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The National President of Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA), Tony Iju Nwabunike, has decided to take back the leadership of the association from few individuals in the association who can be said to have held the association hostage since he was sworn in as the president after a keenly contested election in 2018.
Since the present National Executive Council Members of ANLCA led by Nwabunike took over the mantle of leadership from the Shittu led National Executive Council, it has been from one crisis to another, from one court litigation to another and even invasion of the national Secretariat by unscrupulous elements in a bid to forcefully make the leadership of the association relinquish their mandates.
However, Nwabunike, who has always treaded for peace even in the midst of unnecessary provocation for the first time last Thursday during a media briefing with newsmen in the ANLCA Secretariat in Lagos, said he has decided to take the bull by the horn by wielding the big stick to curtail the Hullabaloo that has engulfed the association in the last two years by saying Enough is enough to all the crisis that has characterized the association.
The president who sounded with authority said “I am the most bastardised, abused and insulted the president of ANLCA;
“I have taken all these insults and acts of insubordination because of my desire for peace, I have done everything possible to ensure peace. I have bent backwards to tolerate and accommodate and carry everyone along despite the obvious disregard of some people for my administration but today is say “enough is enough” I am no longer ready to condone acts of insubordination, insurrection and dissidence by disgruntled elements in the association”.
He went further to accuse five members of the association’s former Board of Trustees (BOT) in persons of Taiwo Mustapha, Ernest Elochukwu, Dayo Abduullaziz, Dennis Oksfor, and Taiye Oyeniyi of being behind the crisis which has rocked the association since he took over.
He revealed that the nine-member BOT was elected on February 2014 for the statutory 6-year tenure which ended in January 2020.
“While the other four members of the BOT have honourably bowed out with dignity, these four have refused to go harping on their twisted logic to sit tight due to a certificate which they fraudulently obtained from the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) which has since been withdrawn as the CAC said it was issued in error”.
He lamented that the dissidents in the association have tried all they could to destabilize his administration,
according to him, part of their scheme included eight court cases, some of them spurious and self-serving, which the members of the dissident group instituted to make the association ungovernable.
The president also recalled the last attack by hoodlums on the National Secretariat which he said was with murderous intent. “I described those hoodlums as murderers because they came with the intention to kill” he, however, declared that he will not lose focus despite any tactics nor method they may adopt.
Also speaking at the briefing, the National Vice President (Dr.) Collins Kayode Farinto also accused the former President, Prince Olayiwola Shittu of also being part of the crisis the administration has been facing, “I can authoritatively confirm that the immediate past president Olayiwola Shittu is part of the problem we are facing here because some of these people are people working with him in his office; if he is not part of the problem he should have being able to call them to order” he insisted.
The National Secretary, Alhaji Mukaila Abdullaziz insisted that the association do not have a BOT as there is a subsisting court order which restrains the NECOM from recognising any person or group of persons as BOT members.
The president also revealed that the association’s NECOM will, in the coming weeks, call for NEC meeting, AGM and conduct BOT elections.
He advised those who are still parading themselves as the BOT members to join the train by picking up forms if they are still interested in being BOT members.