VERIFICATION BROOHAHA:

CRFFN: CWCFFN Is Illegal, Ignore Verification, Lose Your Membership
CWCFFN: We Will Not Go For Registration

The raging face-off between the Council for Regulation of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria (CRFFN) and the Central Working Committee of Freight Forwarders (CWCFFN) over physical verification of claims by prospective members of the Council remained unresolved even up till the weekend.

But speaking for the first time since the CWCFFN started mobilising against the verification exercise, registrar of CRFFN, Sir Mike Jukwe assured that the verification exercise will commence in Lagos on Monday, August 2, 2010, but he disclosed that the venue has been shifted to Apapa in deference to genuine complaints that the initial venue at the Trade Fair complex on the Mile 2- Badagry expressway is too far.     

He also described the CWCFFN as an illegal body that the CRFFN can not take seriously or have any dealing with, even as he affirmed that the exercise would go on as scheduled and advised that any freight forwarder who is interested in continuing as a professional should come forward for the exercise. 

“We are going ahead with the verification, and whoever is interested should take advantage of the exercise and come forward with the documents”, the CRFFN registrar advised. He also added that the exercise has already commenced in Kano, Abuja and Port Harcourt.

According to him, it is only those who have skeletons in their cupboards and touts who are masquerading as freight forwarders that are afraid of the verification exercise.
 
He also declared that the CWCFFN is an illegal body that the CRFFN can not deal with. “How can we be answering a body that has no place in the CRFFN Act, no we can not do that, as far as we are concerned, there is no group called Central Working Committee of Freight Forwarders of Nigeria, we can not deal with them”, he stressed.

But all through last week, the CWCFFN was busy campaigning for a boycott of the verification exercise. It also sent a petition to the minister of transport, Alhaji Yusuf Suleiman that the verification exercise will deny a lot of freight forwarders their right of association.

“The present notice the council has put out to verify those they have provisionally registered is to say the least , shameful and points to the fact that they are merely acting the script to scuttle the genuine aspirations of freight forwarders”, the CWCFFN said in the eight-page letter.

The group also disagree with the CRFFN’s directive that the freight forwarders should swear to an affidavit only at the Federal High Court to depose to the fact that they have never being convicted by a court of law.
“These are manifest of impediments that might deny so many freight forwarders the opportunity of registration. It is a deliberate act to deny freight forwarders their rights”.

But, reacting to the letter, the CRFFN registrar said it is accountable to the minister and that he has already been briefed about the verification and that there is no objection to it. “We have briefed the minister appropriately, and I am happy to inform you that we have his approval to go ahead”, he told our correspondent last weekend.