Goddy Sewa Soleji, MD/CEO OMAN Inv. Ltd. and KLT Chairman ANLCA.
By Dili Utomi.
PRACTITIONERS OPERATING FEE IS FRAUDULENT, UNPROFESSIONAL- Goody Sewa Soleji.
The furore that has been generated by the recent introduction of the Practitioners Operating Fee otherwise simply called the POF at the Tin Can Island Container Terminal is hardly abating as a lot of freight forwarders and licensed customs agents have pitched themselves against the Council for the Registration of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria (CRFFN ). In an exclusive interview with www.greatalternativenigerianetwork.com.ng, the MD/CEO of OMAN Investment Limited and the Kirikiri Lighter Terminal Chairman of the Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents, Mr. Goddy Sewa Soleji described the action of the CRFFN as a fraud, totally wicked and unprofessional. He noted that the CRFFN was not incorporated as a revenue generating arm of the government as he said that ” every government agency or unit has a statutory duty as enshrined in the constitution to aid the various governments to carry out their day to day responsibilities”. The chairman stated that the CRFFN was established purely as a regulatory body to regulate all the activities of freight forwarding and freight forwarders in Nigeria, he noted that it is unfortunate that “the CRFFN has deviated from its responsibility, but it is not going to be easy for them”. He bemoaned the action of the CRFFN as he noted that this action will definitely add to the cost of doing business and the cost will be passed on to the consumers.
It will be recalled that the CRFFN had ordered all terminal operators to start collecting the POF from the first day of March 2021 and that the TICT has so far been the only terminal enforcing the collection of the fee.
In continuation of the interview, Mr. Soleji stated that the various Customs brokers have been trying to bring down the cost of doing business and that rather than help them to achieve this goal, the CRFFN with a lot of impunity is trying to compound the matter with the introduction of the POF.
The chairman also stated that there are cases in various courts instituted to fight this “wicked, fraudulent and unjust fee collection”. He added that “court injunctions have also been taken to stop the collection of the fee pending the determination of the various suits by competent courts of jurisdiction”. “We do not intend to take the law into our hands and so we shall continue to exploit all the legal channels available for us to fight this course” he said. The chairman added that the position of all genuine custom brokers is that this is an illegal fee collection and so it shall not stand as they will continue to resist the collection of the fee with everything that is under the ambit of the law.
On the issue of the meeting purportedly held at the Bristol hotel in Kano where the matter was discussed which included the sharing formula for the generated amount, Mr. Soleji said that anybody who has gone to have an agreement with other people on this matter did that on their own and without the general consent of practitioners. He said that it was true that the the meeting held sometime in 2020 in Kano, but that that was just the antics of a few bad eggs in the system, he added that they are sounding it loud and clear that that was not a generally agreed matter and so the matter of the collection of the POF is dead on arrival. He continued to describe the action as that of wicked, fraudulent and criminally minded people that has no reason to happen.
On the rumour that the POF has always been in force under a different name, he said that there was never a time that the government asked individuals to pay practicing fees, but that what existed was the collection of minute amount of money by individual associations from members for the day to day running of their offices.
He chided the CRFFN for what he called their failures in all their responsibilities as he noted that there has never been any case of the training of practitioners by the body, he asked that the CRFFN account for the billions of naira that they collect from the annual Federal budget as he urged the Federal government to probe the CRFFN. He asked the CRFFN to go back to its primary responsibility of regulating the practice of freight forwarding and stop dabbling into areas beyond their responsibility.
