Illegal Courier Operators Double as Bureau de Change

The Courier Regulatory Department (CRD) of Nigeria Postal Service (Nipost), recently discovered that illegal courier operators, also operate as Bureau de Change in Benin City, Edo State.
At a recent clamp down operation on illegal courier operators by CRD  in Benin, led by Dr. Simon Emeje, senior assistant postmaster general and head of CRD, said a good number of illegal courier operators in Benin have Bureau de Change and hide under the canopy to do courier business.
According to Dr. Emeje, the people who do illegal courier business in Benin are unorganized but organized in their crime ventures, because they transact their business in foreign currency.
It is important to note here that the value of courier services has become more relevant and important to both personal and business interactions especially in this information age when modern means of transportation and communication has evolved, hence courier companies should endeavour to register with CRD.
Present day courier service has wider tentacles using extensive network of men, machine and ingenuity. In Nigeria, especially in Lagos, Port Harcourt and Abuja, you can hardly cover a pole without sighting either a courier billboard advert or a courier agency.
However, the courier business in Nigeria has also attracted players who rather than follow the proper channel of acquiring courier license would go all out to catch in on the new openings in the sector without   getting a license from CRD. The proliferation in the sector has become so alarming to the extent that somebody delivering a paper in a courier event last year, quoted the number of courier companies in Nigeria to be 700. The outrageous number was borne out of naivety that not all courier companies operating in Nigeria are registered.
According to her, within the same building her office (Asset Management company) is located, there are several courier companies operating in the same building.
This is the stack reality of how the industry is, where the number of unlicensed courier companies by far outnumber the registered ones.
The Courier Regulatory Department of Nipost was created as a child of circumstance to sanitize the courier industry in Nigeria and true to expectation; the department has done so much within its mean resources to bring sanity into the industry. Looking at the achievements of the regulatory body, courier operators have variously agitated that it be empowered by the government to enable it face the onerous challenges weighing it down. They argue that the regulatory responsibility handled by  the CRD vide Decree 41 of 1992 is highly limited in powers and that this limitation has not allowed the department  to regulate the way it should even though it has recorded breathtaking achievements in the industry .
Under the leadership of Dr Simon Emeje, the CRD has been able to transform the courier industry from the mess it was some years ago to the level it is now.   However the war is far from being won though the department has been launching attacks on illegal courier companies almost on monthly basis irrespective of where the fake courier company is located in Nigeria.
The regulatory department has also reassured that more raids will be launched on some illegal courier companies already identified and penciled down for attack. The efforts of men of the CRD have saved several millions of naira for genuine courier companies who are already facing a lull in their business as a result of the economic recession.
As the year has just began, courier companies are also required to renew their licenses to enable them operate in the New Year.  The activities of the fake courier operators cut down the income of the licensed ones such that many of the registered firms are facing extinction.
In the whole process, government seems unperturbed by the activities of illegal courier operators who have constantly made the pockets of registered ones to be bleeding. Illegal courier companies operate in a different world and it can only take adequate measures to be able to contend with the scourge.