Nagging security problems, especially in the North, give Post-master General Ibrahim Mori -Baba sleepless nights.
Though he sees great potentials in the Nigeria Postal Service (NIPOST) if commercialised, properly repositioned, and given financial and technical muscle, he is concerned about the postal service in this country and the affairs of the Universal Postal Union (UPU) to which it belongs.
He decries the negative impact of national in security on the revenue of NIPOST, with earnings down in Adamawa, Borno, Yobe, Bauchi and Gombe States.
Plateau, Kaduna and Kano States also puncture holes in coffers as revenue streams are hampered by the inability to deliver mails effectively.
An agreement binds UPU members to pay by performance.
So, beyond the domestic losses lie a more serious jeopardy to international operations and another significant decline in revenue streams.
Mori-Baba spoke to TheNiche in an exclusive interview in his office in Abuja.
Excerpts:
Ibrahim Mori -BabaHow have the security challenges in the country affected your operations?
The security challenges in the country, especially in the North East, have affected our operations greatly. They also have brought down the level of our revenue generation in these areas. Worst affected are Adamawa, Borno, Yobe. Sometimes we also have difficulties in Bauchi,Gombe, Plateau, Kaduna and Kano. This situation has affected our revenue streams and our ability to deliver mails effectively.
These are in domestic operations. At the international level, is the situation any different?
The security challenges have also affected our international operations and brought down our revenue generation in the foreign scene because there is an agreement that you pay by performance. If you are expected to deliver a letter coming from America, Europe or Asia within three days that it arrived Nigeria, after the third day you will not be paid even if you deliver it. That is the rule. In some cases you pay a surcharge. You lost what you could have earned and also get a surcharge.
Could you put a figure on what you have lost due to security challenges?
I am not sure whether we can put the figures together now but the truth is we lost significantly; not only through surcharges. The last time we did a review we discovered that we lost about 10 per cent of what we projected on the domestic scene. I am not quite sure what the total loss on the international scene could add up to.
But the biggest loss is the image. Our image as a postal service provider is seriously affected. The post office is a wonderful organisation; not because I work there. This is an organisation that has a relationship with about 200 countries, those that are members of the postal union and those that are not members.
By international convention we are supposed to deliver mails sent to other countries. And once your country is not operational, it will be known. That is why I said we are quite an interesting organisation worldwide.
So, as soon as we are off the scene of the Universal Postal Union, it will be seen. And by law we are expected to notify the union. If your post office is not going to be in operation for a few months or so, you are supposed to inform the postal union, which will in turn inform all the other postal administrations in the world.
Your staff havegrudges about unpaid allowances. Will they be paid at all?
As an ongoing organisation there is no way you will be able to satisfy all the employees. We are 10,000 staff in number and only very few organisations have up to 10,000.
So, if somebody has allowances to collect in Enugu, how will I be able to know that his allowances have not been paid? That is for the allowance that we can pay.
Now, if you have salary to collect, and you have been given promotion and that promotion has not been connected, yes, the organisation has a role to play. But also you know that the salary payment of most organisationsin the nation has been centralised through IPPIS, that is, Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System.
So, if that is the responsibility of another organisation, you must play your own role or do your own bit and transfer it to the other organisation that is supposed to see to the matter.
I told them that I was also underpaid for several months. But nobody will want to listen to that. I think it was in October or November last year that I was paid the arrears. Between the time I was underpaid and the time IPPIS took over, they said it was not their responsibility that I was underpaid. They said they were not there when I was underpaid.
So, if I was not the person on the seat, I would allege that NIPOST is not treating me fairly. I quite agree with them that when there are issues of allowances, there is need for us to promptly come in.
But they should also understand that the payment of allowances or salary is a product of something else. If we don’t have enough money there is no way we can pay all the allowances as and when due. They should also understand that the payment of salary is being centralised.
I am not trying to pass the bulk to IPPIS. It is a responsibility that NIPOST and IPPIS will jointly undertake because we need to provide information to IPPIS before it will be able to pay.
Will your staff be paid the arrears just like you, if you provide all the information?
Yes, exactly. We need to also let the public know that even if it is arrears on promotion – not arrears as a result of short payment of salary, like my own – and it is for several years, I need to get approval from the Budget Office. It is the same thing if it is arrears on promotion. I need to get the approval of the Budget Office.
In the short-payment of salary, like mine, I needed to also get approval from the Budget Office. We follow the same process if it is arrears on promotion. It is a tripartite thing – NIPOST, the Budget Office and the accountant general’s office.
But if it is a genuine mistake from us and IPPIS on monthly skipping, IPPIS will be able to say ok, we are supposed to have paid you.
Let me give an example. If someone has not been paid for January, in February when the corrections are made, the worker will receive January salary along with February salary. It doesn’t have to go to the Budget Office because the salary was merely skipped.
