Again, MWUN, AMATO Disown COMTUA

…Warns FG Agencies Against Encouraging Illegality By According It Attention

BY GBOGBOWA GBOWA

The Association of Maritime Truck Owners (AMATO) and the Maritime Workers Union of Nigeria (MWUN) have once again reiterated its earlier warning that the Council of Maritime Truck Unions and Associations (COMTUA) has since ceased to exist and therefore is no longer legitimate or recognised and has no standing in Nigeria’s maritime sector.

The two unions in a joint statement explained that the cessation of COMTUA is not only total and irreversible, but also official and permanent; to the extent of finality.

The two officially recognized groups urged agencies of government in the maritime industry including the Nigerian Ports Authority, Nigerian Ports Police, the DSS, including other regulatory agencies such as NAFDAC, NDLEA, NESTREA, SON, Quarantine, Port Health and all other similar agencies to desist forthwith from given any entity with the name COMTUA, any form of attention as doing so tend to encourage illegality which the view as dangerous and unhealthy to national productivity and service delivery.

Speaking on the development, Chief Remi Ogungbemi, Chairman of AMATO, and Kennedy Ikemefuna, Head of Media at MWUN, restated the position first made public in August 2023 that COMTUA has been disbanded by its founding unions and associations.

Pinnacle Time reporter gathered that despite the disbandment of the body in 2023, some jobless characters have been going from office to office amongst government agencies, deploying harassments and blackmail to attract attention.

Some of the illegal affronts deployed according to informed sources include letters of complainants of perceived corrupt practices and extortion, done in the group’s letter-headed paper, despite having no locus under the law to police the activities of the national economy or maritime industry.

Additional report indicate that of recent, the fake persona behind the non- existent COMTUA has found an ally in a similar rabble-rouser group that names itself a national compliance joint task force on behalf of licensed customs agents; as self appointed industry police designed to fight corruption.

Industry observers believe that these agent provocateurs which are by no mean limited to those already identified are having a field day because of the general laxity or indifference in the sector. It encourages non state actors to assume the roles of regulators; while going around with terrible stench of corruption in their fields of practice as industry players.

These characters have reduced Nigeria into a laughing stock, where the regulated have turned around to become regulators; a development that has defined out statehood as mere joke, in which the system is held to ransom; it smacks of the greatest insult and lack of governmental discipline.

Speaking on the COMTUA saga, Ogungbemi said anyone parading himself as COMTUA or representing COMTUA is not only an impostor but doing so at his own peril.

“It has been disbanded,” Ogungbemi said.

In the same vein, President General of MWUN, Comrade Francis Bunu Abi challenged organs of the federal and state government in the port to sit up to their responsibility and not cede their functions to gangsters.

The MWUN leader who spoke through Union Head of Media Relations, Mr. Kennedy Ikemefuna said, “Whoever he is talking to, that is their business because they are no longer with Maritime Workers Union of Nigeria.”

He emphasized that MWUN, along with the other founding bodies, no longer recognizes COMTUA in any form.

This reaffirmation comes in response to recent claims by unidentified individuals purporting to represent COMTUA and attempting to engage in negotiations on behalf of truckers and others in the maritime sector.

According to both AMATO and MWUN, such individuals are acting without authority and in direct defiance of the formal dissolution of COMTUA. In August 2023, seven major unions and associations — MWUN, AMATO, the Nigerian Association of Road Transport Owners (NARTO), Road Transport Employers Association of Nigeria (RTEAN), National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW), Container Truck Owners Association of Nigeria (COTOAN), and Amalgamation of Container Truck Owners Association of Nigeria (ACTOAN) which birthed COMTUA —met and formally disbanded COMTUA.

The dissolution followed the issuance of alert and stern warning to all stakeholders and security agencies not to engage with anyone acting under the banner of the rested body.

At the official dissolution ceremony held at the NARTO Secretariat in Lagos, COMTUA’s founding president, Thomson Olaleye, declared that the council had “outlived its usefulness” and ceased to exist as of July 31, 2023.

“Consequently, the freedom to associate, under which COMTUA was formed, has ceased upon the termination of the MoU and the body hitherto called COMTUA has died,” Olaleye said at the time.

Security agencies and government bodies were formally notified and instructed to treat any ongoing operations or representations by COMTUA-affiliated individuals as illegal.

“Whoever parades himself as executive of the body should be treated as an impostor and subsequently arrested,” the group warned.

Despite the public notice and reports about the dissolution of COMTUA, the founders of the defunct group allege that some persons have been going around and parading the disbanded group, causing great nuisance within official circles while apparently being encouraged by some institutions of government.

According to impeccable sources, the embarrassment has become unbearable as the said COMTUA and those promoting it have violated the sanctity of official spaces with an avalanche of petitions flying around offices of federal and state attorney generals and the ministries of justice, NPA, Port Police, ICPC, EFCC amongst others.

The question on the lips of concerned industry players is if the federal government will find the courage and political will to stem this latest affront on the nation’s constitutional framework and the current state of ambivalence.