NIPOST Raids Unlicensed Courier Operators, Dispatch Riders in Lagos

Emma Okonji

The enforcement team of the Courier and Logistics Regulatory Department (CLRD) of the Nigerian Postal Service (NIPOST), last week, clamped down unlicensed courier operators, including Express, Delivery, Dispatch and Logistics operators in Lagos State, who were illegally operating without operational licence. The CLRD enforcement team, carried out the raid in partnership with the men of the Force Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Department (FCIID), and several armed mobile police officers, in company of the media that witnessed the exercise.

Part of the statutory mandate of NIPOST is to regulate, licence, and monitor the Postal, Courier, Express and Logistics industry in Nigeria, in line with the statutory provisions of Section 43 (1,2 and 3) of the NIPOST ACT.

Addressing the media shortly after the clampdown, the General Manager, CLRD, Mr. Gideon Oludotun Shonde, who represented the Postmaster General of the Federation/CEO of NIPOST, Sunday Adeyemi Adepoju, said those were arrested during the clampdown, were arrested for various offences ranging from illegal operation to under-cutting of cost to the detriment of courier and logistics business in Nigeria.  

He added that CLRD would continue on its clampdown exercise until it sanitises the industry of all forms of sharp practices, adding that the enforcement and clampdown operations, cut across all the states of the federation and have come to stay.

Shonde said CLRD carried out different dimensions of public enlightenment and sensitisation programmes, before the commencement of the enforcement activities.

“CLRD had over time, received several public complaints about the unprofessional conducts and unethical sharp practices displayed by unlicensed courier and logistics operators such as carriage of prohibited items, illicit drugs, obscene articles, price undercutting, pilfering, damaging of parcels, loss of customers packages, dumping of customers items, and obtaining money by trick from unsuspecting customers under false pretences without delivery services, among others. The recalcitrant, most times, do not have traceable premises of operation and they have created a negative image for the industry nationwide, and they have also brought about unwarranted hardship to Nigerians by their misguided entities,” Shonde said.

He emphasised that no person or group of persons would be allowed to continue in economic sabotage and other criminal offences by operating an illegal and unlicensed Courier Express, Delivery, Dispatch and Logistics business nationwide without a grant of license from the federal government.