Prince Olayiwola Shittu Opens Up on ANLCA Crisis

…Gives Real Reasons why the 68-Year Old Association is Disintegrating

Prince Olayiwola Shittu is the former President of Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA) who held office from year 2010 to 2018 when he handed over to his successor, Hon Tony Iju Nwabunike.
However, after his handing over in 2018, the association was plunged into a protected leadership crisis which has lasted for five years.
In this exclusive chat with DAPO OLAWUNI, Prince Olayiwola Shittu speaks on some causes of the crisis and past efforts he has made to call the various actors to order. The Former ANLCA President also spoke on sundry Issues including the running of the Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria,CRFFN and the need to ensure categorization of Practitioners in the Council

On the ANLCA Crisis, as the immediate past President, a lot of people expect you to play more role in resolving the crisis or to rally other ex-Presidents to step in

Something happened in ANLCA which has never happened before. In the past, when we do our elections, the loser congratulates the winner, while the loser goes back to plan for another election next time. But in this case after the election of 2018, it was not so, it was like there was an enmity, the winners were looking at losers and their supporters as enemies who refused to vote for them. I have always believed that when you are President of an organisation, even those who voted for you, don’t worry about them, they are already with you, it is those who did not vote for you that you would have to go and shop for them, there was no reason why Tony Iju should not have called on his opponent who lost the election, Emenike Nwokeoji or to seek his support to work together.
But right from the day of the inauguration, we saw that this was a new dimension, the immediate vice president (Emenike) was kept in a corner, I was the one telling them that he should be on the high table, the man lost an election, and he still came for your inauguration, but you people are treating him as if he is a nobody, even after he has openly hugged the man who won the election immediately after the election, this should have shown you that he is in total support of you.
However, it took eight months of persuasion before Tony Iju could call on Emenike. So, that brewing feeling of rejection made Emenike to stay away, he could have added value to what they were doing.
It’s like some person’s were just interested in creating that war in ANLCA, which was not necessary.
Come to think of it, there is nobody that I have not spoken to among the warring parties, the best thing I could do was what I did, I gave them advise. The first week of the election, I had a dinner with the new President and I advised him that he was likely to get a stiff response. This is because, when I came into office, people like Taiye Oyeniyi hated me with a passion, I don’t know the reason why, but I had to go and knock their doors and ask what is the problem? What do you want me to do?
People thought that this action I took is a sign of weakness. This is not a matter of politics whereby you are waiting for compensation, association is about you going voluntarily to work for people, at your own cost, with your time and finances, so why are we driving away people that can contribute to that success?
When I got to a stage whereby both factions started suspecting me, I had to step aside and be on my own.
Come to think of it, people are saying that I should have rallied the former presidents to resolve the crisis, effort’s were made with some of them, they were not no keen to step-in because they do not want to be rubbished. An example of this was Peter Okocha, he was rubbished when they met at a meeting with the Police. The bottom line is; is this what I should put myself through? Because whatever I say, they would believe you are supporting one party. The best thing is to step aside.
I believe the ANLCA crisis would resolve itself whether we like it or not, on all the litigation they are doing today, there must be a ruling at one time or the other.
However, we are wasting a lot of time, and ANLCA has lost its place.

In the past, whenever any organization wants to do anything, they first call upon us to seek our opinion and buy-in, even the PAAR (Pre-arrival Assessment Report) of the Nigeria Customs Service that we are using today, ANLCA was part of the people that made PAAR, those were part of the advantages.
I have made efforts to call people to resolve the crisis, ranging from Innua Mohammed among others. Our former President, Late Alhaji Sanni Shittu, may his soul rest in peace, we knew that he belonged to a faction, but one thing that alienated me from them all was the issue of elections into the BOT.

When I was ANLCA President, the Board announced to us at a NEC meeting that they would be conducting their internal election every two years to change their leadership. The internal leadership of the board is not even in ANLCA constitution, it was done to allow them run their internal affairs, just nine of them. If they are now trying to change their leadership at the time that I was leaving office, what is my own business with that?
None board members got involved in the matter, because they were looking for excuses to pay back the alienation done to them, which is just a human nature.
For example, when some person’s were suspended or expelled from the association, I had a word with the President and advised him that, the people you are sending away now, they also have stakes in this ANLCA, if some of them did not participate in ANLCA, there would be no association for us to inherit, but refused to listen, so I had to relax.

