Dr. Frank Ukor, President of Association of Registered Freight Forwarders of Nigeria (AREFFN). He also recently added the title of Publicity Secretary of the newly-formed Concerned Accredited Freight Forwarders Association (CAFFA).
He spoke with Shipping Position Daily's Dapo Olawuni on issues surrounding the controversial collection of practitioner fees.
Dr. Frank Ukor, President of Association of Registered Freight Forwarders of Nigeria (AREFFN). He also recently added the title of Publicity Secretary of the newly-formed Concerned Accredited Freight Forwarders Association (CAFFA).
He spoke with Shipping Position Daily's Dapo Olawuni on issues surrounding the controversial collection of practitioner fees.
"Many people that are doing the big jobs are not even members of any association, but ANLCA will claim they are their members"…Dr Frank Ukor
Should CRFFN be talking of collecting fees when the board is not in place?
The board was in place when this issue of transaction fees started, and it was the agreement of the board to start the collection, the only thing that happened that time was that, ANLCA was the problem they had, and because of their opposition, they were playing somebody's script. ANLCA represented by their president was acting somebody's script and the collection did not materialize.
Whose script was ANLCA acting at that time?
The script of the Nigeria Customs Service, of course, the Nigerian customs wrote a letter to the minister of transport, meanwhile the customs is under the ministry of finance and all things being equal they don't have any right to write to the minister of transport, their letter should have been routed through the minister of finance, and I am sure if this was done, the minister of finance would not have sent it to the transport minister because it was not necessary, you will also agree with me that the letter would not have been acted upon without some motives or without some incentives, and eventually the transaction fee was suspended because they said it will add to the cost of doing business in Nigeria. But of course we know that it will not add to any cost because the money is going to be paid from the profit made by the practitioners or anyone that clears the goods. To make it easy for all of us, when the board was in place, the Council had worked out a template for the collection and giving every freight forwarder a soft landing, if you clear a 20-foot container the importer will pay you N125,000 and out of this you are to pay just N1000 as practitioner’s fees, and if you clear a 40-foot container ,you will be paid N250,000, it is already a law, the arrangements have been concluded, if I am paid N250,000 as my agency fee, what is N2000 that I cannot be able to pay as transaction fees? The arrangement was concluded, the only thing is that the minister put in on hold pending the appropriate time, the board was there while it was done. The CRFFN will not allow vacuum, and there is a provision in the Act that says the Minister of transport can give a direction on how the council will go, and all the while the board was not in place because there was no fund to organize elections, the registrar and the management team has been carrying on. But whatever they had to do they had to get clearance from the minister, when it became necessary and government says they are not going to fund any agency of the government, especially CRFFN, it became imperative that CRFFN had to get funds for capacity building, they first of all came to us the five registered freight forwarding associations and all of us agreed to start the collection of practicing fees, we signed a Memorandum of Understanding, with this, the Registrar went to the minister and he gave approval for us to start collecting the money.
We know why they want CRFFN dead; it is because they want to keep enjoying what they have been enjoying. While the transaction fees was suspended, ANLCA was still collecting money everywhere, at the airport, NAHCO and SAHCOL built it into their billing system. We wrote a letter to SAHCOL and NAHCO to keep collecting the money but they should not give it to ANLCA, they should keep it and at the appropriate time it will be given to the CRFFN. We left the money there for three months and they collected over N120Million, but surprisingly, ANLCA collected the money, pocketed it and shared it the way it wanted, they did not give the other associations a dime, this is the money they have been fighting for, it is because of this money that they are ready to kill people, I know a lot of people who have died in ANLCA who have died because they want to contest election, in order to prevent people from dying, we agreed that government should collect this money.
Is this why CAFFA suggested to the Minister that ANLCA should be deregistered?
Do you know why we made that suggestion? The reason is; how would you, a body that is regulated, want to regulate your regulator, how would you organize people to beat up staff of CRFFN? That is why we say that ANLCA is lawless, we know that government is not going to proscribe them, we don't want government to proscribe them, but they should be put in check because their own is getting too much; if you are looking for where we have rascality, lawlessness, picketing the port and shipping companies, it is all found in ANLCA.
What is the situation with the collection now?
The Registrar has said we should exercise patience and very soon we would be having a meeting with the Minister of Transport, he said that the ministry has taken over the matter and that is why we are still waiting to hear from the minister and what he will come up with. But I am sure that if nothing comes out of this, it will send out a very bad signal that will affect the industry, it will mean the death of CRFFN because no other person will have regard for the CRFFN, people will begin to act with impunity and this is not good at all, the ministry must do something about it. Collection of this money is very necessary because it will enable capacity building by CRFFN, it will also end unnecessary rivalry among freight forwarding associations.
But AREFFN, NAFFAC and Council of Managing Directors do not have members to pay this money.
If you are talking about members, I will tell you that even AREFFN has more members than ANLCA, this is because ANLCA membership is based on corporate membership, not up to 600 people registered with CRFFN are ANLCA members, the individuals attached to their licenses are freight forwarders, they are not custom brokers, they are the ones paying the money. Secondly, many people that are doing the big jobs are not even members of any association, but ANLCA will claim they are their members, majority of the people that own licenses are customs officers, they are the ones that will pay this money because they do the job and they will pay, they don't belong to any association, for example; Church Gate Group, Stallion Group, Coscharis and so on, these are big importers, they clear goods, they are the ones that will pay the money and they don't belong to any association, many of the people ANLCA is calling their members are not licensed, they are freight forwarders. There are more than 30 members of my association that ANLCA is calling her members, during elections, they come to borrow our licenses, NAGAFF, NAFFAC others also have them like that, the people that will pay the money are not ANLCA members. Government must investigate why people kill themselves in ANLCA, I was in ANLCA and I spent N7million for one election and eventually when it was time they didnt allow me to contest the election.
Do you believe that conducting elections into the CRFFN governing council will solve the problems?
Hakeem Olanrewaju excelled, he proved his mettle as a good administrator, he knows when to go left and when to go right or when to change anytime the policies are not right. He was a very good chairman, as it is currently, the money is not there to conduct this election now, the easiest way to conduct the election is for them to go to the associations and ask them to sit down elect among themselves and produce certain number of people into the board, after this the board will be inaugurated. It is within the purview of the minister, the Act empowers him to give directive. This method is cost effective and we have discussed it, all the associations looked at it, ANLCA failed to turn up, and the reason why NAGAFF will bring more people into the board is because they have more members.
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