Tony Iju Nwabunike is the National President, Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA), who recently had a “no holds bar” interaction with journalists under the auspices of Association of Maritime Journalists of Nigeria (AMJON) . The politician cum businessman talked about the association crisis and what the executives have on ground to tackle the lingering face off. Nwabunike also shed more lights on border closure, port operations and many more. Our correspondent Roland Ekama was on ground for DAILYFOCUS NEWS ONLINE in the 74minutes fruitful parley…….
Tell us about the election that made you president of ANLCA?
Let me start by telling you about my election. My election was the most highly contested election in the history of our association just because some elements of jealousy came in to play and also some element of “must it always be Tony Iju Nwabudike all the time?”
Just after the election, remember that I was elected as the premier; pioneer council chairman of Council for Regulation of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria and this is supposed to be an umbrella for all the freight forwarding associations. So, every freight forwarder and forwarding association must be under CRFFN.
As at the very first time we contested the election, I contested in a mild spirit because I wasn’t around; I was abroad. In fact, one or two of them actually bought my form and I came to Abuja where the election was held. I won the election and did not only became the pioneer chairman of CRFFN which generated a lot of jealousy
After the four year tenure at CRFFN, I came back to the ANLCA to contest election of board of trustees. Rules for the board of trustees election says that the highest elected member should become the chairman of the board of trustees.
So because many of them were old members, they actually underrated my competence and relationship with people. So we went to war and I came first among all the nine.
So coming back to Lagos to give me the position I am supposed to have as the chairman board of trustees, they now said no, that I am a new person. They now began to talk about people who have been there and those who are supposed to be.
That was why we could not have an immediate chairman at the board. If you remembered Taiwo Mustapha became a coordinator of that board for one year before Henry Njoku was actually reappointed or reelected.
Let me begin to tell you that from that meeting of election of CRFFN to the election of the board of trustees, and to this election, everybody is now saying must we leave everything for tony Iju Nwabunike; why must it be him all the time?
So the election of Tony Iju Nwabunike became very fierce. It was a tough election and I won that election with only three votes. So if you look at it critically, the house began to divide itself. But on that election, I still call it a victorious verdict because you can’t be a president of a divided house. Immediately we came back, they wanted to give it to me, on the night of my inauguration which was on the 13th of April 2018.
The board sat in the chairman’s room at Golden Tulip in Amuwo Odofin and took a decision to do an election in my absence. On my inauguration, Henry Njoku continued as the chairman of the board because he presided over that day. It was also after my inauguration that I was told that Taiwo Mustapha has become the new chairman board.
On that note, I called for a meeting after two or three weeks following the election and pleaded with them to let me settle down so we can have the discussion there after since I am also a member of the board and my resignation was not accepted
I set up a meeting with them in a Hotel where I opened up and knelt down for them in a bid for us to come together and forge a formidable house on issues concerning the association because they all have their own members across the country.
In the long run, they all refused my plea. A faction said there was no election and the other group insisted there was an election even though I wasn’t there.
I intervened by saying since there is disparity on the validity of the election, can the eight of them take a decision by doing the same election so we could get over it and move on. There are five out of 8 people who are yet to participate in that election, then they should do theirs and end that chapter and they refused insisting that the first election remain sacrosanct as such, they won’t go back on it.
So that was the end. But let me say this, this took a toll on the national executive council because people like my national publicity secretary and national treasurer took a decision that they believed in the five.
Others like my vice, my secretary, my financial secretary, my assistant secretary, all backed with the other three whose premise remains that the election should be done transparently. So two out of my nine NECON members left which included Joe Sani and Dada Aguruzor while the others remained.
Up till today, the other ones are still intact with me except Joe Sani who decided out of his own volition to go about castigating the house that has made him what he is today.
But I have never given a word to what he is saying because I felt that it is not necessary. When the time comes, we will take a decision about it.
Let me continue, after all that drama, we went to a NEC meeting at Abuja, on 11th December 2018 calling all members of the disgruntled 5 to be in attendance and that whoever is absent will face sanctions. At the end of the day, most of them refused to attend and then Western chairmen; some came and the others didn’t.
Then NEC decided to suspend all those absent and that is where we are today. But this scenario is not exactly what I wanted because at that point in time, I was in a very critical time of election.
