The current executives of the Council of Maritime Truck Unions and Associations (COMTUA) has not been able to access the only account of the body since it took over about one and half years ago, its National President, Comrade Adeyinka Aroyewun has disclosed.
Aroyewun, who stated this in an online roundtable organized by the Maritime Reporters’ Association of Nigeria (MARAN) on Tuesday night, maintained that the campaign of calumny against the body is from the former members who do not want to relinquish power but want to stay perpetually in office.
He explained that COMTUA is a collaboration of registered associations and groups in the maritime transport industry which came together under a memorandum of understanding that the body should represent them nationally.
According to him, COMTUA came into being since 2018 and has been able to address several issues in the industry.
He restated that COMTUA has only one account domiciled with Access Bank and the signatories to that account were the first BOT Chairman of the collaboration in the person of Comrade Aloga Ogbogo, the current Executive Secretary of Nigerian Association of Road Transport Owners (NARTO), the current President General of the Maritime Workers’ Union of Nigeria (MWUN), who is also the co-Chairman of the BOT of COMTUA since 2020, Prince Adewale Adeyanju while the third signatory is Otunba Olaleye Thompson, the then President and the fourth signatory, Madam Folake George who was the Director of Finance.
He revealed that since the change of leadership on November 25th, 2021, none of the four signatories have voluntarily or otherwise released their signatories for the mandate to change.
His words: “As I speak with you, we have not been able to access COMTUA’s account as executives in the last one and half years of our Administration. Secondly, the so called elders of the collaboration, in the name of the collaboration, got garages, parks and pregate garages for themselves under TTP and the moment COMTUA begins to see inadequacies in ETO and TTP arrangement, and started challenging these inadequacies, they became uncomfortable.”
Aroyewun accused the so called founding fathers who have been profiting directly or indirectly from TTP legitimately or illegitimately now feel threatened that COMTUA is becoming too powerful for them and it is going to cause problem for them.
The COMTUA boss said that these people who after submitting their resignation letters three years ago, two years ago, last year and some this year, felt they could come back to say that they have dissolved the body.
He maintained that those speaking against COMTUA are no longer members of COMTUA, adding that the media and the general public should disregard any campaign of calumny as it stands now because COMTUA does not have any problem as a collaboration.
“We should not fail to remember that there is freedom of association. You can be in or out of association at will and since some people have chosen to be out of the association and they have followed the due process by writing officially to dissociate themselves from the association, it is okay and it has been accepted, that has been settled internally. Every other issue that we have among ourselves has been resolved internally and we will continue to do that because we have our internal mechanism to resolve conflicts,” he said.
He dismissed the noise been made by people who are no longer members of the collaboration and are determined to bring the name and the integrity of the association into disrepute.
He said that COMTUA will not fold its hands and look at them to engage in a campaign of calumny against the body beyond that, warning that if they fail to desist from their conduct, COMTUA will not hesitate to take a legal action against them.
He stressed that the body has no crisis within its fold save for those who have left the association trying to make noise.
On why MWUN and the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW) left the body, he explained that there was never a time the issue of trust had come up in COMTUA as there had never been any case of financial misappropriation or criminal allegation.
According to him, MWUN pulled out in 2021 and that was under the administration of Otunba Olaleye Thompson basically because they are actually not transporters, they are dockworkers, seafarers, NPA employees and so on.
He insisted that there was never a time the NURTW withdrew its membership of COMTUA, saying that the present co-Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the CIMTUA is Comrade Ibikunle Baruwa who is the President of NURTW.
Reiterating that COMTUA does not have any issue of trust with anybody, he stressed that there is nothing like financial misappropriation or criminal allegations in COMTUA and that those that actually withdrew their membership from COMTUA, have their personal reasons for doing so.
Aroyewun stated that though four associations have pulled out of the collaboration even as six other associations joined the body.
In his words: “And as much as about four associations have withdrawn their membership of the collaboration, six more associations have applied and are now members of COMTUA. We have the Green Initiative, Maritime Truck Drivers, the Lekki Fertilizer Group, the Arewa Group, the Marine Beach operators, Amuwo-Odofin Truck Operators and the rest of them. So, the collaboration is ongoing and we are waxing stronger and that is why you are seeing everybody showing concern about the existence of COMTUA. If COMTUA had issues, nobody would want to associate with it.”
Speaking on the achievements of the body since its inception about five years ago, he said, “Before COMTUA came into existence, a lot of issues were associated with the maritime transport industry. For example, we were faced with traffic, congestion, and the challenges of returning empty containers. It was through COMTUA that the introduction of holding bays where our members do not have to return empty containers to the port was actualized. What we do now is to return empty containers to the holding bays. It has saved the industry a lot of stress in the area of container deposit.
“Before now, when you load cargo, after discharging the cargo, you will be on the road for weeks before you are able to return the empty containers. The importer is incurring demurrage and the truck is also stuck. We no longer return empty containers to the port, we return them to the holding bays across Lagos State and beyond. This saves us a lot of turnaround time and this was an Initiative of COMTUA to the Nigerian Shippers’ Council and the Nigerian Ports Authority.
“Before now, the congestion in the port area is not only limited to the condition of the road, our drivers, from time to time, we are also educating them on the need to be more professional in their conduct and I can assure you, in recent times, the rate of accident has reduced and our drivers are more professional now. In addition to this, you will understand that COMTUA has been faced with a lot of challenges vis-a-vis so many unpopular policies of the government and we do not hesitate often to engage the government in policy making. For example, in the past, when the federal government was setting up the Presidential Task Team, members of COMTUA were included in that project and that project stayed for a period and served some of the purposes even though there were challenges.
On the issue of limiting the export processing terminals to five by NPA, he stated that the matter is in court and that the court has placed it on hold pending its final determination.