A former National President of the Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA) Chief Ernest Elochokwu has opened up on the crisis that is rocking the association’s Board of Trustees (BoT) and which has snowballed into divisions in the association.
Elochukwu, who is also a member of the board of ANLCA told Shipping Position Daily that one of the reason the association has been battling to resolve the crisis rocking its Board of Trustee is because the association’s file was missing at the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC).
Elochukwu also accused Chief Henry Njoku, Peter Obih and Aare Sanni Shittu of writing to the CAC to remove the files of the association and put in the caveat with the intention of making it impossible for new members of the board to register as trustees after they were elected.
He however explained that it took the new members a lot time of time before they eventually registered on the 16th of January 2020, just few days to the supposed expiration to their tenure as BoT members.
“So all these years, we were battling because ANLCA files are missing and as result we can’t get registered, until when it was discovered that it was deliberately kept out of where it could be possible for us to get registered. So it took us long before we eventually got registered on the 16th day of January 2020”
“So the question is for a man who was legitimately elected by his colleagues as the chairman BoT and then he was told by the court that he couldn’t act in that position because some people have an agenda of frustrating him from acting in that capacity. Now he got registered 21 days to the expiration of that tenure, will it be fair on him to say okay, let it be whatever it is or for people like us to say, let us legitimately regard him as the chairman only for 21 days out of the six years?”
Explaining further, he said that Chief Peter Obih in his prayers to the court declared them imposters because they were not registered with CAC.
He however maintained that it is not his duty as an elected member of the BoT to get himself registered.
“It is not my duty or obligation that when I got elected into the BoT of ANLCA, that I should be the one to go and start registering myself at the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC). Now somebody among the people who now started supporting that Henry should not go down as the chairman, Chief Peter Obih in the prayer he made at the court, he asked the court to declare that even though we were elected, but because our names were not registered at the CAC as trustees; that we are imposters. And the court, after looking at it , granted the prayers to say that even the person we are saying is the newly elected chairman of the BoT is not even a trustee, by issue of his name not being registered at the CAC”
“So, to us it was a shock because like I said it is not my duty to have myself registered in the CAC, the association has machinery and that machinery should be between the then National Electoral Committee who conducted that election and the trustees that were returned certainly it is not supposed to be the duty of the newly elected board members to go and start looking for how to register. So when this shock of our being imposters came, what we did was to go and make applications to have ourselves registered even though it is not our duty” he concluded.
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