For God to regret ever creating man (human beings) according to the holy book, the Bible precisely, points to the fact that right from creation, human beings have been found to be the most difficult and complicated creatures to manage.
In other words, the actions of human beings fall into two categories consisting of either positivity or negativity or better still, they fall into either groups of the ‘lawful or the lawless’.
How a country or community is seen depends on which of these two groups has the upper hand. From observations, those in the lawless group seems to have gained the upper hand as witnessed in the level of decay that has eaten deep into the fabric of the society though, not necessarily limited to Nigeria.
The lawless group is responsible for the many ills and myriad of challenges ravaging Nigeria and dragging down the business of governance, individual efforts and other critical aspects of the society, especially in Nigeria.
For this group, whenever laws that will help transform the society or different organizations are made, theirs is to sabotage such as they are ever ready to cut corners for immediate gains without minding the implications of their actions on the majority.
This brings to the fore, the recent alarm raised by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on how some illegal travel agencies had continued to engage in the economic sabotage of the country through colluding with unpatriotic fellows to issue them Basic Travel Allowance (BTA) through the back door.
In a letter sent from the International Air Transport Association (IATA), through its head of Account Management, West and Central Africa, Dr. Samson Fatokun, to the President of NANTA, Mrs. Susan Akporiaye, IATA lamented how some unregistered travel agencies have engaged in issuance of tickets for fraudulent purchase of BTA, thus urging the leadership of NANTA to caution its members against such practices.
However, investigations conducted by the Crucial Moment have shown that none of these fraudulent travel agencies belong to the membership of NANTA, an umbrella body housing all registered and authentic travel agencies across the country.
Right from the tenure of the immediate past leadership of NANTA under Mr. Bankole Bernard and his successor, Mrs. Susan Akporiaye, top on the priority of the important association has been to separate the black legs from the genuine agencies for the purpose of giving it a better credibility needed to make transactions between air travelers and the genuine agencies more confident in the country.
In doing this, the leadership of NANTA has continued to ensure that all credible travel agencies register with it for the purpose of making them comply with the rules and regulations guiding the business of travel agency, in line with the rules of the Federal Government as spelt out by the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA).
Unfortunately, despite the efforts of the NANTA leadership, many bad eggs, who have refused to be registered, are the ones engaging in criminal activities like the issuance of fraudulent BTA to their co-conspirators.
Many innocent travelers had fallen victims of these fake travel agencies, who in their pretense to help them facilitate their travel documents, ended up defrauding them.
The painful part is that the actions of these fraudulent travel agencies often clash with the efforts of the registered and genuine NANTA whose members are made up of credible men and women struggling to make ends meet on one hand, and also make air travels seamless in line with international standards.
Since the CBN and IATA had alerted NANTA to the criminality of the fake travel agencies, the association, led by Akporiaye, has once again wasted no time in rallying round all the genuine members to expose such criminals to law enforcement agents for the sake of upholding the good image the association stood for.
Without doubt, the job of getting rid of the fake travel agencies is not that of NANTA alone but including that of the NCAA, security operatives, airlines and even air travelers who are the ones still patronizing them.
While there is the need for better working relationship between NANTA and the NCAA in further beaming searchlights on the fake agencies, the security operatives require intelligence gathering that will help in fishing out these bad eggs for prosecution.
Equally, the NCAA should go after the airlines whose workers engage in this criminality while air travelers and civil servants should be cautioned on the dangers in patronizing fake travel agencies if caught.
There is the need for all stakeholders to take this issue seriously in other to prevent the fraudulent agencies from scaring air travelers away or further portray Nigeria in bad light since foreigners had in the past fallen to the antics of the fake travel agencies.
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