This may not go down well with other member associations of the Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria (CRFFN) but immediate past president of the Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA), Sir Ernest Elochukwu, has said that CRFFN belongs to ANLCA.
Elochukwu said this yesterday during the flag off of his campaign for the forthcoming ANLCA Board of Trustees (BoT) election scheduled to hold February 13, 2014.
The former ANLCA boss based his claim on the role he claimed to have played as ANLCA president in the enactment of the CRFFN Act and in the dominance of the Council by members of the association.
He said: “It was ANLCA under my presidency that fought for the enactment of the CRFFN Act. During the election into the first Council we made sure that as many ANLCA members as possible got elected because there was provision for eight elected members. Not only that, during the appointment of the six non-elected members for the six geopolitical zones, I used my position as national president to influence the appointment of ANLCA members. So the first governing council headed by Tony Iju Nwabunike had not only him as Chairman and some of us as elected then but five other ANLCA members as appointed governing council members. The import of this is that CRFFN is owned by ANLCA.”
“I want to say this emphatically for those who are being made to think that ANLCA is a different body from CRFFN. ANLCA has not less than 95 percent membership of this industry and CRFFN is for this industry so where 95 percent should be involved are they not the owners?” he further stated.
Elochukwu however lamented that despite his efforts, ANLCA’s dominance of CRFFN has not resulted in the betterment of the freight forwarding industry which he blamed on selfish interests.
The ex-ANLCA president said that he will however continue to be of service to ANLCA which is reason for his interest in contesting for membership of the association’s highest advisory body.
To inferences that he should be content with the opportunities he had to serve the association in various capacities, Elochukwu reacted thus:
“I have seen it all in the association so the question will be what does he want again? Let’s look at it from the Nigerian perspective of the turn by turn syndrome where people believe that when you just have your turn the next thing is to leave off because you have had your turn. And so if we go by turn by turn syndrome it will be like there is nothing for me to do here again.
“But we should be able to be tapping on the experience of those that have served because they have the benefit of hindsight. There are things that are seen in better perspective now than when they were there and so I don’t see anything wrong in people who have served coming to serve in another capacity. The society, the industry, the association will be better for it.”
Copyright Ships & Ports Ltd. Permission to use quotations from this article is granted subject to appropriate credit given to www.shipsandports.com.ng as the source.