Story by Dili Utomi.
The national Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF) has this afternoon inaugurated a new set of its 100% Compliance Task Team. The event happened at the Maybin Street, Apapa national headquarters of the association.
The president of the association, Chief Tochukwu Ezisi in a speech at the occasion said that “Since the inception of the Compliance Team 3 years ago, it has been an active eye of the association in checking corruption at the Ports by ensuring that ideal Customs and trade procedures are practiced at the Ports, terminals border stations and bonded facilities across Nigeria”. The president however added that ” There are issues still confronting the Team in efficient and effective delivery of their core mandates and as a result, NAGAFF high Command has reviewed the problems and reconstituted the operational structure”.
It will be recalled that a few days ago, the authorities at NAGAFF headquarters deemed it necessary to dissolve the different chapters of the Compliance Team thereby necessitating a name change from the 100% Compliance Team to the 100% Compliance Task Team and the subsequent personnel change. The mode of selection of members also changed as each chapter chairman was given the power to select 5 members, the national coordinator was also given the power to select 5 members from each chapter as the national headquarters also selected 5 members from each chapter to make it 15 at every chapter, but members were to function as non-resident members meaning that they are posted to areas other than their places of business and their roles purely adhoc though again, the intervention committee shall be resident at the bonded terminals and not at the Ports.
In all, over 100 persons were to be part of the different chapters of the Compliance Task Team, but owing to various obvious factors, just about 25 of the members were available for the inauguration. The legal adviser to NAGAFF, Mr. Fred Akokhia administered the oath of allegiance to members present as the president, Chief Ezisi advised members to only wear their reflective jackets and move into the Ports at agreed days of meeting and afterwards remove their jackets and head back to their normal businesses.
The Registrar of the NAGAFF Academy, Mr. Francis Omotosho, admonished all present that NAGAFF is a knowledge driven association and so Compliance is based on the knowledge of the extant laws and regulations as well as the norms that guide the profession. He added that a two day training programme has been scheduled for the newly inaugurated Compliance Task Team.
The national coordinator of the Task Team, Ibrahim Tanko fielded questions from journalists after the event and he said that the old Compliance Team was dissolved because they found out that some bad eggs were in the old Team and needed to be weeded out and be carefully reconstituted, hence the exercise. He added that a lot is still left to be desired in the operations at the different Ports and so members of the Compliance Task Team need to put their hands on deck for the desired objectives to be realised and these include making sure that every stakeholder plays by the rule and that there is transparency along the whole gamut of the logistics supply chain.
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