What led to the problem that made some international airlines to refuse to lift your mails? And what is the situation now?
As an ongoing organisation, there is no way you can claim that you won’t be indebted to some organisations. It is either you’re owing them or other organisations are owing you.
We are indebted to some of those airlines. But the issue is on two levels.
First, there are debt figures that we have and we wanted them to substantiate the figures with receipts or invoices showing that we are owing them that amount.
There are other ones where payments have been made but because the home countries of the airlines have not told them that we have made those payments they insist that payments have not been made.
We are trying to sort out these issues so that we can pay them in naira, since they are operating in the country. Except for those insisting that we pay them in hard currency – dollar, euro, et cetera.
As I said, as an ongoing organisation, you will certainly continue to owe people and people will continue to owe you.
The other challenge we have with the airlines, which has nothing to do with the fact that we are owing them, is that some countries, postal administrations were refusing to accept our mails and yet want to charge us. The reasons they are just giving are some kind of flimsy excuses. One of the countries returned our mails repeatedly and we tried to find out what the reason was. It was just a very flimsy excuse that they were giving.
Based on these reports, we decided to do an audit of what is on the ground. We want to find out what we are owing the airlines, and what other postal administrations are owing us.
Before now, we had to wait for other postal administrations owing us to pay before we could pay airlines that move our mails because they take this money in hard currency. Some airlines started accepting payment in naira towards the end of last year.If they accept naira from us, I don’t think we would have any problem.
You mean in the past you paid the airlines in hard currency even when the transaction took place in this country?
Yes, that was it.
Why was it so? Is it the tradition in postal service?
It is a global practice because these airlines moving your mails are not domiciled in Nigeria. They are foreign airlines, like KLM, Lufthansa, Egypt Airline, Kenya Airline, et cetera. They will not take your naira. Also, don’t forget, the mails they are carrying, the destinations are different countries. They are not just from Nigeria to their home country. They also extend them to some other countries and they will have to pay for that extension. But generally that is the global trend.
What’s the situation now? Have they started lifting your mails?
Yes, they are lifting our mails now, and we have secured agreement with Lufthansa Airlines to take local currency, which has taken away the pressure on us. They have agreed to take local currency. The agreement with Lufthansa is strategic because it is the airline conveying the largest bulk of our mails. Other airlines are inconsequential.
So, we will be able to pay them. As I said, for us to be in the comfort zone, those other postal administrations we have some balance of payment with need to settle the indebtedness before we will be able to also pay other airlines or postal administrations.
How viable is the postal enterprise? Assuming the organisation gets commercialised, will you be able to pay salaries, sustain operations and make profit?
I will say yes, because we have quite a number of potentials. The potentials are there, and if we are commercialised and given the proper backing, I mean adequate investment, there is no reason why we will not make profit.
Post offices worldwide operate on three pillars – physical, financial and electronic. At the moment, the emphasis in NIPOST is physical. I am assuring you that with adequate investment, the physical and electronic will come on board. And these are the areas in which we will make profit because these are value-added services. They do not have social content.
But physical mail, particularly mail between you and me, has social content in the sense that the customer pays only N50 and we deliver the letter whether the mail is from Sokoto to Port Harcourt, or from Lagos to Maiduguri. The customer pays only N50 but it is very possible that NIPOST spends more than N1,000 in delivering the mail.
But if you want to use EMS (Expedited Mail Service), it is value-added; we charge you the commercial rate, not the social rate.
Tell our readers a little about the international politics, culture and economy of the postal enterprise.
We have what we call the Universal Postal Union which is our umbrella supervising body. Supervising in the sense of giving policies but not in the running of the day to day activities of individual organisations. Within this union, we have what we call IB, which is the International Bureau, headed by a director general (DG).
The post of DG is an elective office. After every four years, we convene a universal postal congress, and it is the country that wishes to host that congress that will do that. At the moment, a Kenyan is the DG, and it means that Kenya is sponsoring a candidate that must be ready to visit most countries that are members of the UPU.
We are currently about 193 or 194 members, and we need about 150 to 158 paid up members. So if you are looking at a position of that nature, it means your country must be prepared to sponsor you to visit some of these countries.
We also have the Pan African Postal Union (PAPU) with headquarters inArusha, Tanzania. Nigeria is currently the assistant secretary general of that organisation. So, Nigeria is in a way playing its political role.
In the UPU, in the last circle between 2004 and 2008 Nigeria was the chair of finance and budget. And I also served in several capacities. Nigeria also served as the chairman, capital administration in PAPU.
In 2012,the West African Postal Union (WAPU) was established. Nigeria also played a major role in that. Nigeria is the host of WAPU congress. The headquarters of WAPU is here in Abuja. And the first executive secretary is from Cote d’Ivoire. So, you can see how politics is played in the postal arena.
