Shipping Manifest

Set defined standards for freight forwarders, former ANLCA boss, Elochukwu, tells CRFFN  

Former National President of the Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA), Sir Ernest Elochukwu, has charged the Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria (CRFFN) to set defined standards for freight forwarding practitioners to operate with.

Elochukwu, while addressing journalists at ANLCA National Headquarters, Amuwo Odofin, Lagos, said that, until the freight forwarding regulatory body establishes ports operations standards which will ensure compliance of freight forwarding practitioners to best trade practices, there will always be friction between freight forwarders and government agencies in the course of cargo clearance from the nation’s ports.

“The average worker or employee of a government agency working at the port goes around with the mentality of being a government man who nobody can dictate to how he should do his job. You see we are not operating standards, part of what has given rise to all the agitations both of the associations and even the Council, is such that with must operate with standards. The essence of the Council, or our working to have the Council on board, is to first start with us, as practitioners, standards we must maintain and to ensure that anybody that infringes of these standards will get sanctioned. Thereafter, we can now approach the government agencies to say that now our members are complying with the international best practices standards we are insisting that the agencies of government must comply, because it takes two to tango, ” Elochukwu stated.

He stressed that the high level of corruption in the nation’s ports is caused by the institutional failings of government agencies, noting that “there is manifest of negligence, of collusion on the part of those who are supposed to be doing the right thing.”