A crucial meeting to harmonize the long awaited postal policy and new postal legislation that will regulate and restructure the postal sector.
The objectives of the postal reform include among others, the granting the postal sector sufficient autonomy to run its own affairs, guarantee all segments of the population access to universal service, provision of quality services which support the Universal Service Obligation (USO), separate operators from regulator and policy makers and ensure an open, liberalized market with equal opportunity for all players.
Alhaji Ibrahim Nakande, minister of state for Information and Communication, told CommunicationsWeek last week that” we are going to regulate the postal and courier sector because we cannot have a situation in which NIPOST will be a competitor with the other players in the industry in which it is regulating at the same time . So very soon, we have perfected the laws. We will soon present it to the National Assembly so that the Nigerian postal regulation will be created and NIPOST will now compete with the other players in the industry. We will have one very soon”.
The Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) also confirmed that the instrument is nearing completion as the two important documents have been subjected to extensive stakeholders’ scrutiny.
The issue of postal regulation has been in the front burner for sometime now as courier operators argue that it is not ideal for a department of NIPOST to be the regulator of the sector when NIPOST is also a player.
The feeler that the postal policy document will soon be ratified is therefore a welcome as the legislation will change a lot of things in the system.
The postal reform will also guarantee economic viability of the public postal operator to ensure that generality of the people have access to services according to the technological evolution of the postal service to achieve quality standards that can compare to the best practice the world over.