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NCC, NIPOST to sign MOU on e-services in Nigeria

Isola Moses | ConsumerConnect

In a move to promote electronic services in the economy, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and Nigerian Postal Service (NIPOST) are to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on an e-fulfillment centre for e-services, e-commerce, e-governance and e-agriculture respectively.

The two organisations, News Agency of Nigeria reports, agreed on this deal during a courtesy visit by the NIPOST Management to the NCC’s Headquarters in Abuja, FCT, Wednesday.

Mr. Ismail Adewuyi, Postmaster-General (PMG), informed the visit was for NIPOST to seek partnership, interventions, and to tap from the synergies that exist between the two government agencies.

Mr. Adewuyi appealed for collaborative efforts in the area of expanding broadband penetration, especially in the rural communities, where the NIPOST currently has presence in order to improve and ease their duties.

The PMG explained that the Federal Government’s vision for NIPOST for the agency to continue to play universal service obligation, which is a mandate of the universal postal union.

According to him, NIPOST is considering setting up a transport and logistics company that would serve the purpose of moving mails, parcels, and to leverage its properties within the country to add value and ensure its contribution to the Nigerian economy.

One of the major areas NIPOST want to optimise is the post office bank, which Adewuyi stated is a big business.

It is an active government financial inclusion strategy that would boost the economy of the country.

“In Nigeria, we are still largely underbanked, especially in the rural communities where we have post office reach. We want to take many out of poverty.

“We want to contract the excess capacity we have and service the people at large in the country.

“For us, our agency is going through a lot of transformation at this point, so there cannot be any better time to seek this kind of partnership than now,” he said.

Prof. Umar Danbatta, Executive Vice-Chairman (EVC) of NCC, said an area of common interest between the two agencies is the issue of Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD).

He said that the commission was making efforts at reaching an amicable resolution between the banks and telecom companies.

Prof. Danbatta called for more awareness of campaign to educate Nigerians about the new NIPOST and also called for continuous collaboration among agencies under the Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy.

“We hope we can raise the financial inclusion penetration to 80 percent. It is about 60 per cent at the moment, he said.

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