… To annually inject at least 1,000 young graduates into industry***
The Association of Registered Freight Forwarders of Nigeria (AREFFN) has declared its intention to make the freight forwarding business a veritable and profitable venture for young graduates seeking to make career choices in the industry.
AREFFN National Secretary, Francis Obiekezie, who made this declaration in his chat with journalists in Lagos said “The aspiration of AREFFN is that we want to inject at least one thousand young graduates into this industry every year”.
In his words; “We even want to establish a link with NYSC Camp so as to catch them young, because we find out there are lots of cross-border trading going on and these are things you cannot do when you are stark illiterate.
*AREFFN National Secretary, Francis Obiekezie
“These businesses were originally dominated by people who are not sufficiently trained and prepared for it so it cannot be a last resort business for people in the future so our aim is to make freight forwarding business a venture to be proud of in the near future” he stressed.
*AREFFN National Secretary, Francis Obiekezie
“Right now, we have done about two batches of different trainings by CRFFN in conjunction with Redeemers University at our Training Hall, we are about to start another batch for Higher National Diploma with freight forwarders” Obiekezie stressed. On issues of members leaving the association for one reason or the other Obiekezie said.
“In the past, we have always been having one crisis or the other leading members to be disgruntled. Just like in political parties some people come and some people go and in those days AREFFN was kind of turbulent and always fighting, our founding father, Dr. Frank Ukor was always in the news having one crisis or the other with either Customs officials or Standard Organization of Nigeria and so on.
“But at a point, we decided to re-strategize because we felt that the approach adopted would not take us to where we wanted to go and might defeat the purpose in which the association was created because people might be hearing about us but we reconsider are they hearing about us in a positive or negative way.
“Today AREFFN has about 2 members in the council after our 2022 CRFFN election with only three associations surviving in that council and AREFFN is one of them, we adopted the strategy not that we are regressive but because we are progressive.
*AREFFN National Secretary, Francis Obiekezie
“When Dr. Ukor asked me to conduct the election in 2018, I took it upon myself to harmonize the two groups at that time leading to a smooth handing over that time.
“However credit should be given to AREFFN President, Alhaji Baba Daura Lawan for ensuring peace and stability in AREFFN since 2018, we secured the current office in 2020 under him, also our Secretariat in Onne which is bigger than the Lagos Office was also secured under Alhaji Lawan.
“That we survived an election into CFRRN was no mean feat because that election was more turbulent than what we have in Nigeria’s General Election.
On challenges in cargo clearance, the AREFFN National Secretary said; “Some of the challenges we are facing is what we are facing on a daily basis, for instance, the road leading to the port is congested as takers and containers have taken over a part of the road, the other part of the road has also been taken over by dumpsite with dirt everywhere along the axis.
“One of the factors we use in assessing the port everywhere in the world is good access road in and out. Because in the freight forwarding business, or job is not finished until your goods get to the warehouse or the market. “Another challenge is the issue of Marine Police, the other time the new Minister of Marine and Blue Economy came he was complaining that there are about 6000 containers abandoned in the port and when you have such an amount of abandoned containers in the port, you ask yourself, what is the size of these two ports.
“That is why we talk of congestion and the high cost of loading and transportation of containers.
“Now why will marine police stop containers that have been cleared and released by the customs and other agencies and nobody is doing anything about it. Manual processing of documentation in the port is another problem we are contending with as freight forwarders” he concluded.
