We’re collaborating with govt to reduce poverty — Postmaster General

Dr Adebayo Ismail Adewusi, Postmaster General of the Federation and Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian Postal Service (NIPOST), in this interview with SULAIMON OLANREWAJU, speaks about his plan to transform the organisation into one of the best postal administrations in the world.

 

What is your vision for NIPOST?

I must say that before I came into NIPOST as the Post Master General, I didn’t actually know the extent of decay that the NIPOST has become and going in there to see the level of the crisis ravaging the sector, particularly the industry across the world, I’d say that the major problem afflicting postal administration all over the world is the same. It may differ from country to country, but fundamentally, the problem is the same. Disruptive technology and its impact on the postal services sector is a major problem that affects all the postal administrations across the world. The advent of technology, the use of the internet has seriously hampered the growth of letter writing as it were. You will agree with me that when we were younger, there was nobody who did not patronise the post office, but today it’s not the case anymore.

It’s a real problem which on a day to day basis we try to see how to solve. But I must say that despite all the problems, the postal services sector still plays a very critical role in any economy. It goes beyond posting letters to linkages between people and people physically. We also have the equipment and all manner of contact that is created because of the post. So, the post is still very critical.

Today, the post is doing so many things. As we lost a number of products; you know today, you hardly find the post selling postal order because those services are no longer needed. But we can still be involved in transferring money from one bank to the other, using the internet. So, we don’t need some of these traditional instruments. But the post today carries out other services like e-commerce. We have also discovered that the post is now more positioned even to do international money transfer services through our financial services partners. That is actually moving. Recall that the amount of diaspora remittance to Nigeria has increased and most people send money to their parents in the villages and the hinterlands where there are no banks. The post is doing a lot of work in ensuring that most of the people in rural areas are captured in the financial inclusion programme of the Central Bank of Nigeria.

On a constant basis, things are changing and we need to evolve and follow the trend, otherwise, we will be left behind. At NIPOST, we say that technology has assisted us a great deal because these days you can send a letter and with the use of technology you can track it. Track and trace, that’s what we call it in postal services. So, it’s very easy to monitor your mails and parcels using modern technology and the internet.

For me, I see the postal service even bigger in the future, because my vision of a post is a post that is able to operate as a one-stop shop; that you can enter a post office and do so many transactions at the same time. You should be able to enter a post office through our digital services and apply for an international passport and get it delivered to your doors. You should be able to use a postal facility to do your driver’s licence and renew the same. Most of these things are traditional things the post office is supposed to do and that is why we are trying to bring them back now, so that, rather than waiting endlessly to get these services you can stay wherever you are and access the services.

 

Is NIPOST involved in agency banking, given the number of outlets you have across the country?

Yes, we are. As a matter of fact, we have a super agency licence from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). And that is what we use to bring forth financial inclusion and which goes beyond the city centres to hinterlands. So, we are very active in agency banking right now.

 

What’s the level of your involvement in international money transfers?

We have an International Money Transfer Operator (IMTO) licence which we also use to handle most of these international money transfer services. Apart from the ones we do, we also have partners like the Western Union. So, we are constantly there.

 

On e-commerce, what do you do?

E-commerce is very direct and simple. What happens is you can place an order for a specific item from anywhere in the world. Because NIPOST is a public postal operator; any package, parcel or letter must first of all be discharged at our facility at the airport in Lagos. That is where we sort letters and ensure there are no dangerous items like drugs and weapons. That is where most people who are into merchandising through any of the well-known names in e-commerce everything they send comes first. Right now it’s becoming a very huge market because it is tedious to the youth and you know somebody can stay in Ibadan and order for products directly from China. Then those products would be delivered to their doorsteps. It is through the e-commerce services that we are able to ensure that this is done seamlessly.

 

Does NIPOST contribute to the Federal Government or wait for subventions?

The truth is, right now, NIPOST is not on government subvention. For about 25 years now, NIPOST has not benefited from the direct allocation for both capital and recurrent (expenditure). The only thing NIPOST benefits from the government is that the government pays the wage bill of workers. Don’t forget that by its establishment and membership of the Universal Postal Union, NIPOST is obliged under the Universal Service Obligation to subsidise most of its products lower than the market rate. For example, if you are posting a letter from Lagos to Maiduguri under the current tariff rate, it is N50 and that letter will still get delivered. So, you discover that NIPOST is subsidising to the extent of meeting with Universal Service Obligation of the UN Universal Postal Union mandate. But you know, the truth is that a lot of reform is coming up now because it’s not easy for an agency of government to go for 25 years without any capital funding as it were. But what the government is doing now is to commercialise some of our processes so that we’d be able to sustain the delivery of quality services to Nigerians at affordable rates. What the government has done is to set up two companies/subsidiaries for NIPOST. We now have a registered NIPOST Property Development Company Limited as well as NIPOST Transport and Logistics. Of course, we are in the process of acquiring a microfinance bank licence. We want to ensure that financial inclusiveness is driven further down to every nook and cranny of the country. These companies, when they become operational, hopefully by the second half of this year, we will be able to leverage our expansive network of facilities across the length and breadth of Nigeria. We are also a logistics company. If we have a subsidiary that tends towards meeting the logistics needs of our customers, it’ll help us. Many private operators are making a kill in that sector. Even under the current Postal Act, NIPOST is the regulator of all courier logistics operating companies in Nigeria. Recently, there’s been a lot of cries as to why we should be an operator and regulator at the same time. So, what has happened is that under the new NIPOST Bill which is currently undergoing final structural advancement we are going to have a separate commission that will be the regulatory commission. Regulating the operators is very critical because it goes beyond ensuring they play by the rules, there’s also one area of ensuring that security is not breached by printing illegally in that sector.

