Outgoing Vice President, ANLCA, Dr. Kayode Farinto.

Outgoing National President of the Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents ANLCA, Chief Tony Nwabunike is rallying support for Dr. Kayode Farinto ahead of the July, 2023 National Executive Committee NECOM election of the association, saying he is the best to lead the association now.

In a statement he personally signed, the Iju Ozubulu, noted that Farinto has remained a passionate lover of the association, a team player and a forthright person, who is ready to defend the course of the association at all times.

Chief Tony Nwabunike.

He said: “I have read back and forth reports of endorsements on the most suitable National President of ANLCA. One come from a former president who endorsed his then Vice President, Emenike Nwokeoji.

“One is therefore compelled by the reality of our recent past and this season to refresh our memories and extol those noble virtues that make Dr. Kayode Farinto stand out as the best man for the job to steer ANLCA to greater heights. By providence and the popular will of ANLCA voters, Dr. Fairinto emerged Vice President to me at the Enugu election held on March 8, 2018.

“The many battles we wrestled with started on the eve of my inauguration as President where Farinto and I started managing multiple threats and avoidable distractions. Dr. Farinto proved to be a selfless individual, team player and one who is ever ready to defend this great association in fact and indeed. I see in him a loyal, consistent and forthright individual who believes in the sustainable institutional framework that holds ANLCA together come rain come shine.

“Farinto believes in consultation and dialogue with listening ears that will foster an all -inclusive ANLCA in unity and love. The ANLCA Secretariat is not a beer parlour or drinking base and Farinto being a thoroughbred professional will run it with basic etiquettes required to administer a corporate head office.

“I hereby plead with our people to choose wisely and build a stronger ANLCA by voting Dr Kayode Collins Farinto as National President of ANLCA and all his team members contesting for other NECOM Offices. They are a team of credible, dedicated and result oriented people.”

While appealing to the various managing directors of licensed customs agent companies and their representatives eligible to vote for new ANLCA Executives in the July 2023 to be firm in their love for the association by not committing the NECOM into the hands of those who subjected the secretariat to multiple attacks.

“Our only offence against them was coming out victorious in the face of all odds even with the endorsement they enjoyed from the then incumbent president.

They vowed to make the association ungovernable by generating excuses like running a parallel Board of Trustees BoT, instituting multiple court cases, distracting us with chains of police invitations over false allegations, coming with thugs armed with guns and charms to attack our secretariat and even sponsoring physical assault against my person.

These are people that are joyful when the secretariat is locked up. They jubilate taking delight in things that connote a downfall of the association.

“In their desperation, they said boldly that it’s either they hold the reins of power or they make trouble in a do-or-die fashion. This was shamelessly exhibited severally by those who are Farinto’s opponents today.

“Like the fake mother in the case of biblical King Solomon, the opponents were asking that the baby, ANLCA be divided into two parts while we begged like the real mother that dividing the baby means destroying a young life. Today, they are asking to nurture the same baby they demanded be divided yesterday. Don’t trust them. Don’t allow them.

“People who insisted that it was either they lead or else everything gets destroyed should not be entrusted with leadership because they can use it to hurt the association. A customs broker is not a thug and should not be seen as a sponsor or patron to hooligans because of anything, not even because of the association’s leadership”, he said emphatically.