Baba Mori, Post Master General of Nigeria: We want NIPOST to be a one stop shop

Ibrahim Baba Mori, Post Master General of Nigeria, recently took a facility tour of Speedyprints, a subsidiary of Superflux, one of its partners. In this interview with GODFREY OFURUM, he gave insight into their relationship, the postal reform bill and more

Postal reform

Well, it depends on what the government wants to achieve at the end of the day and how they want to position NIPOST. But from our own point of view, we are looking even from the consultant's point of view.

Firstly, we want to strengthen the present status or position of NIPOST and then the next level will be to commercialize certain aspects of the post. And as far as we are concerned, for over four to five years, we would have involved the private sector in our operations. We do not move our mails in the highways; some other persons do that for us. Even though you see the trucks in our coolers and names but we do it in partnership with some companies. Those companies that move our mails solely own those trucks. We have extended such partnership to move our mails along the West Coast of Africa. So, we have two trucks that move our mails from Badagry in Lagos State to Cote d'Ivoire through Benin, through Accra and the Gambia.

Postal Commission

This is something that we have been clamoring for because you cannot be a player and at the same time be a referee. The mandate created problem for us and we are happy that stakeholders after their meeting in April, 2007 agreed to sponsor a bill for a postal commission.

And that bill has been proposed for the establishment of a postal service commission, which is expected to regulate all postal players in the country including NIPOST, which is a national carrier operator. At the moment, all the documents are still with the ministry. It had not gone beyond that because the conclusions of those discussions were made before the exit of the last administration. As soon as the new ministers are appointed and ours assume duty, it should be the first thing that we will present to the Federal Executive Council because it has to be discussed at that level. Such a policy has to be approved by the executive council.

Effect of postal reform

Some of the challenges before NIPOST are the frequent changes of peoples' addresses. You will agree with me that even the place you reside now; the streets are not well numbered. And yet people will want NIPOST to do magic and some people may not renew their postal boxes and by our rule, once you do not renew your box numbers, you will not get your mails and those are some of the problems.

We know our weaknesses.

There are also problems if not solved will affect our job and this has to do with the movement of people from one location to another. When you are moving and you already have an address with NIPOST, you are expected to fill a form, notifying us of your new location, which you are supposed to drop in your postal box, which we can use in tracking you.

However, quite a number of people do not observe this and yet they believe NIPOST can perform magic and get their mails to them.

But like I have always said, I am not really bothered much about some of these things, because I know that every organisation has its own weaknesses. Some of these weaknesses are not even owned solely from your own level but has to do with the absent of infrastructural facilities that should be put in place.

Effect of reforms on mail delivery

We have not shifted grounds from what we promised Nigerians. The 72 hours, 36 hours, 24 hours and 12 hours we promised are still in place. For example, a letter from Lagos to Kaduna should not take more than 72 hours. However, it depends on what part of Kaduna the mail is going to. If it is actually going to a mailbox in Kaduna town, I can tell you that in less than 36 hours it will be in Kaduna.

But also if it is going out of Kaduna town, it will take another 12 hours, but in most cases over 75 percent of letters get to their destinations in 72 hours.

Competition

I have said this umpteenth time that the private sector will play a complementary role when they come on board. Currently, there is no clear cut difference between the services rendered by the private courier companies and what we offer.

I am not sure you are aware that most of the services of these courier companies terminate where you have airports and probably seaports. If you are now talking about a mail going to my state, Kebbi, the best they can do is to get it to Sokoto. They might not be able to take it to my village. If you talk in terms of comparative advantage, that has to do with things they have and we do not have, vice versa. But when it comes to spread, there is no way private courier companies can match our business.

Grow the mail

Grow the mail is an initiative of NIPOST, in partnership with some private companies including Speedyprints. However, the modalities are still being walked out. The aim is to increase the volume of mails and also to let people know that they can place adverts on our envelopes.

Grow the mail benefits

In NIPOST, we are concerned about what we call the last mile. And that last mile also depends on what time the last mail will get to its destination. I believe from this meeting Speedyprints will be able to solve a number of problems for us. At least, they will be able to sort the mails and that is what we call the last line. Instead of us taking the mails from different areas, they will do it for us and all we would do is to know the destination of the mails and as soon as they come, we arrange them in states and towns and put them in our system.

Impression of Speedyprint

I am happy that I was able to make it to this place today because I had been promising to be here to see for myself the facilities they have and thank God that I was able to make it, and what they have here is fantastic.

Partnership with Speedyprints

When we were engaged in moving NITEL bills before its privatization and outright sale and purchase by Transcorp, the volume of our mails actually jumped to unprecedented percentage. Even though it made us to hire extra hands but then it was challenging and one we really cherished because it also made us to look inwards to re-design our works. It was an experience that we were happy about and it generated additional income.