The Nigerian Postal Service (NIPOST) has shut down an illegal courier, express, delivery, dispatch, and logistics service operator in Kano State.
The General Manager, Courier and Logistics Regulatory Department (CLRD), NIPOST, Dotun Shonde, disclosed this to the press on Tuesday, during the clampdown operation in Kano.
He said the exercise became imperative to sanitise and weed out quacks from the postal service or industry.
Some of the offices were located around Bompai Road, Shari’a Commission Road, and Tarauni Market, among others.
“The postal, express, courier, and logistics industry in Nigeria has been proliferated and infiltrated with so many unlicensed/illegal courier and logistics operators with reckless abandonment of ethical standards and professional conduct,” he said
The enforcement operations of the NIPOST Act require that before you operate a courier, express, delivery, dispatch, or logistics service, you obtain a licence from the PostMaster General. It is stipulated in Section 43 of the NIPOST Act, CAP 127, of the Federation of Nigeria.
According to him, “We are here to sanitise the postal service in Kano State. The enforcement operations are about sanity for the postal market or industry.
“We have a lot of quacks operating in that space. No licence, no traceable office address. We have lots of complaints in the office by the Nigerian public.
“So, as you have seen, we have embarked on a clampdown operation, and we have people who are operating in defiance of that law without regard to the existing law as provided for.
He further disclosed that he has received several complaints from Nigerians about sharp practices in the services perpetrated by the illegal operators who are operating without obtaining a licence and contrary to the existing laws of the postal service.
“There exist unethical sharp practices, such as price undercutting, pilfering, broaching, damages, loss, and dumping of customer items, poaching, and subletting of operating licences, with a mountain of public complaints about Customer’s being duped or obtaining money from them under false pretences, no traceable office address, and no registered brand name.
“There abounds the issue of public safety and security threats due to the carriage of illicit drugs and prohibited items.
We have cases in some other parts of the country where, during the clampdown, we found in their dispatch boxes illicit drugs, small arms and ammunition, human parts, and currency.
All these things are prohibited in the postal service, but because they are quacks and not operating within professional ethics, they carry anything. And of course, they have patrons—people who patronise them because of their illicit activities.
“It is a menace to the postal industry and portrays a negative image of Nigerian society at large. It is against global best practices and international conventions.
“The Enforcement Team consists of officials of the Courier and Logistics Regulatory Department’s (CLRD) NIPOST, armed mobile police officers and men of the Force Criminal Investigation Department’s (FCID), and members of the press.
“So we are here to sanitise the postal service in Kano State. The enforcement operations are about sanity for the postal market or industry.
We have a lot of quacks operating in that space. No licence, no traceable office address. We have lots of complaints in the office from the Nigerian public.
“It is expedient for any interested private investors in the postal, express, courier, and logistics businesses to follow the due process and obtain a grant of operating licences from the Federal Government.
They are required and advised to obtain a grant of operating licence from NIPOST as stipulated by the existing laws or risk facing the full wrath of the law and prosecution,” he stated.
Shonde, however, stated that it has carried out the enforcement exercise in Abia, Rivers, Edo, Lagos, Ogun, Katsina, and Kwara States, while hinting that they will continue the exercise in Kaduna, Abuja, and later Osun State.
Meanwhile, some of the offices were located around Bompai Road, Shari’a Commission Road, and Tarauni Market, among others.
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