We hope the effort of the CRFFN pays off in resolving the crisis

That is what both parties are waiting for, they have agreed that whatever CRFFN says, they would abide. However, in the CRFFN, there are those members who are involved in the crisis, the out-gone Chairman of the board who has refused to go, is a member of the Council. This is why we are looking at their report now, this is why I am saying that I am waiting for their report to know if they have done well or not, but whatever it is, we just have to move on.
A lot of people come here to my office, both those that work in the Secretariat and others, some people accused me of sponsoring them and giving them money to fester the crisis, the question I ask is, as a former president, should I run away from the people who had worked with me? Some of them still come to me for assistance including the people in their own offices.

Looking at the state of the CRFFN, where are we right now?

It won’t be appropriate for me to speak now until the report of the CRFFN comes out. If their report comes out, no matter where the pendulum swings, we can now see if they have done well or not, afterall, we are all involved in the Council.
Even the makeup of the CRFFN and the way they are conducting their kangaroo elections is going to make it difficult for them to function. You cannot appoint people that you are going to regulate to come and be the decider of regulation, when they are the people to be regulated. The mistake made is on the election of freight forwarders into the CRFFN, it should have been by appointment, based on merit.
All regulatory bodies are based on appointment.

Are you saying that there shouldn’t have been an election of freight forwarders into CRFFN?

What I am saying is that any Regulatory body is by appointment, it is the government that should do the appointment, CRFFN is a government agency, it was removed from the private sector, so that they can self-regulate, but like every Nigerian sector, people don’t want to be self regulated. When you now ask them to regulate themselves, what do you expect?

But we have other professional groups like the NBA, the engineers regulating themselves?

You wouldn’t say that the NBA is self regulated. Associations just like ANLCA, NAGAFF and others, their job is not to regulate themselves, they are there to fight for the rights of their members, but when it comes to regulation, it is best done by government itself.
We all saw the outcome of the last election into the CRFFN, is that supposed to be called an election? Have you seen any Regulatory body doing that kind of arrangement we just did? Where people were selected just to fulfill a purpose? This is the main reason why CRFFN is having problems.

This means that the Act of the CRFFN have to be ammended

The Act already says that the Minister of Transportation should direct the affairs of the council onna general note. Part of the Regulation should have been that election of various associations should be supervised and mid-wived by the CRFFN so that the right thing can be done. The CRFFN should regulate the association and the individuals. However the Council we have is more interested in who is paying money for practice, annual renewal and so on.
All the litigation going on in ANLCA today, the CRFFN could have stepped in, at any giving time to give direction, and a lot of things would have been corrected a long time ago.

In a situation whereby you are regulated by CRFFN and the Nigeria Customs Service.

From the beginning, I have always believed that the customs Broker, by virtue of his service, is closer to the customs, they are better regulated, majority of the people in the industry today would rather prefer to answer freight forwarder without any regulation because CRFFN is not regulating anything, but the customs broker is regulated by customs because there are yardstick to the performance of your activities, but that time that we were promoting customs brokerage to be members of the board of the World Customs Brokers Organization which is also on the board of World Customs Organization, we were trying to get the best international standard available, but a lot of people did not liked it, even from within the customs brokers themselves, they prefer things not being done, where anybody can claim anything he likes, and business as usual. It is not everybody that is a freight forwarder today that are in NAGAFF or in the CRFFN, if you put all the associations registered by the CRFFN now, the number of non-members of the CRFFN outnumber those who are in the associations. But under regulation, you must belong to an association.
If government is thinking of amendment, they should remove that self regulation from the Council’s Act. This is main reason why CRFFN stepped into ANLCA matter and everybody were having skepticism from both sides, the government should take full control, you cannot take half control. Those that were elected into the Council, what has been the impact of having elected members into the Council whose job is to regulate themselves? People don’t like to regulate themselves, this is just the bane.
If you are a freight forwarder, and all you do is to pay your annual dues and charges to CRFFN, and you walk away until another year, why should a regulatory body like CRFFN not be able to warehouse all the necessary fees, which would be more than enough to run the CRFFN, but that is not their focus because they get money from government, whether people pay or not.
Now, we have ended up that, for every job you do as a freight forwarder, they must collect POF, which means their interest is in money and not the job.

