By Haruna Salami
The Chairman Senate Committee on Communications, Senator Oluremi Tinubu, (Lagos Central) has made strong case for Nigeria Postal Service, NIPOST for the agency to discharge its responsibilities.
She made the case Tuesday while speaking with journalists at the National Assembly after presenting the report of her committee to the main Appropriation Committee.
Tinubu, while commending the Minister of Communication and Digital Economy, Ibrahim Pantami, for ceding N200 million in 2022 budget proposal for NIPOST, which has zero capital allocation, said the agency has a lot to offer Nigerians.
She described her presentation to the Appropriation Committee as “quite well” because there is not much to defend since “they only have about N4 billion budget”.
The Lagos lawmaker thanked God that people are now quiet about budget padding, which is a misconception for what lawmakers when they take projects within the ambience of capital and “take them back to our various constituencies, which we’ve done so far”, she said.
Speaking on the modalities for 2022 budget proposal, she said “Projects are introduced within the ambience of the capital projects at an amount of five percent. So you see that is nothing, is not that is really affecting the ministry’s budget so they can work with 95 and then they can give to us to ensure that at least our people back home have something that they will say the Ministry of communication has done for them.”
Senator Tinubu regretted that “something is wrong with Nigeria in the management of institution like NIPOST.
“What is really wrong is most of us that have been privileged to, at least travel to countries that we say observe best practices maintain their institutions.
“I will tell you that in the times I lived in the U.S. and even at times, when I go to London, I used the Post Office”, she emphasised.
All this other, you know, like delivery agencies that they have all, I don’t want to name names, but they come as a second option.
As we speak, our NIPOST is supposed to be doing very well, if they are built up really and they can also have something like a bank.
“If I want to even exchange money, when I go abroad, I go to the post office at times and we go to the bank; you have the option of the post office.
According to her, if you have that, why can’t we develop a postal system, like in those years past, when we used our postal system to write letters to people, they were effective.
“Now, we talk about internet and all that, but they use this, but their postal agencies are still viable. So why would we not try to revive NIPOST and see what it can do for us?
She said the National Assembly has proposed a law to give NIPOST the autonomy they required, adding that the agency has a lot of properties that they can also go into real estate.
“They can be self-sustaining, that is all we’ve done and we look forward to an enviable institution that will create job opportunity”.
Nigeria will be proud of them, and our children that are coming. You know, it will be less laborious for them and less expensive because NIPOST and the postal agencies will produce alternative than other delivery agencies will become second alternative.
She said people can go to post office and write to loved ones as Christmas is coming, adding “how do you send packages to people”?
“Those are the options, that we are looking at and it will create more jobs” she concluded.
