SAN FRANCISCO, October 09, (THEWILL) – The Nigeria Postal Service (NIPOST) is already counting its losses to the Boko Haram insurgency in Borno State.
The Postal Service said on Wednesday that it has lost over 50 percent of its revenue to the insurgency, stressing that some of its offices in many of the Local Government Areas of the state were closed down and few others compelled to run skeletal services because of the crisis.
All these nonetheless, NIPOST said it has benefited immensely from the shut down of GSM services in the state, noting that it has increased patronage of postal services as many residents of the state have been forced to be writing letters in the absence of. mobile telephone services.
The Maiduguri Area Territorial Manager of NIPOST, Paul Bitrus Ngadda, who disclosed this during the celebration of the World Postal Day, lamented that the revenue of the area has drastically declined since the Boko Haram insurgency began in the state.
He added that NIPOST now operates skeletal services in most part of the state except Maiduguri and Biu due to the general insecurity in the state.
He disclosed that the Maiduguri area was making about N3 million monthly until 2011 when the insecurity worsened even as he lamented that NIPOST revenue nose-dived to N700, 000 at the peak of the crisis.
He said the area office was not able to achieve its financial target in 2012 Fiscal Year, insisting that only N19 million was made during the year as against the budgeted N32 million revenue target.
“Majority of our customers have relocated to other parts of the country due to the insecurity problem in Borno State and this has affected our revenue immensely,” he said.
The NIPOST boss lamented that the insecurity problem has led to the closure of some of the offices of the service in the northern part of the state, and Gwoza area in the southern part.
He however said the revenue has shown slight increase since the shutdown of telecommunication networks with increasing patronage.
“The only offices operating now are Maiduguri and Biu while in some of the outskirts areas, we are offering skeletal services. One of our drivers was once attacked and the vehicle use was taken away. Also our main office was attacked in March which led to the temporary closure of the office,”Ngadda said even as he explained that the said objective of the World Postal Day with the topic ‘The post: delivering for people and businesses,’ was to create awareness about postal services.
