Postmaster General: Why Establishing NIPOST Bank is Not Feasible Now
Dele Ogbodo in Abuja
The Post Master-General of the Nigeria Postal Service (NIPOST), Mr. Bisi Adegbuyi, tuesday said the federal government has laid to rest consideration for the establishment of NIPOST bank as such project is not feasible under the present economic realities and dispensation.
Adegbuyi, who fielded questions at the sideline of its 2015 Merit Awards ceremony for its deserving staff in Abuja, said NIPOST would however go into agency banking because of the nature of its economic environment.
He said: “I think that issue has been laid to rest on whether a country needs a post bank is a function of its peculiarities. There is a post bank in India. There are no post banks in Kenya and United States.
“What we are likely to do here in Nigeria, having looked into our peculiarities and circumstances, is to go into agency banking.
“If commercial banks today are closing some of their branches in rural areas because of innovativeness and technologies, I don’t think that is a route for us to establish post bank in the country. What we will rather do is to create agency banking to increase our revenue.”
According to him, its technical advisers have advised that cocktail of payment settlement through agency banking and financial services can comparatively yield quick results without regards to its heavy, recurrent expenditure that is today a major albatross for the services.
On what he has been doing since assumption of office few months back, he said: “We have been laying foundation, though nobody will see such immediately.
“I have been working with men and women to bring about operational efficiency in the Nigerian postal services. And that calls for deployment of innovative services and technology.”
According to him, NIPOST will be deploying innovative technologies to improve operational efficiency, adding: “We are currently talking to ICT experts on how to reduce the recurrent expenditure content of NIPOST’s budget.
“With technology, NIPOST will improve its track trace operations which is the soul of the service anywhere in the world
“We want Nigerians to post letters or parcels and be able to track it on day-to-day basis, and migrating from the old analogue system to contenporary systems”
For effective service delivery in the sector, he said a lot of things would have to change in the system, adding that this can only be done through the Procurement Act and passing into law the postal reform bill.
On the target of N1 trillion annually set up by the government, the postmaster-general said: “Projections are supposed to guide you. Budgets are supposed to be estimates of what you are supposed to do. If you put in the necessary parameters, you may be able to achieve it.
