It is fact that he has brought a lot of integrity and drive to the Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria (CRFFN) since his election as the chairman of the governing board. As an avowed believer in training of freight forwarders, Alhaji Hakeem Olanrewaju also stays that his tenure will witness significant attention in this regards. In this interview, he opens up on certain contentious issues. Enjoy it.
Now that the CRFFN is a full- fledged member of FIATA, how did your recent meeting with FIATA go?
It is fact that he has brought a lot of integrity and drive to the Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria (CRFFN) since his election as the chairman of the governing board. As an avowed believer in training of freight forwarders, Alhaji Hakeem Olanrewaju also stays that his tenure will witness significant attention in this regards. In this interview, he opens up on certain contentious issues. Enjoy it.
Now that the CRFFN is a full- fledged member of FIATA, how did your recent meeting with FIATA go?
We thank God, the meeting that we went for at FIATA was called the headquarter session, and it is where every association president in the whole world usually gather to deliberate on issues concerning their countries. Of course, this is the first time that we are attending this meeting because we had just been admitted, so we were allowed to come and give our country report; especially as regards the situation in our country, how far have you been able to tackle it and where do you want FIATA to come in and assist; because this is why they are the international umbrella of freight forwarding. To answer your question, the meeting was very fruitful, after the reading of the country report which I gave, afterwards there were questions from the floor and adequate answers were provided. Our attendance was also very useful because we were introduced to the chairman of the training committee on freight forwarding and the chairman for the foundation in other to discuss how Nigerian freight forwarders can be trained. We also held series of meetings privately with the president of FIATA as well as chairmen of other groups, they were so happy that we have registered more than 4,000 members, we also explained to them the process we used to verify them, and that we still have more to be registered. Were it not for the elections in the country right now, they would have sent their team to come and see what is on ground, but they have promised to come in May, the chairman of the training committee will be coming to meet with stakeholders to see the facilities that we have. They normally train 28 people on a train-the-trainer course, but on my request they have added two more to make it 30 because we have a large number of freight forwarders, and as they have explained to us at the meetings, there are 14 subjects. As they have assured us, they are coming by May and probably by June or July after we must have met the people that are coming to train us for the train-the-trainer exercise, the training starts by July and it will last for three weeks, after this the training proper will now commence for all the freight forwarders. At least, this is a big achievement for the council within a short time, what we have achieved within these two months with FIATA takes some countries up to a year or two to get it, so we are fast-tracking the whole process and FIATA is giving us the concession looking at the number of freight forwarders that we have, because we are the highest in the whole world according to their record, even Ghana has just about 250, but with the figure that we gave them we are the leading in Africa so they had to give us the concession and they want to make sure that we benefit from the FIATA training programme. FIATA always issue higher and lower diploma certificates at the end of the programme, each one takes a year to get, and if you have the higher diploma you can be admitted into any university in the world to do your masters, FIATA certificate of freight forwarding is recognized everywhere in the world. Currently there is no university in Nigeria that is teaching freight forwarding as a course, but in the FIATA modus they have 14 subjects, even after the train –the- trainer course, they will conduct examination for them from time to time, they will certify them that they are okay and then they will be sending training materials to them. When the school starts, they will be coming to see how the students are doing, at the end of the day they will still be the one to come and conduct the exams. So I think there is a lot of benefit that CRFFN and Nigerian freight forwarders will get from FIATA. .
What plans does the Council have for 2011?
For 2011, this is where we will start from because we have been looking forward to the FIATA headquarter session because we know that it will energize our programmes. I have been a member of FIATA for almost ten years now and I know that we have missed a lot, I also wanted to be trained by FIATA, but they said that if your country is not admitted it is not possible, just like the one we will have in Nigeria now if you are not a Nigerian you can not participate in the training, I cannot go to Ghana Institute of Freight Forwarding and say I want to get a certificate there, it is meant for the indigene of that country, so the only benefit we got from FIATA is that we did some networking, we got books from there that we read on our own to gain knowledge, you gain the knowledge but you can not write any examination or collect any certificate and this was affecting those of us who were FIATA members at that time, but thank God that we are admitted into FIATA now and fortunately everybody can be trained in this process, so our projection for 2011 is to organise the training and let our people have a knowledge of what they are doing, we will also sanitize the port and ensure that it is more friendly. Customs have been there for over a 100 years and you can see what is happening in the custom service today, with the leadership they have today, they are all being trained, anybody who want to be a comptroller now must be a graduate and this is increasing the revenue requirement from the government because they are spending government money to train themselves and they are paying back to the government and so their revenue collection is going up. For us too in the freight forwarding industry we have to follow suit so that at the end of the day, we can have a better working environment and a better knowledge of the job.
Recently, the Council registered only one association and gave other six months within which to meet the requirements, what happens after six months?
I have told them that when I take my decisions I do not look back, my yes is yes and my no remains no, six months is a long time, they know the requirements and conditions that they are to meet, it’s not that there will review it downwards and by the end of the six months, the registration committee will revisit their issue, they will visit their secretariat to see what they have on ground and pass the report to the council, the council will now decide the next step to be taken on them and we will move forward. So for now the council has taken its position and it is either you meet the requirements or forget about it because we can not continue to do things the old way.
The committees that you promised at the inauguration of your governing council, what is the latest about them?
We have released the names and most of them have got their letters, in a few weeks time the minister will inaugurate the consultative forum which is the major body that will contain all major stakeholders. They are to talk about the standardization of freight forwarders, to look into the problems, to recommend and advice the council on the way forward as well as what the council should be looking up to. It will be like an advisory body to give the council direction. It makes our own job easier. We still have other committees like the monitoring and compliance committee, we have the disciplinary committee, we have about 12 other committees that are on day to day activity to checkmate registered freight forwarders , we have research, education and training committee, transport committee and many others.
