Courier operators seek passage of Postal Commission Bill

CITING lack of appropriate regulatory agency as cause of the stagnation in the courier sector, the Association of Nigeria Courier Operators (ANCO) has called on the National Assembly to pass the Postal Commission Bill before the expiration of its tenure in June.

President of the Association, Siyanbola Oladapo said at a media parley in Lagos that the refusal to pass the bill by the 6th and now the 7th National Assembly, which is winding down its activities, has retarded the growth of the industry.

According to Oladapo, the demand for reforms in the postal sub-sector has been a recurring decimal in Nigeria’s policy formulation.

“The department of Post and Telecommunication (P&T) was split during the regime of Major General Muhammadu Buhari in 1985. From the split emerged the NITEL and NIPOST.

Since, the telecommunications sector has undergone several reforms culminating in tremendous investment and success of the sector especially with the advent of the Global System for Mobile Telecommunications (GSM).

“Government policies have not really added value to the courier service business because in a situation where we have an organisation as a player and at the same time as the regulator, it won’t augur well for the industry. We have been consistently faced with unfavourable policies, which we are still trying to review with the regulators.

“Republic of Benin has Courier Commission, Ghana has so is it not an irony that Nigeria, the big brother in West Africa and Africa as a whole does not have.

The bill was first presented as a private member bill and later as an executive bill by the Jonathan administration, yet the National Assembly have refused to pass the bill eleven years after”, he added. Oladapo said if the courier sector is well harnessed, it is capable of creating 200,000 jobs, thus boosting the nation’s economy.

Oladapo listed other challenges inhibiting the growth of the sector to include, lack of due regulation channel, inimical activities of Local Government employees on Nigerian roads, lack of understanding of the importance of courier operations, bad roads and failure of the Federal Government to understand the viability of the courier sector.

“Also, the levies imposed on us by government through NIPOST are a bit on the high side. We are still appealing to them to reduce this, given the fact that we are still going to the same market for acquisition.

We also require the enactment of a particular bill towards “Having a Postal Commission, we believe, will go a long way in addressing these issues. Our regulators need to bring us to a roundtable for us to look at all issues from all sides and take a mutually beneficial stand on all issues.

In as much as we appreciate the fact that the government is constitutionally empowered to regulate the industry through its relevant ministry or parastatal, we also feel we, the major players should be involved and carried along in their decision-making and policy formulation”, he stressed.