One may be tempted to ask the relevance of a pill to a dead horse. Pills are supposed to be corrective measures used to sustain life but which must be used at the right time otherwise the use will become of no effect and consequence if life is totally lost before the application.
The postal and courier sector has left no one in doubt that within the environment where it operates, with a lot of challenges that it needs to be resuscitated. This need has been identified by stakeholders in the postal sector both in the government and in private circle.
It is one demand, Nigerians have been fair enough to voice out what they feel could salvage sector. But what has left most Nigerians confused is why the issue has not been given the urgent attention it requires.
Since the turn of the year, all we have been reading and hearing from stakeholders in the postal industry, whom we look forward to getting authentic information about the position of the postal document, is always vague. Their statements are usually very soon, soon and so on, portraying government’s readiness to appoint an independent commission for the postal sector. From January this year up until now that we have barely 75 days to the end of the year, it is still the same story of independent regulatory body for the postal sector to be made known soon, very soon and plans are underway to appoint an independent regulatory body for the postal sector.
This correspondent has sampled on the matter the opinions of Minister of State for Communications, Dasuki Nakande, senate committee chairman on Information and Communications, Sylvester Anyanwu , Mori Baba, postmaster general of the federation, Dr Simon Emeje, Courier Regulatory Department (CRD) boss, Toyin Olufade, ANCO president and some other stakeholders in the postal/ courier industry and one thing is clear, that all identified the urgent need to salvage the postal industry but they varied in their opinions on the present position of the document or process to appoint an independent regulator for the sector.
For instance, at the recent Commonwealth Telecommunications Organization (CTO) summit held in Abuja, Sylvester Anyanwu told journalists that the effort to regulate the postal sector has passed the first reading in the National Assembly and only being waited for the second reading.
At the World Post Day celebration at the Nipost headquarters in Abuja recently Mori Baba also said that very soon, probably before the end of the year that we might have the postal commission in place. He made the same statement at the Nipost staff award which held in Abuja few weeks ago.
Some time in May too, Dasuki Nakande when prompted by this correspondent on the position of the document to regulate the postal sector, he assured that government was going to appoint a commission for the sector soon. His counterpart in the Information and Communications ministry, John Odey has also been quoted severally giving the hope that government was going to address that issue soon.
Since it is clear that an independent regulator is the best thing to happen to the postal and courier sector, one would have expected that the issue would have been given accelerated hearing and action but this never came to be. We should take a cue from the fact that telecommunications was once part of the post but when the telecom sector was liberalized it became the toast of the economy. The same can happen to the postal sector.
