National Addressing System is Key to Development – Musa

Umaru Musa, general manager Bulkpost, an arm of the Nigerian Postal Service has explained the whole idea behind the Postcode saying  it is part of the Nipost management effort at repositioning Nipost. He said that Ibrahim Mori Baba, postmaster general of the federation’s consciousness on the need for Nigerians to be able to get their items delivered safely and in tact ignited the recent effort to have a working postcode which Nigeria launched since 2000. He said the postmaster general is determined to ensure that all the salient and important national indicators that the Post ought to develop are put in place.  Musa said that over the years Nipost had been trying to improve on the postcode system until this year the postmaster is more determined than ever to have an effective postcode system for the country.
By postcode, Umaru said we are simply talking about our identifiers, the indices through which one can be located within the country. In United Kingdom, Germany and Nigeria such a system is known as postcode while in other parts of the world they call it other names.  In the United States for instance it is called zip code, pin code in India, all meaning the same thing. According to Umaru, what happens is that a country is divided into postcode zones for easy identification and basically postcode is of two types. It can be numeric or alpha-numeric. Musa explained that you can have postcodes that end in some word while you have others that are only numeric.
In the case of Nigeria, the whole country is divided into nine postal zones and the way it is zoned Musa explained is to create some level of historical contiguity. If we say 9 for instance, it means the whole of the north central area including the Federal Capital Territory, Niger, Plateau, Nassarawa and Benue states, while 1 is for Lagos and Ogun. 2 represents Oyo, Osun, Kwara and Kogi while Edo, Delta, Ondo and Ekiti share 3. Enugu, Anambra, Abia, Imo and Ebonyi have 4 whereas Rivers, Akwa Ibom, Cross River and Bayelsa   have 5 as their postal code. Other remaining states are also constituted into their postal zones contiguously. Nigeria’s postal code is 100000 and if you are in Lagos for example you have 100001 depending on the area of Lagos you are.   In all cases the main general post offices in each state have to end in 1.  Musa enlightened that postcode is normally made in such a way that one can identify delivery and originating office of every mail item the way it is used globally by building it into the National Addressing System. With the addressing system, it solves the issue of how you can identify a postcode zone to the street, also to the location and  to the building.
Musa said the aspiration of getting a standardized national addressing system was responsible for the recent conference held late last month titled “Developing the Nigerian Addressing System as an Important Strategic Infrastructure for National Development” which was part of  Nipost and Ministry of Information and Communications effort at moving Nigeria forward.  He lamented that quite a number of Nigerians don’t know their postcode even when the need for one to know his postcode is staring one in the face. Musa said to overcome some of these challenges of not knowing one’s postcode informed some of the reasons for the recent effort to have a formidable postcode for the country.  He informed that in the next few months that government will constitute a National Addressing Project Committee which Nipost is the prime mover to work towards realizing not only efficient postcode system but also an efficient National Addressing System for Nigeria. “Part of the effort of the present Nipost management is to ensure that a lot of issues as regards delivery and handling of mails are addressed. In a lot of cities and towns in Nigeria you can hardly get proper addressing system in terms of house numbering, street naming and in some cases street names are changed quite often. We need to have a steady and standardized system of addressing and numbering of our houses”, Musa said.
On the implementation of the National Addressing Project, Musa said though the present postmaster general is desirous of implementing the project, it is not a project Nipost can finance alone. He said that as the PMG rightly pointed out, what we need in Nigeria is partnership among the various stakeholders to ensure that streets in this country are properly numbered. Since it is a national project Musa said Nipost is looking at a situation whereby there will be a national project team that will work in collaboration with state governments and local governments to ensure that we have even small towns and villages having this outlay to quicken development.
Moving beyond that, the system will provide a platform for tracking and can be used to deliver social services having a data base of organized information. Musa reiterated the objective of the just concluded workshop and said it was to bring together private stakeholders, ICT companies, banks, large mailers and various parastatals like the National Population Commission, e-Governance and others   to explore areas of partnership considering that Addressing System is an important infrastructure for national development. He said even the banks today  don’t give  out  loan facility unless a third party is involved whereas  in other parts of the world  disclosing your postcode reveals every information about  you  such that it can be used to track one to his house.
Musa said that   addressing system will help to move the country forward especially in the seven- point agenda of the federal government. With the addressing system he said you will be able to know the population of different areas in the country and the challenges in the general election in the country can be addressed.
On some of the challenges facing  the delivery sector, Musa condemned  what he called criminality in the capital market and said people will take people’s dividend warrant and open an open with it and within a week or so  the account is used to clear hundreds of thousands of naira. He wondered how banks could allow such a development when in the real sense of it a prospective customer is supposed to open account with his forms endorsed by referees. He said it is important that this criminality be stamped out for the development of the industry.