Only recently, the NDLEA in Abuja impounded several dispatch riders’ motorbikes because they were used to carry hard drugs. These are some of the things NIPOST is trying to do; ensure they are regulated, making sure they have offices and boards of directors who will be liable in the case that there is a problem. But most of these people you see on the street, many of them are not registered and not licensed and every effort we made in the past to bring them under the regulatory framework, they had always resisted it. But the truth is that we still have to ensure that we carry out the mandate under the law. It is important to ensure that most of these operators play by the rules so that their activities would be monitored. We have seen instances where people sent stuff and they were not delivered.

They have even gone into all manners of fraud using people’s items and not delivering them. So, that’s why we also appeal to the public to ensure they do not patronise them. They may charge below the industry rate in order to attract people but there’s a whole lot of danger using such unlicensed operators. It is at the detriment of those who patronise them and of course, it has a larger implication on our economy because those who are legitimately licensed to operate will be affected. So we are here to protect the interest of those who are properly licensed to operate.

 

The issue of unbundling of NIPOST has been there for a while. Is this review of the Act going to lead to the unbundling of the organisation or has the establishment of these subsidiaries commenced the process of the unbundling?

The truth is that the process has started. The BPE is midwifing it and a transaction advisor has put together all necessary framework and business plans for each of the companies. At the moment, the companies are even undergoing recruitment of management staff. The process is on and it has nothing to do with the law that is coming. Even under our existing law, there is nothing stopping NIPOST from having the subsidiaries operate in a manner that will support the kind of service that we offer. So, there is no problem with that.

 

What is the update on the issue between NIPOST and the FIRS?

Well, things have normalised a bit because, ordinarily, NIPOST is not at war with FIRS. FIRS has a mandate as a tax collecting agency of the government and our own focus is postal service.

However, under our laws and even under the newly amended Finance Act 2020, it is very clear that the role of NIPOST is to provide instruments to denote and authenticate documents and the only instrument that can be used is the stamp that is produced exclusively by the NIPOST. As a matter of fact, stamps are quasi money that carries a value. So, because of that, it is the convention that all postal operators across the 192-member nations of the UPU have the mandate to produce stamps and Nigeria is not an exception. NIPOST has been producing stamps for a long time.

When we were younger, anything you bought, even receipts were authenticated with a stamp which is crossed by the face. And the whole idea is to ensure that if there is fraud at any point in time, you can easily show that this is what happened. We’ve seen situations where NIPOST was invited to the court to validate certain receipts given through the stamp. You know stamps are not just there forever, if you buy a stamp now, two or three years later, that stamp can be replaced by another. By the time you purchase an item of value, the standard used is the one that authenticates. So, if someone tries to perform fraud and tries using the stamp that was produced 20 years ago, it is very easy to notice. And these are some of the things that stamp does as an instrument to validate, authenticate.

So, while the FIRS duty is to charge all manner of taxes, the only thing they can use to validate those transactions is the stamp. This is where we play our own role now. So, we are not at each other’s throats. We are supposed to be complementing each other. Our roles are complementary, not adversarial as it were. But there is a lot of misunderstanding in the public space as to why we continue to have this kind of problem. But we have had a series of meetings. Even last week we had a meeting where NIPOST with FIRS leadership met with some other agencies of our ministry. It was at the instance of our minister, the Minister of Communication and Digital Economy, Dr Isa Ibrahim Pantami, that we started this engagement. So, all the agencies under the Ministry of Communication and Digital Economy and their CEOs were in that parley where we established a synergy among all the agencies of government and the FIRS. Because NIPOST has been in the frontline, we were also there and looked at the major areas of our differences.

As it is now, things will soon be normalised.

 

Many things have happened since you became PMG. What kind of postal service do you want to leave behind?

I would like to leave the kind of postal service that can compare with contemporaries across the world. We were all living witnesses to the role of USPS in the last election of the US, where the postal service played very fundamental roles. I want to see NIPOST elevated to that level where as a critical national infrastructure we will begin to play relevant roles in the lives of the people by providing quality service because you know we are a service delivery organisation. We want to continue to sustain that quality service and want to be able to contribute meaningfully to lifting people out of poverty in line with the government vision. These are some of the things I want to ensure that I leave behind in NIPOST.

 

How does NIPOST lift people out of poverty?

There are a lot of things we do that affect the public, especially the youth. There is a very high content of youth empowerment in most of the things we do. For example, recently, NIPOST started working with NSCDC (Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps) to provide a platform — a verification service. And with that we will need several thousands of youths to serve as agents to drive this kind of initiative. Of course, once that process commences, anywhere you are within a-five kilometer radius, you are inside that platform. Once you are in the platform, you would be asked to verify any address within the locality and if you are the closest person, all you need to do is to move to that address and confirm that it is the real address and who is living there. One of the problems we have is that people put in the wrong addresses. When they are applying for anything, it’s a necessary requirement that you must have a valid address. But in Nigeria, a lot of people don’t do that, they just put anything down. But with this service, you can easily verify. With our relationship with NSCDC, it would be good for security agencies. So it would be easier for a policeman to ask ‘where do you live’, so it would not be difficult to verify when you are standing there. If you lie, they would be able to know. So, we are moving into that threshold of ensuring that security is improved upon by some of these services we provide and other little things we are trying to do to make a difference.

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