Story by Dili Utomi.
The Africa Association of Professional Freight Forwarders and Logistics Of Nigeria (APFFLON) held its monthly meeting at its secretariat in Ikeja, Thursday and members used the opportunity to rob minds on issues that are germaine to the development of their trade.
Chiefly amongst the issues discussed were the relationship of members with the Nigeria Customs Service and other sister agencies, projects to be carried out, training and retraining, acquisition of office spaces and the expiration of the tenure of the executive committee members at the Murtala Mohammed Airport chapter of the association.
The meeting which lasted for about three hours had the president of the association, Otunba Frank Ogunojemite chairing and the members of the different chapters giving reports of their activities for the past month.
Otunba Frank Ogunojemite spoke with us after the meeting and detailed some of the intentions of the association as it concerns the growth of members and their businesses, welfare matters, the building of their corporate headquarters and the general business environment.
Otunba Ogunojemite spoke on the concerns about their relationship with other freight forwarders and called it all “cordial”, he added that training and retraining of members is a continuous process and that he though commends the Nigeria Customs Service for engaging in the training of stakeholders, but that more can be done, he added that the association has a professional training agreement with the Redeemers University to continually train members.
On the issue of the development of the association’s secretariat on the acquired land at the Airport road Ikeja, Otunba Ogunojemite said that soon the project will take off, he also informed that APFFLON has a health care programme called the APFFLON health plus which takes care of some of the health needs of members.
His words “My paramount concern as the president is the welfare of members, I am looking for a way to engage humanitarian entities in keying into providing certain welfare packages for members”
On the professional front, he said ” The Federal Ministry of Finance should demonopolise the provision of digital network services and add more providers on board as the services provided by the sole service provider, Webb Fontaine is epileptic, unreliable and costly to freight forwarders”. He advocates that bringing in more service providers on board will create better efficiency, cost effectiveness and make for faster and smoother businesses at the Ports.
The meeting was also used to constitute a caretaker committee for the Airport chapter. The committee members include Bisayo Okpara as the committee leader, Olayinka Ogidan, Anselm Ekeh and Shakir Tesleem as members and the committee has four weeks to to carry out the given mandates.
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