Nigerian Shippers’ Council has entered into partnership with Multimix Academy to create awareness on the availability of the Cargo Defence Fund (CDF).
This agreement was reached when the Secretary of the Cargo Defence Secretariat, Mr. Okwudili Daniels paid a courtesy visit to the Director General of Multimix Academy, Dr. Obiora Madu last week.
According to Mr. Okwudili, the Cargo Defence Fund is a mutual scheme where importers and exporters contribute via annual registration fees, so that when a registered member runs into a problem, the fund could be used to assist the member in solving the problem.
“Cargo Defence Fund has a legal committee headed by a lawyer on the CDF board and the role of the role of this committee is to look into the complaints of members to establish whether CDF can assist the claimant by taking over the claim and pursuing it in court. When the committee is of the opinion that the case cannot succeed in court, a recommendation of the ex-gratia payment of 10% of the total loss is made to the board to approve and the complaint is paid.”
Okwudili stated that the CDF had been established by the Nigerian Shippers’ Council (NSC) when the Council noticed a very high rate of abandonment of legitimate claims by indigent Nigerian shippers who couldn’t afford the cost of pursuing their legitimate claims via courts or arbitration.
The CDF Secretary had lamented low patronage of the fund by importers and exporters despite the enormous benefits in the scheme, hence he admonished Multimix Academy to join in creating awareness on the Cargo Defence Fund.
In his remarks, the Director General of Multimix Academy, Dr. Obiora Madu gave assurances that the institution would collaborate in the dissemination of the initiative.
“There is need to create awareness on the Cargo Defence Fund because most importers and exporters are not aware of the programme. I believe this is a very laudable project that would help grow the non-oil sector.
However, Dr. Obiora admonished the CDF to ensure that the registration fees are moderate in order to encourage partnership.
Reacting to the cost of registration, the Secretary said, “The registration is only done once and renewable annually. For businesses between N1million to N10million it costs N15,000; businesses from N10million to N100million would pay N25,000; N100million to N1billion would pay N100,000, the charges are just token”