By Kelechi MgbojiAssistant Business Editor
Nagging security problems, especially in the North, give Post-master General Ibrahim Mori -Baba sleepless nights.Though he sees great potentials in the Nigeria Postal Service (NIPOST) if commercialised, properly repositioned, and given financial and technical muscle, he is concerned about the postal service in this country and the affairs of the Universal Postal Union (UPU) to which it belongs.He decries the negative impact of national in security on the revenue of NIPOST, with earnings down in Adamawa, Borno, Yobe, Bauchi and Gombe States.Plateau, Kaduna and Kano States also puncture holes in coffers as revenue streams are hampered by the inability to deliver mails effectively.An agreement binds UPU members to pay by performance.So, beyond the domestic losses lie a more serious jeopardy to international operations and another significant decline in revenue streams.Mori-Baba spoke to TheNiche in an exclusive interview in his office in Abuja.Excerpts:How have the security challenges in the country affected your operations?The security challenges in the country, especially in the North East, have affected our operations greatly. They also have brought down the level of our revenue generation in these areas. Worst affected are Adamawa, Borno, Yobe. Sometimes we also have difficulties in Bauchi,Gombe, Plateau, Kaduna and Kano. This situation has affected our revenue streams and our ability to deliver mails effectively.These are in domestic operations. At the international level, is the situation any different?The security challenges have also affected our international operations and brought down our revenue generation in the foreign scene because there is an agreement that you pay by performance. If you are expected to deliver a letter coming from America, Europe or Asia within three days that it arrived Nigeria, after the third day you will not be paid even if you deliver it. That is the rule. In some cases you pay a surcharge. You lost what you could have earned and also get a surcharge.Could you put a figure on what you have lost due to security challenges?I am not sure whether we can put the figures together now but the truth is we lost significantly; not only through surcharges. The last time we did a review we discovered that we lost about 10 per cent of what we projected on the domestic scene. I am not quite sure what the total loss on the international scene could add up to.But the biggest loss is the image. Our image as a postal service provider is seriously affected. The post office is a wonderful organisation; not because I work there. This is an organisation that has a relationship with about 200 countries, those that are members of the postal union and those that are not members.By international convention we are supposed to deliver mails sent to other countries. And once your country is not operational, it will be known. That is why I said we are quite an interesting organisation worldwide. So, as soon as we are off the scene of the Universal Postal Union, it will be seen. And by law we are expected to notify the union. If your post office is not going to be in operation for a few months or so, you are supposed to inform the postal union, which will in turn inform all the other postal administrations in the world.Your staff havegrudges about unpaid allowances. Will they be paid at all?As an ongoing organisation there is no way you will be able to satisfy all the employees. We are 10,000 staff in number and only very few organisations have up to 10,000.So, if somebody has allowances to collect in Enugu, how will I be able to know that his allowances have not been paid? That is for the allowance that we can pay.Now, if you have salary to collect, and you have been given promotion and that promotion has not been connected, yes, the organisation has a role to play. But also you know that the salary payment of most organisationsin the nation has been centralised through IPPIS, that is, Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System. So, if that is the responsibility of another organisation, you must play your own role or do your own bit and transfer it to the other organisation that is supposed to see to the matter.I told them that I was also underpaid for several months. But nobody will want to listen to that. I think it was in October or November last year that I was paid the arrears. Between the time I was underpaid and the time IPPIS took over, they said it was not their responsibility that I was underpaid. They said they were not there when I was underpaid. So, if I was not the person on the seat, I would allege that NIPOST is not treating me fairly. I quite agree with them that when there are issues of allowances, there is need for us to promptly come in.But they should also understand that the payment of allowances or salary is a product of something else. If we don’t have enough money there is no way we can pay all the allowances as and when due. They should also understand that the payment of salary is being centralised.I am not trying to pass the bulk to IPPIS. It is a responsibility that NIPOST and IPPIS will jointly undertake because we need to provide information to IPPIS before it will be able to pay.Will your staff be paid the arrears just like you, if you provide all the information? Yes, exactly. We need to also let the public know that even if it is arrears on promotion – not arrears as a result of short payment of salary, like my own – and it is for several years, I need to get approval from the Budget Office. It is the same thing if it is arrears on promotion. I need to get the approval of the Budget Office.In the short-payment of salary, like mine, I needed to also get approval from the Budget Office. We follow the same process if it is arrears on promotion. It is a tripartite thing – NIPOST, the Budget Office and the accountant general’s office. But if it is a genuine mistake from us and IPPIS on monthly skipping, IPPIS will be able to say ok, we are supposed to have paid you. Let me give an example. If someone has not been paid for January, in February when the corrections are made, the worker will receive January salary along with February salary. It doesn’t have to go to the