December was just barely 2 months to my general election( for Federal House of Representatives) which was just a month after my primaries.
My primaries was equally highly contested where I came first. In fact I will tell you that there was too many gunshots and some aspirants were wounded because at that point in time, it was generally believed that whoever become the APGA candidate will automatically emerge to win the election so the primary was as fierce as anything you can think of.
So just coming out from the primaries in October to get to the election of the NEC meeting in December and I came from the east and saw all those things, called all of them together and told them we are too big to do that and this is where we are today.
Most of them are my friends, some have come back. I will tell you that Ikorodu chapter chairman is back, Airport chapter chairman has been there with us, and Idiroko chapter chairman is with us. And out of the seven chairmen from the NEC, three are here and four or five is on the other side. All the eastern chairmen are with us, the northern chairmen are with us and even the some western chairmen are with us.
Calculating out of the eighteen of the chairmen, its only about five that I am still looking forward to getting them back so that we can move forward.
Let me say this, all the things you have been reading on the pages of the newspapers about the house being divided, that we are not together, is just coming out from just one source.
Let me be honest with you, I have not seen Apapa chairman speaking evil against the association; I have not heard it from any source. I have not seen the Tin Can chairman saying any negative thing against my association.
I have not seen or heard even Obe or Godwin from PTML saying anything. All the things you have been hearing or reading in pages of newspapers are from one individual who has taken a decision to run the association down not me. But he is still my baby and I am very sure very soon we will get together and get this thing sorted out.
What plans have you put in place to bring everyone together ?
Reconciliation is ongoing and it has been my agenda for everyone to be on same page .
If you look at it critically for me we are almost fully reconciled. I am supposed to have a meeting with the board members. They actually came and after two or three meetings we were supposed to have the third one which they came again but very unfortunately I was hospitalized.
They saw it and some of them came to visit me in the hospital. Let me say that they are all eager to have reconciliation fully.
Nobody is happy that an association that had been since 1954, the umbrella of all the licensed customs brokers and all the freight forwarders is not speaking seriously with one voice when we have many critical issues confronting us.
I have taken a decision to advise my vice president to not to say anything about the crisis. It is not because we don’t want to speak. Its because I don’t want anybody to be joining issues on the pages of the newspapers.
You can remember that my vice is also very eloquent when it comes to discussions as such he can equally say anything and discuss or defend it before the press but its like I am calming him down saying he can’t join issues with Joe Sani because he is aggrieved.
So its not because the minorities are having a voice and the majorities are keeping quiet. We chose to keep quiet to achieve peace and get things put together to move on.
“Typically, ethnicity has played a big role in the Nigerian politics not just ANLCA.”
What is your view about ANLCA and tribal coloration?
in every election including Nigeria, if you look at it critically you find that when somebody is from the east, he is going to have his vice from the west.
If somebody is from the North, he is going to get the other one from the south south. Typically, ethnicity has played a big role in the Nigerian politics not just ANLCA situation.
Ordinarily if I am the president of the association of licensed customs agent and I am an Igbo man, it means we need to get a Yoruba man or a Hausa man to become the board chairman to balance the equation.
So I have no doubt about that and bears no grudge against it. What I am saying in effect is that Tony Iju is now the president of the association of Nigerian licensed customs agents, Henry Njoku is supposed to step down but he is saying there is no election. That means he has to call them, if the eight of them sits down and do a genuine election then he will step down.
And he said he is ready to step down today if the secretary , Taiwo Oyeniyi ,who is a Yoruba man should equally step down to make it balanced in the board. Because if the board is having a Yoruba chairman and Yoruba secretary, the igbos or Hausa men there will say why two Yoruba men?
So Henry Njoku should have stepped down by now and I am an advocate that support that he steps down and Taiwo will come on board for ethnic balancing.
Kindly tell us the position of your association in line with AFCFTA?
I am just returning from Niamey; Niger Republic . If I tell you what I discovered. We are talking about African Continental Free Trade Area Agreement.
What is our perspective on it? What are our neighboring countries thinking about it? We were nearly lynched the day before yesterday just because we are Nigerians over border closure.
We have a whole lot of things. Go and check on the customs unit, check on the other government agencies at the port. What are we really talking about?
