Dr. Kayode Farinto is the Vice President of the Association of Nigeria Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA), in this interview with Pearl Ngwama, he described the recent CRFFN election as normal, stressing that the new council would not be a tea affair. He said it would focus on capacity building of freight forwarders as well protecting members from the excesses of the Nigeria Customs. He raised hope that the crisis in ANLCA would very soon become a story of the past. On the state of the maritime industry he was of the view that all agencies have not lived up to expectation but failed.
Excerpts
What’s your reaction to the recent Council for Regulation of Freight Forwarders of Nigeria (CRFFN) election?
The election has come and come; it’s a normal election. We’re privileged to be one of those that won the election.
Are you satisfied with how some of the registered associations were left out?
That is a story for another day because what happened is a self-inflicted injury; some of us wrote a letter to the minister that we should not recognise the initial 6-6-1-1 agreement were associations would have been prominent. We have all seen the result ourselves, so it’s a self-inflicted injury nobody should be angry about it.
This is one thing we actually asked for, we wanted an independent candidate and we have gotten it. That’s one thing about politics, some people will win and some people will lose.
Do you think a government appointee should be the chairman of the council?
That’s a technical question. The council is for freight forwarders so if you say something is for freight forwarders then it means that the chairman should be a practicing freight forwarder.
However, do not forget that the last chairman of the council directly or indirectly is a practicing freight forwarder because this is somebody that does export but because of the section 6 of the Act that establishes the council which says that the minster shall give directive on the way forward in the council and that is why the minister is hiding under that one to say he wants to appoint the chairman.
However, the council is for freight forwarders, hence the chairman should be a freight forwarder.
What difference do you hope to bring to the council?
We’ve talked about capacity building; empowering our members and the fact that this council will not be tea party affair. The mistakes of last time were many so we’re going to correct it this time around.
We must make sure we empower our members; there’ll be capacity building and sensitisation must be more. And above all the agents must be protected. It’s unfortunate that the council has been dormant in so many areas; this is the council that supposed to protect freight forwarders but let’s see what we can do and what we change when we come on board.
Could you mention some of the ways you intend to empower your members?
Education and sensitisation; we must give them courses from time to time. Incidentally I was the chairman of education committee the last time and during my tenure we succeeded in registering a lot of institutions to offer freight forwarding practice; Unilag, University of Nsukka, University of Bayero and some private polytechnics.
So now that we have formed a time line for every freight forwarder to be trained, we’ll make sure we pursue that vigorously, we need to separate the chaff from the grain. Everybody calls himself freight forwarder. Who’s a genuine freight forwarder?
These and many other things are what the council will be achieving. Don’t also forget that the Act that establishes the council empowers it to have a tribunal, those that are practicing illegitimately are having a field day for now. So, I’ll advise them get yourself trained.
When you’re training yourself in the course of what you’re doing you get yourself acquainted with the job. There are a lot of things Nigerian freight forwarders have not been doing, they’re just facing dry cargo, there are other cargoes they need to be looked into too.
This is depending on the leadership because the leadership has a broader of role in the area of achieving all the ideas that we have.
Like you mentioned the leadership has a lot of role to play. Do you think the elected officers have the capacity to do the job?
I wouldn’t know until the council is in place, until the leadership is composed and we now see what they are bringing out. Allow them to constitute the leadership, give them a period of about 90 days, and see what comes out before you start assessing them.
In specific terms how do you intend to protect your members?
In the area of Customs excessiveness and Customs modus operandi; the World Bank Organisation’s first criterion in logistics performance index rating is the stability of Customs operations which we do not have.
If a woman or man has a business you don’t know when that job will come out and you cannot say what you’ll make on that job which is very bad and you don’t even know what will happen to that job until it gets to the consignee’s warehouse. These are not what we should be talking about in 21st century.
But this challenge with the Customs has lingered; how do you intend to hit the nail at the head this time?
It has lingered because we never had a council that has been in place for a very long time. Our tenure was just two years and before we knew it there as an interruption and it’s not as if there was an election immediately for some people to come on board.
We need to have a council in place for a minimum of two to five years. Then we’ll be talking about what we have achieved. The agents must be protected and this Customs excessiveness needs to be looked into, very important.
We have Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) and we’re not following it. So what are we talking about? You say you release a cargo you re-arrest the cargo, you’re abrogating and rebrogating, in this century? Even in banana republic there are things that are not obtainable.
What’s the update on ANLCA crises?
It’s an in-house issue and we have started discussing it. Very soon we’ll call a press conference on it to tell you how far we have gone. But I can tell you there is light at the end of tunnel.
So, are we hopeful that the factional group and NECOM are coming into agreement?
Yes, because one thing about life is give and take; we’ll look at what they’re proposing; whichever one we think is admissible then NEC will decide on that.
They’re still our brothers, but this our crisis has lingered because people were actually benefitting from the crisis. We also have external influences.
We also have some of these agencies who believe that this is an opportunity for them to fuel the crisis and unfortunately they have succeeded in doing that but very soon it will be a thing of the past by the grace of God.
What is your assessment of the agencies in the maritime sector? Would you say they’re living up to expectation?
They have all failed us because every agency has not lived up its responsibility, even their statutory functions they have not done it. The one that supposed to be regulating is busy collecting revenue, so they have all failed us, except recently, I can give the Nigeria Ports Authority (NPA) pass mark and that is because of what they’re doing in the area of gridlock on our road and the eco call-up system. May be these two things that made me give them pass mark, every other agency has failed.
Don’t think there are challenges hindering them from living up to expectation?
They do not have any challenge, what they have is what I call protectionalism; every agency believes I’m superior to this so it wants to protect itself from the other.
NDLEA wants to protect its agency because it has Act, Customs believes it’s the lead agency may be when it’s doing something that is wrong it’ll be able to protect itself.
It’s unfortunate, if we have a very good enabling environment where there is a one-stop shop and where everything goes and works it would have been better. I can’t give any agency pass mark except NPA and my pass mark is 45 per cent.