Mr Emenike Nwokeoji is the National President of the Association of Nigeria Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA). In this interview, he opens up on the challenges of restoring the association, after a protracted crisis.
There were allegations that the last emergency NEC meeting of the association was marred by a walk-out by some members. Can you clarify this?
Personally, I can say that I’m not press-friendly, but not that I’m an enemy of the press. But I think some development has made it possible that I need to speak to you. Last week, a lot of things filtered around a story where somebody; one of us granted an interview claiming that there was a walk-out at the emergency NEC meeting and it trended. In as much as I do not want you to believe that the issues that we have been having in ANLCA are totally over. When I mean over, I mean you cannot win somebody in an election and expect that the person will clap for you for whatever you do. Even in contemporary politics, you are still the same. So, it’s natural. The good thing about an association like ANLCA is that no matter the challenge that comes our way, God has a way of resolving it for us.
When I was vice president, even at our second term election and in fact, even when I was the chairman in Onne, after my first election, when it was my re-election, it was ‘war’.
But when that report came, I started wondering, I know two journalists were in that meeting. I don’t know whether they noticed the walk-out. Even after the meeting we stayed behind. I don’t know maybe because of our system, and the rule of law that grinds slowly. Because of that, people take advantage of it and say, yes, we can do anything and you can meet us in court. So having said that, I needed to clarify the outcomes of that emergency NEC meeting.
What were the decisions reached at the NEC meeting?
One of the decisions we had from the NEC meeting was the approval to open up a portal for renewal of membership. Before now, people have been shouting and accusing us for not being eager to conduct ASECO election as agreed in the Customs Consultative Council Peace committee. The reason being that, is that there was not what we can call authentic membership register. You know there were factions before now. One faction was registering both members and non-existing members. The other faction was doing that in order to beef up the voters list. So, there’s no way we can use that. We came-in in September. The year was just coming to an end. Apart from that, finance was an issue. But when we noticed that if we continue to wait for finance, that it might take longer. Then we decided that we need to do this. We need to do away with it and conduct this election and that happens to be early in the year. Early in the year, members are still going to look for money to renew their licenses and there’s no way we can conduct the election in 2024 using 2023 licenses. So, we agreed to wait while we search for money for members, because there is a window left for every member to renew their license every year by the Nigeria Customs Service. That window closes on March 31st. Any license not renewed will no longer do business with the Customs Service. But you can always renew any other time. But until you do that renewal, the licenses are logged out. So, we said, let’s wait for the end of that March 31st and use that window to enable as many as possible of our members to renew their licenses. That is what brought us here. We also know about the holidays that have been coming one after the other before we fix that emergency NEC. The good news is that people are responding. Because wherever you are in the country or outside the country, you can always open that portal, fill the form on your phone online, make payment online, download the receipts, attach it to that form and submit. As it hits the system here, the system automatically generates the receipts, which is forwarded through the details in that form. So, it’s seamless. People are responding.
What is the next step as regards reconstituting the ASECO?
After we have been gone through with the ASECO, we gave a tag that by the 30th of this month of May, we look at the number of licenses that are registered and we use whatever number we have to conduct it. But it’s still subject to if there’s reactions from members, because we know finances are not easy to come by now. The NECOM would look at it and know how to go about it. The next one is ASECO. You people remember when the chairman of ASECO resigned and a lot of stories followed it. Now we reconstituted the ASECO, another story followed it. Because of the process we are in to ensure that we move along with everybody, we decided to look at the outcry of the members and see how we can do some adjustment on the membership of ASECO. This because the first list released dropped some members of the ASECO. The NEC meeting agreed that those members, about three of them should be brought back. Then ASECO will roll out their programme for the first job they intend doing, which is the BoT election. The third issue that the NEC gave approval was that you know in so many of the chapters in the West here, we have two factional leaders; one chairman this way, one chairman that way. Eight months after election we said we can no longer continue to maintain such a thing. Moreover, their tenure has expired. So, we went to NEC and got the approval to appoint administrators to administer those chapters for not more than 90 days within which the elections in those chapters will be conducted. Not more than 90 days, within that period the proper election will take place.
There are crises currently at the Airport Chapter. What are you doing to resolve this?