This means the error is from the formulation of CRFFN by the freight forwarders themselves

I don’t want to be part of those that believe they are the fathers and mothers of CRFFN, it doesn’t matter who thought about the idea or who mid-wived it, what matters is the practicability of what we have on ground. If you are a doctor and you graduated being a doctor, it does not mean that you must be the one that would regulate yourself.
The council Act already gave room for the leadership of the freight forwarding associations to be members of a body set up, called Freight Forwarders Consultative Council, where they interface with management of the CRFFN, this is more than enough. This is where major challenges can be trashed.
A lot of people were thinking that CRFFN is meant to come and challenge the Nigeria Customs Service in terms of policies, but that would never happen, because ni regulatory agency can lord it over another regulatory agency, the freight forwarders thinking is that all the problems in the sector today, the CRFFN must match forward and take action.
This is not good enough for some of us who decided that we want to be customs brokers, this is because everything is now subsumed under the word ‘freight forwarder” which simply means movement of cargo from one place to the other.

How do we now separate the customs brokers who are regulated by customs, from freight forwarders regulated by CRFFN?

Let me explain this to you sir that you can get clearly the intendment if the CRFFN Act. Everyone who graduates as an Engineer joins COREN which is the regulatory body of the profession, but within that body, there are structural Engineers, automatically they are in COREN, just like we all belong to CRFFN, if the generic name is freight forwarding, there must be specialities of those who are in the profession, presently it is not defined.
When I was ANLCA President, we met with the CRFFN and advised them to borrow the COREN idea whereby every aspect of Engineering is represented by an association, but they all report back and are regulated by COREN, the COREN is not about people regulating themselves, appointment into their governing council is by the government, but the associations report to COREN to protect your interest. This is the same thing that apply in the medical field, it is not enough to say this is freight forwarding and every other horizon is blocked, at the end of the day, you just want everybody to come and pay money.
If you are a customs broker, you are responsible to customs regulations, but if you want to be a freight forwarder without customs regulation, it is left for you to be a general freight forwarder without specialty, are you a transporter, warehousing or you are just bearing the name freight forwarder?
We mentioned it at that time, but a lot of people kicked against it. At that time, we were travelling and interfacing with customs brokers all over the world, whenever we have challenges, we reach out to some of our counterparts all over the world and they inform us of what is being done in their own country.
We attended the South Korean educational system, we participated for a short time, there, we saw Customs Brokers and Customs officers were being trained simultaneously, imagine a situation whereby we went to Gwadalada (customs training college, Abuja) for course whereby officers and agents are participating, the outcome of that course is that when you meet in the field, you would be able to harmonize positions without anybody lording anything over you. Once you give somebody a license, you are supposed to guide the person on how to operate.

On the IFCBA, it seems immediately you left office, nothing is happening again

I don’t know, maybe the succeeding executives of ANLCA felt it was not necessary. This is why you see that FIATA is on the same board of World Customs Organization, just like the customs brokers, and FIATA says their membership is by individual companies or by one organization representing the country, it is the same thing we have in the IFCBA, it is one association representing one country, and ANLCA was the one that was chosen because we were the ones practicing customs brokerage.
FIATA could have also chosen NAGAFF to represent Nigeria. However, everybody wants to go to FIATA, it is not the CRFFN that should be representing Nigeria on FIATA because they are a regulatory agency, it is the associations that should belong in FIATA. Organisations could also belong to FIATA, for example the DHL, based on the transportation they do, they are members of FIATA.

Is ANLCA still representing Nigeria on IFCBA?

Our position is there, we have two slots in the board, I don’t know who is following it up now, at a time before I left, I told them I was leaving and that election is going to take place, this was why I was happy that some of the people who worked with me and know the process would also be in the new government, but the uneccessary war created made some of us feel circumspect, when you give an advice that somebody do not like, and he reads meaning to it and question your motive, not necessarily looking at the message or how beneficial it would be.
When I was leaving office, it was the time that IFCBA management was to visit Nigeria, but the ANLCA elections caught up.