Nipost says Nigeria has no Post Code

Nigeria Postal Service (Nipost) said that Nigeria has no specific postal code rather a zonal Improvement programme (ZIP), highlighting the level of organized chaos in sorting mails in the county.

A postal code also known in various countries as a post code or ZIP code is a series of letters and/or digits appended to a postal address for the purpose of sorting mail. Once postal codes were introduced, other applications became possible.

Alhaji Ibrahim Baba, postmaster general, said that there were, however, zonal and states post codes, in Nigeria and that the post code was not like the phone code with specific codes for countries.

According to the PMG, the post codes available in a country depended on the area or location of its states or towns.

Baba said that post codes for states and zones had long being in place in the country.

“There is no code for a country even in US, they do not have one code; what they have is called Zonal Improvement Programme (ZIP). This means it is from zone to zone.

“No country has a post code, what we have in Nigeria are post codes for states. All we have done with the post code was to drag these post codes up to the level of post offices.

“We have done some to the level of the streets, but we have not been able to do that in all cases because there are no proper addresses in the country,’’ Baba said.

The Postmaster General also said that the Federal Government recently considered creating an Independent Postal Commission for the country as a lee-way to tackle various challenges facing the sector.

Baba said that the essence of creating this commission was to regulate the activities of the postal industry in the country.

“What we have now is not a complete regulation because it is just registering courier companies and monitoring to see that they are doing what they are suppose to do.

“There are no sufficient sanctions in cases of default. The creation of the commission will enable them come up with the don’ts and dos,'' he said.

Baba said that the sanctions that would be enforced by the commission would also be applicable to the Post Office.