Adegbuyi: New NIPOST will Create Millions of Jobs

Emma Okonji

The Postmaster General/CEO of the Nigerian Postal Service (NIPOST), Bisi Adegbuyi has vowed to overhaul the entire NIPOST system and reposition it to create millions of jobs for unemployed Nigerians and boost the medium and small enterprise (SME) businesses in the country.

Adegbuyi made the promise at the NIPOST Workshop Services Customers’ Forum held in Lagos recently, with the theme: “Technology Key to Repositioning NIPOST in Today’s Economic Recession”. He noted that the government agency has all it takes in terms of infrastructure and human capital to sustain itself and still contribute to the country’s Gross Domestic Products (GDP), but that it only needs a little push with modern technology tools to realise its huge potential.

“The federal government needed someone with good business acumen to turn around the fortunes of NIPOST, and I was appointed few months ago to do just that. My strategy is to focus on parcel deliveries and use same to empower over 70 million Nigerian youths and offer them services that will make them become entrepreneurs. This is about eCommerce and that is where the money is,” Adegbuyi said.

We will do strategic thinking and bring in people from the private sector, who are already successful businessmen and women to help turn around NIPOST, he added.

According to him, “It is an open secret that a forward looking business concern must be amenable to the dynamics of its operating environment. As CEO with private sector orientation, I intend to do things differently in order to achieve better results that would be of great benefit to the organisation, its workforce and all other stakeholders. To this end, we would leverage on the deployment of technology, coupled with information technology to drive the operations of NIPOST in line with trends in modern businesses and put the organisation in competitive stead.”

According to him, countries that have prospered relied on small and medium scale businesses, which they supported technologically. The NIPOST customers’ forum is to drive home, the point that the world is growing through technology and that NIPOST is in a position to drive economic development in the country, using modern technology tools, the Postmaster General said.

Government, he said, must therefore provide the technology tools for SMEs to grow and make meaningful contributions the the Nigerian economy. What we need do is to key into global best practice and use technology to drive development through SMEs, Adegbuyi added.

The keynote speaker at the forum, Major Sam Olaosebikan (rtd), pledged his support for Adegbuyi’s vision to turn around NIPOST, but advised the Postmaster General to seek private sector partnership, if NIPOST must realise its vision. “NIPOST can become money making organisation if the services of the NIPOST workshop is expanded to all the six geopolitical zones and all the states where NIPOST has presence,” Olaosebikan said.

Although not many knew about the NIPOST workshop, which is located in Ijora-Olopa, Lagos, its products and services, which cut across wood work and furniture making, metal work and steel fabrication, among others, are showcased at the General Post Office in Marina and Ikeja, as well as district post offices in Surulere, Adeola Odeku, Falomo, Festac, Apapa and Agege, all in Lagos, where the workshop is located.

While corroborating with those who called for the integration of NIPOST with financial institutions in order to boost revenue generation,
Olaosebikan said NIPOST must partner schools across the country, to provide school furniture. He equally called on government to patronise NIPOST for the supply of office furniture, since it can produce office furniture that are of high quality.

We need to run NIPOST as a business enterprise with efficient postal service delivery system that will generate huge employment for Nigeria, create wealth and empower youths in rural communities, which will in turn help to reduce poverty, Adegbuyi said.

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