When philosophers propounded that change is a constant phenomenon, their major focus was not the Nigerian Postal Service (Nipost) but they were trying to describe natural occurrences.
As it were, the Nigerian Postal Service at some point in time had enjoyed a booming business provided by the monopoly it enjoyed as the sole provider of post office boxes nationwide and complimented with other ancillary services. Then, people had the culture of writing letters and rushing to the post offices to buy postage stamps that would accompany such letters. Distribution of letters was mostly by street names and addresses and Nipost mail runners were a regular scene especially in cities while in remote villages, letters were kept at the counters of the post offices where people would sort out their mails. Events were to prove that none of these methods was found to be efficient in the handling of mails as most often letters got missing in transit.
Such development gave room for the need for people to acquire post office boxes that could guarantee some level of security and privacy of one’s letters and parcels. It was a thing of pride for one to own a post office box in those days as almost all the villagers would want to be allowed to use such a system. One reason is that even at the price it was then to own a post office box, a lot people could not afford it. Secondly, the level of education then did not allow people to see the necessity of having a personal post office box.
But as the world became more enlightened with complexities leading to better and faster ways of communication, interest in using the postal services started diminishing. The development of Information Communications Technology (ICT) has actually changed the way we communicate. People seldom write letters that require to be posted at the Nipost offices these days. Internet and SMS via the telephone are faster and cheaper means of communicating these days than using the post.
The youths who also form the greater percentage of the active communicating society find the ICT tools more convenient and affordable than waiting for a week or more to get a reply to a letter through the post.
This development has sounded a debilitating blow to some of the Nipost services including the use of post office boxes. To live up to the challenge created by ICT explosion, Nipost had to shed off some of its workforce and engaged in reengineering to reintegrate and reinvigorate the organization into the challenges and opportunities created by the ICT revolution.
Hence new services were introduced into its fold most of which are electronic-based. However, low patronage of the post office boxes is one thing the Nipost management is still battling to have a solution for. With so many e-solutions still evolving and threatening the operations of the postal house like e-dividend , who will save post office boxes from going into extinction?
Investigations by Nigeria Communications Week revealed that people still keep post office boxes but most of the subscribers are corporate organizations and individuals who deal in stock and as such expect their share certificates, dividend warrants and such other related translations which are necessary to be translated through the post to show originality of such dealings which internet and telephone are not capable of providing.
The interesting thing is that cost of having a post office box is a bit moderate at four thousand four hundred and fifty naira (N4450) for corporate ownership and three thousand four hundred naira (N3400) for private ownership. Another factor is that the management of the outfit has made the process of getting a new post office box less cumbersome. With such enhanced processes and polite staff to attend to you, one could just walk in and pay for a post office box over the counter with less stringent conditions. One fact still remains; Nipost has lost a reasonable percentage of sales on its post office boxes.
