•Asks PMG to justify NIPOST existence
By Andrew Oota
The Joint Senate panels on the Medium Term Expenditure and Fiscal Strategy Paper on Tuesday threatened to recommend full privatisation of the Nigeria Postal Service for optimal performances.
Miffed by the poor performance of NIPOST ,the Finance panel chairman who also chaired the MTEF-FSP joint panel, Senator Sani Musa, told the Postmaster General of the Federation, Tola Odeyemi who appeared before the joint panel to defend her agency’s 2024 budget proposal by convincing the Senate on why the agency must continue to exist with poor revenue generation .
Odeyemi incurred the wrath of the senators when she said her agency projected N18bn as personnel cost for the NIPOST 16, 000 workers across the country.
Senator Musa expressed dissatisfactions that NIPOST whose presence cannot be felt anywhere in the country could increase its personnel cost from N13bn in 2023 to N18bn for 2024.
The explanation of the Postmaster General that the increment was as a result of the recent hike in personnel cost by Federal Government to federal workers did not change the minds of the Chairman.
A member of the joint panel, Senator Ireti Kingibe attempted to defend the continued existence of NIPOST as a partially funded agency of the federal government claiming that every nation deserves their own vibrant postal agency.
She said, “ NIPOST should not be scrapped but should be turned to a revenue generating agency.
“The only thing is that the agency was stuck in the 19th Century analogue operation instead of migrating to digital service for efficient services.
“There is nothing stopping NIPOST to digitalise their offices across the country to offer electronic services for Nigerians, deliver government services at all local government areas and even engage in financial services.”
Kingibe had hardly ended her submission when Senator Osita Izunaso took to the floor to disagree with her.
