Africa’s digital rise hooked on innovation —Report

THE Postmaster-General and Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian Postal Service (NIPOST), Mr Adebisi Adegbuyi, has said that the role of technology in the administration of postal services is preeminent and that for any postal system to compare favourably anywhere in the world, it must put technology first in the scheme of things.

Adegbuyi, who spoke at the end of the Strategic management retreat of the agency in Ogun State, recently, also disclosed that NIPOST under his watch would work hard to be customer-centric as the customer remains the king. He disclosed that the new postal service would be fully automated so that customers would be able to track their wares as they move from one point to the other.

“We have come up with strategies that would ensure that our customers are kings.  We exist because of them and if they don’t patronise us, it means we are not satisfying them, but our goal is to make them happy and if they are happy, they will come back.

“How do we make them happy? Somebody who patronises the post is interested in tracking and tracing his mails, parcels and all of that. Once he knows it has left one location for another, he’s very happy because he knows when to pick it.

“ And pursuant to thereto, we have commenced operations to migrate from our analogue tracking system to the latest digital tracking system which will allow cutomers to track and trace their goods real time online. We are very confident that as we are reforming, we are doing things differently, our customers will benefit immeasurably and we will retain their loyalty and that in itself will ensure will ensure will remain afloat,” he stated.

The Minister of Communications, Barrister Adebayo Shittu, who declared the retreat closed said in his remarks that when the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari came on board, it discovered that NIPOST had fallen behind because of the introduction of GSM and internet. He said the government felt something must be done to save NIPOST since it is one of the oldest agencies of government and that because of its age; it has several infrastructure all over the country.

The minister said in order to bring back the glory of the agency; utilise its infrastructure and the personnel that the government decided to reform the agency by appointing new management with the mandate to reform and reposition NIPOST. He said he was confident that the retreat would have afforded the management opportunity to come up with more innovation and ideas to move the agency forward into what the government envisaged.