Before we came on board, in our handover note we received two judgments at the Airport chapter. There were a lot of litigations going on and the first thing the NECOM did was to gather elders considering that the three gladiators, pardon my words, are all Yorubas. We gathered the Yoruba leaders mainly from that chapter. We challenged them to look into the matter and determine how come that this matter had been protracted for so long. Stating what we should do that will lead to a resolution and end the disagreements that has lasted for over five years. When they came up with their report, the NECOM was yet to meet to study the report then we got another report that one of them came with the Police, arrested the chairman and took him to Zone 2. When we got that report, we now studied the first report by the elders and then said now that the matter has gone to this level, we need to do something. We set up a committee comprising two lawyers to look into the matter. But like how decisions are always taken, the outcry of some people came that one of the lawyers is an interested party because he represented one of the gladiators in the court in one of the cases. So, we had to meet again and drop that lawyer. We appointed a former chairman at the airport to join the team. They met severally and invited all the three contestants. They all obliged them. They all testified before them and they came up with a report and that report was read in the emergency NEC we had the last time after which it was adopted and the NEC agreed that: One, based on the report that was received, we revisited the matter because the report exposed some hidden facts in the judgements that the matter all this while has been lingering because past administrations did not really obey court orders or they ignored directives from the court including judgements. That was why the problem lingered. So, by the approval of the NEC, we now decided to at least implement or execute the last judgement. If you go through that judgement which I can avail you, it went on to rubbish the earlier one.
What did the Judgment say?
One of the things it said is that if the Excos had obeyed a court order stopping them from conducting the election, the matter or the issue of one man protesting against each other shouldn’t have arisen at all. But because they ignored the court order and went ahead to conduct that election, that was why the issue now got compounded. But unfortunately, after the inauguration, we wrote letters to all the security agencies, notifying them about the change in leadership at the Airport. This NEC meeting took place on a Friday. We were surprised that on Sunday afternoon I got a phone call from a Policeman at the Secretariat with a letter. I asked what the letter is about and he said the letter is about invitation to the station. I asked him which station and he told me Airport. I said okay he should hand the letter over to the security men there. So, we got that invitation. On Monday, because we are law abiding Nigerians and citizens, I asked some people to go and represent the NECOM since I was in Port Harcourt and they attended that meeting. But all we discovered was that the past Chairman (Adewusi) ran to the police to make a complaint that he is being removed unjustly. But we reached the Police to tell them we observed that the new Exco has been sworn in at the Airport chapter. But unfortunately, in concert with some of our people that always benefit from crisis in ANLCA, I would call them professional troublemakers. They have been reaping from trouble in ANLCA. Whenever ANLCA is in peace, their body will be itchy, because they always want crisis. They are not even from the chapter. That is the irony. That’s why I say they are professional troublemakers. They are non-registered and do not operate in that chapter at all. So, the former chairman, rather than handing over to the new executive, decided to ignore the decision; by inviting the Police to help to keep him in power. That is purely reprehensible and a serious affront to the entire association, particularly to the office of the National President and NECOM. That gross insubordination cannot be allowed to stand. The good thing about all of us that are leaders and even members is that we all swore to uphold the constitution of this association. What NECOM has just done is to implement or to execute a valid Court judgment and if somebody is not satisfied with what we have done, the person is still at liberty to write, because we have the internal mechanism to sort out any issue. But resorting to the Police to protect you to remain in an office is something that I don’t know how that idea came to the head of the former chairman.
What are your recommendations?
Like I said, our constitution is sacrosanct and is clear on actions that will be taken against such insubordination. I want to use this medium to appeal to our members. Even last night you can see I’ve lost my voice again. I know what it took us to stop our members from reacting after yesterday. I want to appeal to our members to remain calm. NECOM is really handling this because we were voted in under the mantra of ‘Restoration’. We can’t come to start destroying what we have vowed to restore. I know some people are doing this just to provoke us so that if we react, then they will see what they can lay hold on. If somebody that attended the meeting had informed me directly that he might not stay until the end of this meeting, which would be a good thing. At least he attended and can leave at any time and not to say that the meeting was a walk-out. That will tell you the extent people can go just to cause trouble.
