Peeved by bloated personnel costs, the Senate on Tuesday, threatened to initiate legislation that would see to the full privatisation of the Nigeria Postal Service to guarantee its optimal performance as a federal government revenue generating agency.
Chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance, Senator Sani Musa, dropped the hint during the presentation by Postmaster General of the Federation, Tola Odeyemi on the ongoing budget defence by the federal government agencies.
Part of her submission which courted the anger of the Joint Senate Committee on the Medium Term Expenditure Framework and Fiscal Strategy Paper was her justification of N18bn as personnel cost for the NIPOST 16, 000 workers across the country.
The Postmaster General of the Federation, who had earlier disclosed N13bn as personnel cost for
2023 said the N18bn for 2024 was as a result of the recent hike in personnel cost by Federal Government to federal civil servants.
Her defence was faulted by Senator Musa who insisted that the impact of the agency was not being felt across the country.
Senator representing the Federal Capital Territory, Ireti Kingibe, however, said what was needed to turn around the fortunes of NIPOST and make it effective to meet her target was to make it digitally compliant.
She said: “NIPOST should not be scrapped but should be turned into 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.”
Senator representing Imo North, Osita Izunaso also aligned with the submission of Senator Musa as he declared that there was no way the agency would ever meet up on its revenue target unless it is restructured.
In his closing remarks, Chairman of the Joint Committee mandated the Postmaster General of the Federation, to
forward to the committee, details of her business plan to reposition the agency to meet up with government expectations on volume of revenue.
He said: “NIPOST should have been fully privatised before now because nobody is feeling their impact anywhere in the country.
“We are ready to recommend to the Senate in plenary, full privatisation of the NIPOST except the Postmaster General convinces us otherwise.
“The CEO of NIPOST should forward to the secretariat of our committee details of her business model on how the agency would be generating adequate revenues for the country through creative ideas.
“Failure to do this would leave the Senate with no other option than to recommend the full privatisation of NIPOST.”
At a separate presentation before the Committee, another agency, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) offered reasons why it has not met its revenue target for 2023.
Addressing the Joint Senate Committee,
NCC Director of Financial Services, Yakubu Gontor, attributed it to lack of patronage for its auctioned frequencies.
Gontor who gave the agency revenue target of N387.4 billion, however, noted that the NCC had earned N199.8 billion, as at last September.
He revealed that two frequencies, 600 megahertz (MHz) and 35 megahertz (MHz), were made available for auction but there was no patronage for them.
He said:” Our revenue projection from spectrum fee was N387.4 billion. But we ended up earning N199.8 billion as at September 2023, which is a significant difference from the projected revenue.
“We hope to earn more between now and December, but we may not be able to meet budgetary projection.
“This is because frequencies are usually sold through auctions and they are some frequencies that were earmarked for auction during the year.
“However, the auction did not attract the expected patronage. Those frequencies had been reserved for subsequent auctions.”
. TheWitness
