The Postmaster General of the Federation/CEO of the Nigerian Postal Service (NIPOST), Mrs Tola Odeyemi on Monday, September 2, said the agency is targeting 10 billion naira revenues for the government this year.

According to Mrs Odeyemi, the present leadership of NIPOST has taken steps to change the narratives of NIPOST and ensure that the company adds value to the activities of the government and impact positively on the lives of ordinary Nigerians.

Odeyemi said NIPOST has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Small and Medium-scale Enterprises (SMEDAN) to ensure that the cost of moving goods/services through NIPOST for 22 million businesses that are registered with SMEDAN is reduced by 15 percent. This, she said, would boost the economy and improve productivity across all sectors of the national economy.

She made the remarks at the opening ceremony of a three-day Strategic Management Retreat for the Management staff of NIPOST, Directors, and Postal Managers from the 36 states and the FCT.

The retreat took place at DRACC Aco Estate, Lugbe, Abuja.

She said the Retreat had the theme “Empower, Innovate, Shape: Nigerian Post, optimised for Excellence.”

She noted that it was targeted at “ensuring alignments of all our day-to-day activities so that they would be in tandem with the vision and mission of the present leadership.

“We want to explore opportunities for efficiency and energise the NIPOST base across all the 774 local government areas. It has become necessary that we must deliver the minimum level of service that is expected from NIPOST,” she said.

Mrs Odeyemi said NIPOST would upgrade its technology architecture to improve its mail delivery systems and build public trust and confidence in the agency, stating that complaints reaching the management on missing mail are due to human errors.

“Yes, we are aware of the complaint about missing mail. We are going to upgrade our technology with an end-to-end tracking system. This enables us to know where things go wrong because this is a human system, so you experience some errors. But we will address the errors through improved technology,” Odeyemi said.

The NIPOST boss said efforts have also reached an advanced stage for NIPOST to restart its e-commerce, financial services, NIN enrolment and registration using its facilities in all the 774 local governments of the country.

Odeyemi said: “There is a lot of work being done with little resources that NIPOST has. One of the things I want to change is that I want to increase revenue, for revenue generation we are starting last-man delivery of some government services and NIN registration. It will be available in all our locations.

“We are restarting our financial services, meaning that one can be able to do simple financial transactions, like bill payments, utility payments, and cash in cash out, at any NIPOST location.

“We are also increasing our presence in e-commerce logistics, and haulage services using all our locations for the good of Nigeria.

“Under the Renewed Hope Agenda one of the things that we have done is our partnership with SMEDAN. They have a mandate to ensure that across Nigeria, NANO, Micro small, and medium enterprises function properly.

“One of the key aspects of this industry is the ability to move their goods from production to end-users or customers. This is one of the areas we want to participate in the diversification of the economy.

“It’s to enable people to move goods at a reduced cost, and we just signed a MoU with SMEDAN and we are reducing prices by 15 % for the over 22 million businesses that register with SMEDAN.

“So we want to be the enabling platform to improve trade and commerce in the country.

“We will also have agro logistics products, we are in agrarian states where you have excess capacity for agricultural production. This we will do to help farmers move their produce to either the aggregator or to the table. It could be from the farm to the table or from farm to business,” she said. (The Nation)

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