What is your council doing about the issue of the new CEMA?
Immediately we heard about it we sent a circular to all the associations’ headquarters and called for a meeting because this is the time that we have to speak with one voice as freight forwarders and we had a meeting last week and in that meeting, all the presidents of the associations were present. I constituted a committee among them with our own lawyer and their own lawyers, my vice chairman is heading that committee, they are to sit down and look into the issues one after the other, ask questions, look for where amendment is needed after which they will bring it to the larger house for deliberations so that after this we will send our own standings as freight forwarders. As I speak with you now, the committee members are somewhere brainstorming.
Do you foresee CEMA as a threat to CRFFN?
The council is designed for regulation and other functions, most of the languages that they used to draft the proposed new CEMA are borrowed from our Act and we can not have two regulators, custom will do its part and we will play our part, but there must not be conflict and this is why the committee is meeting to see where there is contradiction and other things. There are many contradictions between the draft of the CEMA; most of the things in our Act are replicated there, but I don’t think this is a threat to us because we are all working towards the same goal, we are all Nigerians and we are working for the progress of the country and to make sure that the federal government meets its target and that there is no loopholes and no revenue loss, and also to make the port a friendly place for everybody.
What do you have to say about the allegation that the Council of mismanaged N250 million?
We have a problem in this country and that is why we are talking about knowledge and training, government can not just give you N250million and you just go and squander it. When the council was inaugurated, the government said: start up with this money, the money has a purpose; it is government money which must be accounted for. And at the end of the day, there is the office of the auditor general and you have to retire the money and explain how you spent the money, if you tell Government that you want to use the money to buy ‘A’, you must not use it to buy ‘B’. Many of those who are alleging have not worked in the government before and so they don’t know how government is run, they just believe that government has given you money, so you can spend the money any how. You cannot just spend government money anyhow because they will come and inspect what you used it for, the auditor general is there and every year you have to retire what is given to you, and if for two years, you have failed they will write to the EFCC. We always tell people what we have done so far, getting to the stage where we are today is not my money, and that is why you see the council has achieved a lot because the government has supported us a lot, right now we have four offices; Port Harcourt, Kano, Abuja and Lagos which are very functional with staff, we have operational vehicles and other things running, even now the money we are even talking about is not enough to achieve what we want to achieve, we should be talking of billions in other to get to where we want, now we are talking of education. It is through money that customs got to where they are today, when the Comptroller General just assumed office, people were criticizing him of travelling around the world, but now we are seeing the results, he has gone there and seen it and he started sending his officers, and if the government has spent N100million or N200million for him to go for all the travelling, training and so on government, is making billions of Naira today as a result of that investment, and all the efforts are yielding results, did anybody criticize him again today again? Because you don’t even know whether he is in the country or he is not in the country, but the job is going on fine and they are improving everyday. You need to first of all understand what we are doing, if we had sat down doing nothing, we would not have registered 4000 people as freight forwarders, to achieve these, we spent a lot of money on adverts in the papers and so on, all these things are not free, somebody can not just sit down somewhere I think he can run us down because he desires to be there, all of us cannot be there, we can only have one president in Nigeria, we have multiple parties now and they are all campaigning, imagine if tomorrow one party should now rise up and be asking of the budget for last year and how the president spent it. Most of these people are still thinking backwards, most of us in the council are sacrificing our money, even when we started nothing was given to us, it was after six months that the money was given to us, the council has been inaugurated then, we have been having meetings and moving because we were sacrificing and we wanted the council to grow.
Why do you think the one stop shop in Apapa is not working?
I have said it many times that the only time anything can work in the port is when you involve the stakeholders who are really concerned, there is an adage that says you can’t not shave a man’s hair in his absence, that is why in the CRFFN now we have the compliance and enforcement team to checkmate these things. The truth is that freight forwarders must do the right thing, it is because people are not being prosecuted that we have the tribunal, it is in the Act already and any moment from now, they will be inaugurated, by the time we have this committee we will know that this is a profession and you cannot just come in to mess up. What you asked about the one stop shop, I asked somebody what the failure is all about and they told me that by the time of examination, it is not all the agencies that come out, but if somebody is checking them it won’t be so. What we did during the port decongestion committee which made it to succeed was that freight forwarders were involved. They wrote to the council and over 200 freight forwarders were used, other governments agencies also participated, the EFCC, the custom and so on were paid, we were the only ones that they did not pay. We made it to work because our boys were always on ground and they were giving us the reports on what was happening which we were passing to the committee immediately. It worked because we had a time for examination of which everybody must be there and release at the same time, the custom knew our contribution during this period, I thought it will be same now with the one- stop thing which is a very good idea but because corruption is everywhere, everybody believes they can do anything they want, we are the ones that will check our selves now, if you were not at the examination, somebody will take records that you were not there, everything has time and we can not wait for anybody. Like I told, you we have our own compliance and enforcement unit because most of the problems always come back to the freight forwarders, this unit is to campaign for our people to do the right thing, when you do the right thing, the customs are there to carry out their jobs, they are revenue collectors, if you pay your normal duty and they open your container, do necessary examination then you will go, it is not everybody that usually have problems in the port, for example, the multinationals don’t have that problem, their goods do not stay more than three days in the ports, you only find problems on goods that are not properly declared. So, why don’t you do the right thing and reduce the tension in the ports. So the advice that I will give the Area Controller is that he should carry the freight forwarders along, we have to sit down together because we know where the shoe pinches.
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