Paucity of Funds Stalls Nipost, Galaxy V-SAT Project

Lack of funds has snarled the deployment of the 1,500 V-SATs touted as one of the main keys in the transformation of Nigeria Postal Service, (Nipost) into a modern public institution, Nigeria CommunicationsWeek has learnt.

Galaxy Backbone had in 2008 signed a Memorandum of Understanding MoU with Nipost to provide Vsat-based connectivity to all its 15,000 postal offices nationwide based on the National Information, Communication and Education Programme (Nicep) project.

But Ms Bolanle Onagoruwa, director general of Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) said that the project is now hobbled by paucity of funds.

According to Onagoruwa, four years after the project was initiated, little has been achieved adding that Nipost, requires substantial investment to renew itself.

She said that even the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has indicated interest to partner with Nipost and use its vast nation-wide network to drive the apex bank’s rural Micro Finance Banking (MFB) policy.

Speaking recently in Lagos through Alwell Ibeh, director, Information and Communication, the DG maintained that it was in the light of the foregoing that the BPE embarked in the current process of instituting economic reform in the Nigerian Postal Sector in general and, in particular, to reposition Nipost for greater operational efficiency.

According to her, postal organisations in most countries have become very active change agents by engaging in the provision of basic financial services, particularly to the unbanked rural areas of their countries using their vast postal networks, taking advantage of the associated low operational cost to achieve geographical and financial outreach.

She said: “Here in Nigeria, the Financial Sector Strategy (FSS) 2020 of the Federal governments’ vision 20-20-20 seeks to create an integrated, vibrant and robust financial services industry that can power the nation’s economy into becoming, not only the fastest growing but, also to being among the twenty biggest economies of the world by year 2020.

“The Nigerian Postal Services, with its vast nation-wide postal network of over 4,000 outlets, could play a major role in financial services delivery, particularly in the rural areas that have a lower presence of banking services.

Onagoruwa further highlighted that the postal policy thrusts shall be based on separation of the roles of policy making, sector regulation and operations; birth of a sector regulation to be undertaken by an independent regulator, will Nipost will be designate as the Public Postal Operator (PPO), so as to fulfill the Universal Service Obligation (USO). This will aid the maintenance and expansion of her nation-wide postal network for the provision of quality service.

“The post office network should be well suited for the provision of public interests services such as basic financial services, IT services and government services,” the BPE boss added. 

She also announced that a design for the establishment of an independent postal sector regulator, has been completed, together with the implementation programme.