Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA) assumed a different dimension following the claim by a member of the association’s Board of Trustees (BoT); Chief Peter Obih that the immediate past President of the association, Prince Olayiwola Shittu is the mastermind of the leadership crisis currently rocking the board.
Peter Obi also claimed that Igbos from the eastern part of the country constitute 95 percent of clearing agents, freight forwarding and importers, hence they deserve to be given control of more chapters from the existing nine chapters of ANLCA in western zone.
Speaking with journalists in Lagos yesterday, Obih blamed Shittu for allegedly stopping the power sharing formula and agreement within the association on how the chapters executive positions should be shared among the ethnic groups, mainly Yoruba and Igbo.
While reacting to allegations that Yorubas and westerners were not given opportunity to contest and lead the associations at eastern chapters of the association, Obi said that there are Yorubas and westerners in the eastern zone, but that they do not show interest to contest for any elective position.
Tracing the crisis in the BoT, Peter Obih alleged that the genesis of the crisis was when Shittu had subjected the BoT to a compulsory election and purchasing of forms at the rate of N500,000 per candidate.
He said that Shittu at that point allowed money bags and people who do not to merit to be on the board to hijack the ANLCA BoT.
Shipping Position Daily recalls that the BOT elections were conducted in 2013 in Warri, Delta State.
Peter Obih said that after the board elections, the President ought to have approached the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) to register the names of the new board members, but it has not been done up till date. He said there supposed to have been a new certificate showing the new members.
He alleged that Alhaji Taiwo Mustapha, the newly elected board chairman bought his way into ANLCA and that prior to the election, he was not known in ANLCA. According to him, Henry Njoku deserves to be allowed to run his second term as Chairman of the BoT, adding that he is only one recognized by law.
"I am suspecting that the past president of this association knows what is happening, rumor has it that he is the one engineering the crisis because the person he was fronting did not win"
"The way things are going now, the president (Tony Iju) intervened but they don't want to give him the ninety days he requested for, and the outgone president is not saying anything, so I am beginning to suspect him"
"Shittu tried in office, but this idea of perpetrating yourself in office by putting your own person there is not right"
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