NIPOST to become five independent companies this year

By Nwakaego Alajemba

The Nigerian government is to un-bundle Nigeria Postal Service (NIPOST) into five companies before year end.  Government has been struggling in the last decade to remodel moribund NIPOST as part of farm-out strategies to make the public entity commercially viable in the face of disruptive technologies and years of mismanagement that has rendered it unviable.

A remodeling of NIPOST some years back made it both a regulator and a commercial enterprise in the first wave of deregulation under President Olusegun Obasanjo.

The new blueprint makes NIPOST five independent commercial enterprises. They include: NIPOST property and development company; NIPOST e-government services company; NIPOST banking and insurance company; NIPOST e-commerce services company, and NIPOST transport and logistics services company.

At an event in Lagos this week, Minister of Communications, Adebayo Shittu, expressed the commitment of government to ensure NIPOST gets unbundle to bring its services home to millions of Nigerians and make it more effective by leveraging on a public private partnership (PPP) model.

Shittu says government believes a PPP holds great prospect to salvage NIPOST and make it to effectively birth five companies able to deliver 21st century services.