Nigeria is so stagnant in the area of this trade agreement. And here we are talking about association problems from one day to another. We keep talking about Joe Sani, talk about board of trustees. Is that what we should be talking about all the time? We need to move forward.
What are the achievements recorded so far ?
I inherited blocked licenses, suspension of licenses from my former president (about 300 of them) and I will tell you I used my diplomacy and relationship with customs to unblock all of them.
These issues have been there for almost two and half years. People were not actually using their licenses to work and today every single license that was blocked has been released.
Then again I will tell you that there is a bill now that I am pushing into the National Assembly. I want the law makers to calm down. The bill is for the Chartered Institute of Customs Brokers( CICB)
I am going to pursue it vigorously and we are going charter the custom brokers so that we have to actually have our institution chartered and certified so that at the end of the day you now know who is truly a customs broker.
I can tell you that the beautiful edifice I inherited as an office is functioning properly. Before now, it was just all about coming to that place and you use ordinary paper to fan but now you have a comfortable place to work.
Everything there is IT compliant and every single person is online with proper documentation. As at last night, 10 of my members came back from Brussels and USA from train the trainers courses.
You may not have heard all these things because we don’t want to begin to blow our trumpets. Go and ask the National Secretary; they came back yesterday night. Of the 10 of them, 6 went to Brussels and 4 to the US. These are for the trainings.
Also, as an association, one thing that has been lingering is indiscipline. People think that they can do anything they want to do at any given time .
I want to instill discipline in them. Before now you see people printing cards in the name of the association because they were committee chairmen on customs relations or committee chairman on Nigerian shipping companies or committee chairman on terminal operators and then you use it to go and intimidate and extort.
Today you don’t have to do that. More so, if you look at our letterhead, you cannot see the letterhead of the national president, you cannot see the letterhead of the national vice president that of the secretary general. You only see that of the national Secretariat, if I am signing or the secretary general signs to show the decorum and shows we know exactly what we are doing.
We are actually taking it one after another. I am waiting for the National Publicity Secretary to be pardoned, probably everybody who is suspended to be pardoned by NEC so that they can come and take their positions.
“All the things you have been reading on the pages of newspapers about the house been divided is coming from one source”.
We learnt ANLCA is clamoring for customs brokers to be chartered. How possible is the vision?
You can’t be my member if you are not licensed. This is the difference between us and other associations. For example you are being licensed, we need to know your operations, we need to know your training, you need to know the tariffs. We need to know exactly what you are trying to defend.
Many of the freight forwarders and customs brokers cannot defend their books. So we need to put them in the limelight.
Now let me tell you, if you go to international seminars as we do go, Nigerian freight forwarders cannot defend themselves.
There is no relationship because most of them have not been attending training have not been acquainted with institutionalizing their businesses and actually knowing exactly what they are supposed to do.
When we are chartered, we have an institution. We have to certify everyone qualified and we have to do better as an institution. So it is simple.
When you ask what would CRFFN be doing? CRFFN is broader system of things because they are supposed to regulate, control and monitor us but in section 19 A and B of the CRFFN act is to regulate, control and monitor us even the association members and renewal of individual membership.
The issue is that if you keep on waiting for the CRFFN to train them, they may have a bogus plan for freight forwarding need but we are going to come down to the lowest level of custom brokerage.
You need to know the system. For example, customs have gone beyond NICIS II moving out to ASYCUDA World and we are saying some of our licensed members are not even acquainted to the NICIS II system.
Do you support border closure by the federal government?
When the border was closed, I wrote to the CG of customs and the gentleman actually said that this bothers on purely security and it is not only customs that is manning the place.
We have Navy, Police, Army, DSS, and so on. So it is all the government security outfits put together. So when it comes to security I am always very conscious about things I say and how I say them.
My concern is just 2 months after signing the ACFTA treaty, Nigeria is now practicing closure instead of open border trading along side with neighbouring African counties.
By now we should be talking about what we are going to trade with alongside other African countries
Today I will tell you that we can only boast of petroleum but if you are trying to compete with countries like South Africa who actually produces so many things. If you try to compete with Morocco who actually produces so many things alongside with countries like Algeria and Egypt in a market that is border less, we need to sit up as a country.
