COMTUA Disbandment Sacrosanct In Maritime Sector – Unions

The Association of Maritime Truck Owners (AMATO) and the Maritime Workers Union of Nigeria (MWUN) have firmly reiterated that the Council of Maritime Truck Unions and Associations (COMTUA) is no longer recognised and has no standing in Nigeria’s maritime sector.

Speaking on the development, chairman of AMATO, Chief Remi Ogungbemi and head of Media at MWUN, Kennedy Ikemefuna restated the position first made public in August 2023 that COMTUA has been disbanded by its founding unions and associations.

Ogungbemi said that anyone parading himself as COMTUA is doing so at his own peril, saying, ‘it has been disbanded.’

Echoing this stance, Ikemefuna of MWUN added that, ‘Whoever he is talking to, that is their business because they are no longer with Maritime Workers Union of Nigeria,’ emphasising that, MWUN, along with the other founding bodies, no longer recognises COMTUA in any form.

This reaffirmation comes in response to recent claims by unidentified individuals purporting to represent COMTUA and attempting to engage in negotiations or represent truckers’ interests in the maritime sector. According to both AMATO and MWUN, such individuals are acting without authority and in direct defiance of the formal dissolution.

In August 2023, seven major unions and associations — MWUN, AMATO, the Nigerian Association of Road Transport Owners (NARTO), Road Transport Employers Association of Nigeria (RTEAN), National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW), Container Truck Owners Association of Nigeria (COTOAN), and Amalgamation of Container Truck Owners Association of Nigeria (ACTOAN) — formally disbanded COMTUA and issued a stern warning to all stakeholders and security agencies not to engage with anyone acting under its banner.

At the official dissolution ceremony held at the NARTO Secretariat in Lagos, COMTUA’s founding president, Thomson Olaleye, declared that the council had ‘outlived its usefulness’ and ceased to exist as of July 31, 2023.

“Consequently, the freedom to associate, under which COMTUA was formed, has ceased upon the termination of the MoU and the body hitherto called COMTUA has died,” Olaleye said at the time.

Security agencies and government bodies were formally notified and instructed to treat any ongoing operations or representations by COMTUA-affiliated individuals as illegal. Whoever parades himself as executive of the body should be treated as an impostor and subsequently arrested, the group warned.