ANLCA President Accused of Fuelling BOT Crisis

By ZION Olalekan |

National President of Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA) Tony Iju Nwabunike has been fingered in the lingering leadership crisis that has engulfed the Board of Trustees (BOT) of the association in the past three months.

Members of the association who spoke with Nigeriamaritime360.com expressed disappointment at the silence of Nwabunike on the crisis, saying that they expected him to make a statement on the crisis, but kept mum and silently giving his support to a vested party in the leadership tussle.

The battle for the chairmanship of the ANLCA BOT is between Alhaji Taiwo Mustapha who is the newly elected Chairman and Chief Henry Njokwu who has been the chairman for ten years.

Secretary of the ANLCA BOT, Prince Taiye Oyeniyi in a chat with our correspondent accused the ANLCA President of being tribalistic and dancing to the whims and caprices of Henry Njokwu. He said that Njokwu has remained silent in the face of the BOT crisis.

Close sources within ANLCA told our correspondent last week that Njokwu had gone to court and has also written the national president and warned him not to recognise Taiwo Mustapha as the Chairman BOT.

The source told our correspondent that legally, the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) did not recognize Taiwo Mustapha as the BOT chairman because the names of the present BOT members have not been submitted to CAC.

He said, “The immediate past national president, Prince Olayiwola Shittu was supposed to send the names of the 9-man board members to the CAC but he did not do so. Henry Njokwu has been chairman for ten years and his name was still the one at the CAC”

“Even most of the so called board members including the National president, Tony Iju, they are new entrants into the board and their names have not been captured by the CAC”.

In order to get the reaction of the national president on these tribal allegations, several calls were placed by nigeriamaritime360.com to Tony Iju at the weekend without any response.

Speaking with our correspondent, the BOT Secretary alleged that the ANLCA President has taken sides and that “He is the one that is engineering everything, we are watching him, and he may end up creating problems for his government”

“If truly he is not taking sides, he has called a peace meeting where ninety days was agreed upon, now that he has kept silence, it means that he is enjoying the issue, he has forgotten that if they should go to court and argue that the board is not registered with the corporate affairs, it is the same board that conducted his election, it then means that his election is null and void, maybe he doesn’t know the implication”.

While addressing the ethnic undertone in the BOT crisis, Prince Oyeniyi said, “They are beginning to turn it into an ethnicity fight, the whole Lagos is solidly behind us, what they are saying is that whether we like it or not, we must release some chapters to them, which is not possible, there is no Yoruba man at the Port Harcourt area”.