ANLCA, Acting President, Dr Kayode Farinto; Chairman BoT, Dr Taiwo Afolabi and Vice- Chairman, Ozo Chukura, displaying the association’s BoT recently in Lagos.
KOREDE FOGO
The National Executive Committee (NECOM), of the Association of Nigerian Licenced Customs Agents (ANLCA), has described as lie report that it stole the identity of a lawyer to obtain a court judgement against the factional Board of Trustees (BOT) members headed by Alhaji Taiwo Mustapha.
An online news medium (Not BUSINESSINSIDERNG), on Thursday, alleged that the ANLCA’s NECOM had allegedly stolen an identity of a lawyer in suit FHC/AB/CS/109/2021, at the Federal High Court, Abeokuta, Ogun State.
Speaking to journalists, the acting National President of ANLCA, Dr. Kayode Farinto, described the report as fictitious and baseless and as imagination of the writer.
Farinto who denied knowing the acclaimed lawyers whose identify the association’s NECOM was accused of stealing, disclosed the the report was a figment of the imagination of the writer.
He, however, explained that it was a member of the association, Aliyu Lameen, who took the BoT headed by Alhaji Taiwo Mustapha to court and not the NECOM.
Farinto said, ” The first thing i need to mention is that the man that went to court is one of our members and he is, Alhaji Aliyu Lameen, he took the new BoT to court and a judgement was obtained. The story as fictitiously narrated by the obscure online medium yesterday was that the expired NECOM may have used the stolen identity of a lawyer to obtain a judgement against the Taiwo Mustapha led faction. That’s an indictment on our part, because NECOM members are of high integrity
“We will inform our lawyer about this report, because the reporter that authored the report indicted us. However, the purported suit no he quoted was a case that is coming up on Monday and that is different from what happened at Abeokuta. He has muddled everything up and on the affidavits he displayed, why did he quote number 1 to 5 and jumped to number 42? What happened to other numbers in between?” He asked rhertorically.
He continued, “We don’t know the authenticity of this document, but we just want to correct the the false impression by the report that NECOM has done something that is not in line with the procedures. The affidavit he quoted was seen for the first time, however, we want the industry to know that the story written by the online medium is fake,” he said.
However, when journalists queried whether the NECOM actually stole any lawyer’s identity to falsely obtain a certificate of registration from the CAC, he explained, “That’s not true because you will recollect that when Taiwo Mustapha said they got a certificate of registration from CAC 30 days to the expiration of their tenure through the back doors, we wrote to the CAC about the certificate and they issued a letter canceling the certificate.
“Taiwo Mustapha went to court suing CAC and NECOM, in that court ruling they lost out because the ruling in that case was that they should come back to NECOM for arbitration and seven months after failing to come for arbitration, we filed the ruling to CAC stating our new board members that was where CAC informed us that the association was owing about seven years remittances, we paid the remittances, made another advert and the CAC gave us a fresh certificate on the 7th of September 2022. The Taiwo Mustapha led faction has been claiming they have a so-called letter of cancellation, when their own cancellation was done, we have a letter written to us, so if they have any letter canceling our certificate let them present it,” he stated.