The Chairman of the Nigerian Postal Service Governing Board, Barrister Isaac Kekemeke, has admitted that the agency has failed to meet public expectations over the years but is now poised for a turnaround.

Speaking at the maiden meeting with top management, General Managers of Commercial Business Units, and State Postal Managers in Abuja on Monday, Kekemeke said efforts were underway to reposition NIPOST and restore the confidence of Nigerians.

“We know that over time we have disappointed Nigeria and Nigerians, but we are going to come up, after now, to tell Nigerians that we are ready,” he said.

“We are set to redirect the efforts and to put NIPOST on the path of progress. We will become an organisation they will be proud of, and the trust that we have lost will be restored by the way and manner we do things from now.”

He stressed that funding was not the major challenge facing the agency but rather the need for a renewed attitude and actionable goals.

“Get the job done first before funding. It’s the job first, not funding. If you bring all the funds and you have no attitude in action, your fund is going to go into the same drain. Fund isn’t the problem. We can create a fund,” Kekemeke said.

“Nigerians will be shocked that at the end of these two-day discussions, we’re going to have a new NIPOST—not the old NIPOST that they used to have,” he added.

Also speaking, the Chief Executive Officer of NIPOST, Tola Odeyemi, said the agency was actively working to rebrand itself and align with global trends in postal logistics.

“We’ve been working hard to change the face of NIPOST, to change the perception of NIPOST. But with the onboarding of Chief Kekemeke as Chairman of the Governing Board, I think what we’ll see is an accelerated improvement in the Nigerian Postal Service,” she said.

Odeyemi explained that NIPOST had signed onto the Postal Prosperity Zoom project, a global initiative of the Universal Postal Union, aimed at helping designated postal operators reclaim lost volumes from e-commerce giants.

“What UPU is doing in conjunction with these e-commerce giants is reintroducing those volumes of e-commerce packets back into the designated operator. NIPOST is the designated operator for Nigeria,” she said.

“So both the clearing, customs clearing, warehousing, reverse logistics—everything—is what NIPOST has now signed on to with the UPU. So we’ll be starting that project very soon.”

She further revealed that NIPOST had developed a unified postal management system to enhance e-commerce, postal, and logistics operations.

“We’ve digitised our e-commerce and logistics. We have a commercial business unit that’s called e-commerce and logistics,” she said.

“Working with Sendbox, we’ve created a platform where e-commerce companies, retailers, and wholesalers can use us. Our first consignment went out on that platform on Thursday, April 12, and we already have people onboarding with us to use NIPOST as their last-mile distribution partner.”

Odeyemi added that the agency had also partnered with logistics platform Messenger to allow MSMEs and individual riders to use NIPOST’s infrastructure for deliveries.

She said NIPOST had made significant progress in digitising its customs duty payment system to enhance transparency.

“We’re working with Paystack on the digitisation of our customs duty, which is probably one of the most problematic things that people know about NIPOST—customs duty handling charges,” she said.

“So now we’ve completely removed the human element and digitised the system, so you can pay your customs duty with full transparency.”

On financial services, she said, “We’re also completely digitising our internal financial services with Interswitch. We’ve built our PostMoney platform. We’re working with Parthian Capital and Ecode to relaunch our super agency licensing and IMTO operations.”

Credit: punchng.com