As part of the rebranding efforts of the President Umar Musa Yar’dua‘s administration to place Nigeria into global reckoning , Professor Dora Akunyili, Minister of Information and Communications has identified the post as a key element in the campaign.
She recently launched officially the nation’s postal code system and said the absence of the system for the country has had serious negative effect on the recognition and status of the country among other nations. Before now the system had been in existence but it had low awareness by members of the public..
At the opening session of a two-day workshop on National Addressing System in Nigeria with the theme: “Addressing as a Strategic Infrastructure for National Development”, Akunyili said a good and reliable system is a non-negotiable requirement for the development of the country. According to her, the launch of the postal code system is intended to kick-start a new process of Addressing Nigeria highlighting that the benefits of the physical address, postcodes and national addressing standards including all the useful information in a data base will include making it accessible by all relevant agencies for public good and national development .Akunyili stressed that it is a big irony that after almost half a century of nation hood that we still take issues of physical addresses lightly whereas in developed economies , it is a very serious matter .
Akunyili explained that there is nowhere inn the country where a comprehensive system of street names and property number exist but rather more often than not phrases such as opposite the Total filling station, After Apostolic church, Next to the Police station and so on have been used as addresses even in the cities and towns saying that this does not only have a detrimental impact on the provision of services but that it also affects businesses operating efficiently.
Postal code (known in various countries as a post code, postcode, or ZIP code) is a series of letters and/or digits appended to a postal address for the purpose of sorting mail.
Germany was the first country to introduce a postal code system, in 1941. The United Kingdom followed in 1959 and the United States in 1963.
In February 2005, 117 of the 190 member countries of the Universal Postal Union had postal code systems. Examples of countries that do not have national systems include Ireland, Hong Kong and Panama.
Although postal codes are usually assigned to geographical areas, special codes are sometimes assigned to individual addresses or to institutions that receive large volumes of mail, such as government agencies and large commercial companies.
Postal codes in Nigeria are numeric, consisting of six digits and the Nigerian Postal Service (Nipost), the national carrier divides the country into nine regions, which make up the first digit of the code. The second and third digits, combined with the first, are the dispatch district for outgoing sorting. The last three digits are for delivery. The main postal head office in each region will have a postal code ending in 00001, such as, Garki Main HO in Abuja has the postal code 970001, Ikeja HO in Lagos has 100001, Lokoja in Kogi has 270001 and Port Harcourt has 500001. The lowest postcode being 100001 and the highest is 982002 (12).
