Report Of Stolen Identity Of Lawyer By NECOM Fictitious, Baseless-ANLCA

Africa’s largest group of Customs Brokers, the Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA) on Thursday described as fictitious and baseless, a report written by an online news site (Name withheld) alleging that the associations National Executives Committee members (NECOM) stole the identity of a lawyer to obtain a judgement against the factional  Board of Trustees (BOT) headed by Alhaji Taiwo Mustapha in SUIT NO: FHC/AB/CS/109/2021 on 20th January 2022 at the Federal High Court, Abeokuta, Ogun State.

Reacting to the report on Thursday, the acting National President of ANLCA, Dr. Kayode Farinto described the writer of the report as a person who is known to all stakeholders in the industry as one who writes for personal aggrandizement.

Farinto described the report as an indictment on the NECOM members integrity, this is even as he denied knowing the lawyer mentioned in the report.

According to the acting ANLCA President, “The first thing i need to mention is that the man that went to court is one of our members whose name is Alhaji Aliyu Lameen. He took the new BoT to court and the judgement was obtained. So, I was surprised to read a report online 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 all the NECOM members have high integrity

 “We are going to give it to our lawyers to address it, because that report has indicted us. We have said it several times that some journalists are in the habit of writing fictitious stories. Stories that are unfounded. We won’t let this go bye. We are already discussing with our lawyers

“The purported suit number that the Reporter quoted is a case that is coming up on Monday, so it’s different from what happened at Abeokuta. The Reporter has mixed it up and the so called affidavits he displayed on his platform, he quoted number 1 to 5 and jumped to no 42; what happened to the numbers in-between? We even don’t know the authenticity of the documents he displayed, but we just want to correct the impression that NECOM has done something that is not in line with the procedures.

“And this so-called affidavit we are seeing it for the first time and we just want the industry to know that the story written by this online medium is  fake. The Reporter is always in the habit of writing for personal aggrandizement.”

When quizzed whether it’s true that NECOM actually stole the lawyer identity to falsely obtain a certificate of registration from the CAC, Dr. Farinto explained that  “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 door, and we wrote to the CAC that this is the certificate that Taiwo Mustapha is parading, the CAC issued a letter canceling the certificate. So Taiwo Mustapha went to court suing CAC and NECOM. However, they lost out in that court ruling because the ruling in that case is that they should come back to NECOM for arbitration.

“Ater failing to come for arbitration seven months after, we filed the ruling to CAC stating our new Board members and CAC informed that the association was owing about seven years remittance. We paid the remittance, made another advert and the CAC gave us another certificate on the 7th of September 2022.

“But the Taiwo Mustapha led group have been claiming that they have a so-called letter of cancellation. We have a letter written to us, so if they have any letter canceling our certificate let them present it” the acting ANLCA President added.