Budget Office because the salary was merely skipped.What led to the problem that made some international airlines to refuse to lift your mails? And what is the situation now?As an ongoing organisation, there is no way you can claim that you won’t be indebted to some organisations. It is either you’re owing them or other organisations are owing you.We are indebted to some of those airlines. But the issue is on two levels.First, there are debt figures that we have and we wanted them to substantiate the figures with receipts or invoices showing that we are owing them that amount. There are other ones where payments have been made but because the home countries of the airlines have not told them that we have made those payments they insist that payments have not been made. We are trying to sort out these issues so that we can pay them in naira, since they are operating in the country. Except for those insisting that we pay them in hard currency – dollar, euro, et cetera. As I said, as an ongoing organisation, you will certainly continue to owe people and people will continue to owe you.The other challenge we have with the airlines, which has nothing to do with the fact that we are owing them, is that some countries, postal administrations were refusing to accept our mails and yet want to charge us. The reasons they are just giving are some kind of flimsy excuses. One of the countries returned our mails repeatedly and we tried to find out what the reason was. It was just a very flimsy excuse that they were giving.Based on these reports, we decided to do an audit of what is on the ground. We want to find out what we are owing the airlines, and what other postal administrations are owing us. Before now, we had to wait for other postal administrations owing us to pay before we could pay airlines that move our mails because they take this money in hard currency. Some airlines started accepting payment in naira towards the end of last year.If they accept naira from us, I don’t think we would have any problem.You mean in the past you paid the airlines in hard currency even when the transaction took place in this country?Yes, that was it.Why was it so? Is it the tradition in postal service?It is a global practice because these airlines moving your mails are not domiciled in Nigeria. They are foreign airlines, like KLM, Lufthansa, Egypt Airline, Kenya Airline, et cetera. They will not take your naira. Also, don’t forget, the mails they are carrying, the destinations are different countries. They are not just from Nigeria to their home country. They also extend them to some other countries and they will have to pay for that extension. But generally that is the global trend.What’s the situation now? Have they started lifting your mails?Yes, they are lifting our mails now, and we have secured agreement with Lufthansa Airlines to take local currency, which has taken away the pressure on us. They have agreed to take local currency. The agreement with Lufthansa is strategic because it is the airline conveying the largest bulk of our mails. Other airlines are inconsequential.So, we will be able to pay them. As I said, for us to be in the comfort zone, those other postal administrations we have some balance of payment with need to settle the indebtedness before we will be able to also pay other airlines or postal administrations.How viable is the postal enterprise? Assuming the organisation gets commercialised, will you be able to pay salaries, sustain operations and make profit?I will say yes, because we have quite a number of potentials. The potentials are there, and if we are commercialised and given the proper backing, I mean adequate investment, there is no reason why we will not make profit.Post offices worldwide operate on three pillars – physical, financial and electronic. At the moment, the emphasis in NIPOST is physical. I am assuring you that with adequate investment, the physical and electronic will come on board. And these are the areas in which we will make profit because these are value-added services. They do not have social content.But physical mail, particularly mail between you and me, has social content in the sense that the customer pays only N50 and we deliver the letter whether the mail is from Sokoto to Port Harcourt, or from Lagos to Maiduguri. The customer pays only N50 but it is very possible that NIPOST spends more than N1,000 in delivering the mail.But if you want to use EMS (Expedited Mail Service), it is value-added; we charge you the commercial rate, not the social rate.Tell our readers a little about the international politics, culture and economy of the postal enterprise.We have what we call the Universal Postal Union which is our umbrella supervising body. Supervising in the sense of giving policies but not in the running of the day to day activities of individual organisations. Within this union, we have what we call IB, which is the International Bureau, headed by a director general (DG).The post of DG is an elective office. After every four years, we convene a universal postal congress, and it is the country that wishes to host that congress that will do that. At the moment, a Kenyan is the DG, and it means that Kenya is sponsoring a candidate that must be ready to visit most countries that are members of the UPU.We are currently about 193 or 194 members, and we need about 150 to 158 paid up members. So if you are looking at a position of that nature, it means your country must be prepared to sponsor you to visit some of these countries.We also have the Pan African Postal Union (PAPU) with headquarters inArusha, Tanzania. Nigeria is currently the assistant secretary general of that organisation. So, Nigeria is in a way playing its political role.In the UPU, in the last circle between 2004 and 2008 Nigeria was the chair of finance and budget. And I also served in several capacities. Nigeria also served as the chairman, capital administration in PAPU.In 2012,the West African Postal Union (WAPU) was established. Nigeria also played a major role in that. Nigeria is the host of WAPU congress. The headquarters of WAPU is here in Abuja. And the first executive secretary is from Cote d’Ivoire. So, you can see how politics is played in the postal arena.