Founder of the National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF), Dr. Boniface Aniebonam, has described comments credited to former president of the Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA), Sir Ernest Elochukwu that the Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria (CRFFN) belongs to ANLCA as inconsequential.
During the flag off of his campaign for a seat on the ANLCA Board of Trustees last Wednesday in Lagos, Elochukwu said that by virtue of the role he played as ANLCA president in the enactment of the CRFFN Act and in the dominance of the Council, it would not be out of place to say CRFFN belonged to ANLCA.
But the NAGAFF founder while speaking with SHIPS & PORTS DAILY the following day said that Elochukwu’s statement was politically motivated.
He said: “What I understood from him was that he was just playing politics because, according to him, he said that ANLCA was an association and a pressure group while CRFFN is a regulator so the difference is quite much and there is no basis for comparison. He also went further to say that the issue of ANLCA ownership of the Council has to do with the membership of ANLCA as the biggest customs agents association in Nigeria and in terms of number that the CRFFN belongs to them. But what I think from all he said is that it is all about politics, there are things politicians say to get people’s votes because he couldn’t mean to say something like that when people like us are still alive.”
Aniebonam further said that if any association should claim ownership of CRFFN, it should be NAGAFF.
“If you look at the licenses issued by the Nigeria Customs Service I would not want to believe it is more than two thousand licenses not minding those that are operational or not. The membership of the Council is about 4000, corporate bodies about 400 and associations about 5, so looking at NAGAFF as a freight forwarding association with emphasis on individual membership in terms of number if there is anybody to claim ownership of CRFFN, if there is any need of that, it should have been NAGAFF in terms of number,” the NAGAFF founder stated.
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