Clearing Agents Demand Probe Of Practitioners’ Operating Funds

Clearing agents operating at the nation’s seaports have called for an investigation of funds generated through the Practitioners Operating Fee (POF).

LEADERSHIP reports that the registrar for the Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding (CRFFN), Kingsley Igwe, publicly admitted that the Council was unaware of how much had been collected by SW Global, a technology firm contracted as the technical partner.

However, speaking in Lagos, the former national secretary of the Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA), Babatunde Mukaila, called for a full investigation by the appropriate authorities.
According to him, there was an agreement that a percentage of the funds collected from declarants would be returned to them, but that has not happened.

“Let the authorities investigate what has transpired, especially why all the declarants have not been paid their dues. There was an agreement that a percentage of the funds collected from declarants would be returned to them, but that has not happened,” Mukaila said.

He estimated that his company alone was owed over N5 million in remittances that were never paid despite fully complying with the POF payment process.

“I paid diligently, and they collected all our data supposedly for seamless remittance, but nothing came. Even our association, while I was in office, was supposed to benefit — nothing happened. The contractor must explain what went wrong,” he added.

Also, the former public relations officer of the National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF), Stanley Ezenga, confirmed that freight forwarders had not yet received a share of the POF.

He also alleged no record of the remittances made to freight forwarders or their associations.

“We have been paying, and whenever we meet, we ask questions. But when you ask your colleagues if they have received money, the answer is always ‘No’. I have not received a single naira,” Ezenga said.

“If the current CRFFN registrar says he doesn’t know how much has been collected, then there’s no record. That suggests the money may have gone elsewhere”, he alleged.

Ezenga, while supporting the POF in principle as a tool for capacity building through training and retraining of freight forwarders, said the current implementation lacked transparency and accountability.

“The idea behind POF was noble. It was to enhance professionalism. But the use of the funds is now questionable. CRFFN has not lived up to expectations. The essence of regulation is missing,” he lamented.