By Ajibola Adedoye
Henceforth, trainings will be conducted for freight forwarders at the port terminals where everybody can make out time to participate instead of all these accredited institutions which is far beyond what an average practitioner can afford, it is also far away from our point of operation.
Mr. Kingsley Igwe, Chief Executive Officer/Registrar of the Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria (CRFFN) made this submission on Tuesday, February 25, 2025 during his first official visit to NAGAFF’s Headquarters in Apapa.
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Igwe noted that this move is necessary because the freight forward industry is a knowledge-based industry, it is regulated globally so it ought to follow global standard in operation, service and convention.
According to him, “Before now, there are laid down principles but unfortunately, these principles have not been exposed to practitioners in the industry. It is not that they are not there, we just don’t know how we’ve not been able to access it but this time around, we can access it now.
“By bringing the training to the port terminals no freight forwarder would not have any excuse not to acquire knowledge that will help them meet up with the latest trend in the freight forwarding industry” he stressed.
Igwe who admitted that CRFFN as a body has not live up to the expectation from the people they regulated and the indices are quite clear also noted that the fundamental reason for the establishment of CRFFN is to revamp the industry where freight forwarders can become professionals thereby ensuring sustainable freight forwarding practices.
“Having understand the fact that there is no way we can get it right without consulting, so, we have been consulting with people within and outside the industry on how we can strengthen and make our curricula better so that they are useable and localize such that the training we are bringing to the freight forwarders should be relevant to their practice” he opined.
“What CRFFN is doing differently this time is to intensity our effort in building the capacity of freight forwarders in order to further empower them to be the best in their chosen profession for economic advancement of the country.
“As I speak to you, the Minister of Marine and Blue Economy, Adegboyega Oyetola is very much interested as to how many freight forwarders do we train annually. The Presidency is also interested in capacity building, that was why he gave every ministry what is called ‘The Performance Bond’ for accessing the performance of all ministries, that trickle down to the agencies. So, it’s a priority agenda in CRFFN this time around to ensure that the freight forwarding community doesn’t lose again” he maintained.
While acknowledging the challenges that comes with Practitioners Operating Fee (POF), the CRFFN CEO/Registrar said “I admit there are lots of challenges, as a matter of fact, we are loosing huge revenue in huge figure due to the challenges experienced in the industry on daily basis. Currently, we are using third party for the collection of POF and that is why when we intend to genuinely make a payment there are whole lot of issues from network failure to unavailability of platform to even multiple debits without reversals. I can assure you that upon assumption of office about four months ago, this is one of the problems we have been tackling by engaging the Consultant responsible for the collection of POF on our behalf. You know when there are bureaucracy, there is always friction, the flow is not smooth and that is what we are experiencing now. The service provider has a little challenge as regards the update on the platform, they just finished their management meeting few days ago, so in few days from now, they are going to be corrected and improved upon” Igwe assured.
Additionally, in order to encourage those of you who have been honest with your payments, we need to have an accurate data because most people have not been able to enjoy the Declarance Fee as the data has not been organized which makes it difficult to identify who should rightfully benefit by what amount. So we are actually reviewing all of that and definately for those who have been very faithful and religious in paying, they will surely get their kickbacks when the time comes.
The CRFFN Boss however advocate collaboration from all stakeholders in the maritime industry in order to improve the agency’s revenue generation drive.
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