The Nigeria Postal Services has disclosed its plan to open no fewer than 10,000 smart offices across the country in line with the Federal Government’s digital economy policy.
Giving this indication in an interview with journalists in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital on Friday, was the Postmaster General of the Federation, Dr Ismail Adewusi.
Adewusi, who was on the inspection of the NIPOST’s facilities in Oyo State, said with technical advancement across the globe, letter writing is already out of vogue.
In the light of this, he said the postal services had initiated creative business methodologies in a bid to maintain its relevance.
The NIPOST boss said, “We want to be a one-stop outfit where you can do many transactions like collection of your international passport, driving license, capture your National Identity Card images; all these are the E-governance platforms that we are developing. We want to run a smart outlet post office services. It would not be big but you will be able to do all your transactions.
“We are going to use the new technology platform. Presently, we have the license to do international cash transfer. The citizens would be able to do their online transactions at our smart outlets in pursuit of the digital economy policy of the Federal Government.”
According to him, with about 13,000 staff in the 3,000 outlets across the country, NIPOST would begin the new operation with the current staff strength and expand its frontiers later.
On the current state of postal services in the country, he said,
“After the pandemic, things have been very difficult for the postal services sector. It is not the sector alone that is affected; it is a global problem. During the lockdown, we could not move our mails. That impacted negatively on our revenue. The Nigerian airspace is yet to be opened. These impacted negatively on our operations.
“Mails are reducing as people no longer send letters. The reform is in place to ensure that NIPOST is commercially run as a viable business entity. NIPOST Properties and Development Company Limited as well as NIPOST Transport Company and Logistics Limited are already registered. We have NIPOST bank being run like a microfinance bank with branches across Nigeria. All of these are new initiatives that we are pursuing.
“Now, we don’t have enough postal outlets. The ones that we have now were designed several years ago. In Ibadan, we have about eight post offices. Ibadan is so large that we need to take our services down to the grassroots where it is needed. Definitely, when we set up those smart offices, working with the private sector of course, we are going to have more than 10,000 outlets all over Nigeria. We have about 3,000 outlets all over Nigeria.
“We want to bring postal services right to the doorstep of all Nigerians. We are going to be working with the private sector to develop this franchise across Nigeria. By this, the efficiency of investment would be further enhanced if we partner with the private sector. We are talking about the need to enhance our services delivery capacity. It is not about the physical structure first. If the offices look so fanciful but you post a letter and it does not get there in the next two months, it doesn’t make sense.
“What we are doing since I came in is to reengineer our services delivery quality. For us, our main focus at the moment is to put all our services together and be competitive. At the moment, we don’t have staff that are idle.”
