Oluyinka Onigbinde
Despite the expiration of the two-week ultimatum given by the Minister of Transportation; Mr Rotimi Amaechi, to conclude plans for the election of the Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria (CRFFN), there is yet no indication that the elections will hold any time soon.
Apprehensive freight forwarders have stated that there is still no headway, even as they have lamented the difficulty being faced by them to update their annual subscription on the CRFFN portal due to the alleged collapse of the SW Global platform, the technical partners of CRFFN.
They informed that without updating their annual subscription on the platform, interested freight forwarders will not be eligible to vote or be voted for.
Their anxiety is predicated on the fact that the CRFFN had in a notification sighted by our correspondent insisted that only practitioners who are financially up-to-date will be eligible to vote in the coming Governing Council elections.
Speaking to our correspondent last week, the President African Professional Freight Forwarders and Logistics of Nigeria (APFFLON), Otunba Frank Ogunojemite lamented that SW Global with their action is working against plans to conduct the governing council election, stating that it has been difficult for freight forwarders to update their annual subscription on the CRFFN portal.
Ogunojemite alleged that the portal has been having issues for over two weeks and can cause disenfranchisement of qualified freight forwarders from the coming council election.
The APFFLON boss said that under the CRFFN, there are two types of membership which are staff membership and executive membership,
He said the annual subscription of the staff membership is N10,000 while that of Executive is N20,000, and added that those on the staff membership list were wrongly converted to executive membership. He also alleged that despite efforts to correct the error, it has proved abortive as SW Global portal has been down for weeks without any information.
“What I’m saying is SW Global who is a partner for CRFFN has been having issues with their portal for over two weeks now and this issue has not allowed anyone to upgrade their subscription, so that will disenfranchise them to vote and be voted for. It is as if SW Global is sabotaging the Transport Minister’s effort to reform the council” he said.
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Speaking also, a former President of the National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF) Dr. Increase Uche, said that they await the ministry to make guidelines as to how the election will hold.
He stated that the issue of freight forwarding associations dividing the slot of the council has been jettisoned, he said all candidates going to the election are independent candidates
“We are waiting for the ministry to make a publication, they are the ones to guide us, there is no association issues here, everybody is independent, so the issue of association is no more there, we want to promote professionalism in the council, the Minister has decided to take that line. We need to reposition the council for optimality, election has nothing to do with any other association, the issue of 6-6-1-1-1 is no longer there we are all independent contestants”, he said.
All efforts to get the reaction of the registrar of CRFFN, Barr Sam Nwakohu proved abortive as calls and text messages sent to his known telephone number were not responded to, as at the time of filling in this report.
However, an IT officer at the CRFFN denied that the Council’s portal has collapsed. According to him, the portal is working well and fine without any hitches.
To confirm his claim, he opened the portal for our correspondent to see and also carried out some activities on the portal.
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