Poor Regulation Cripples Courier Business

"Business before now was booming for the private courier operators in the country, most whom left the big foreign names to start their own company after years of meritorious service. However the sub sector now faces serious challenges and operators blame NIPOST for their woes" 

MANY local private courier services operators in Nigeria are fast winding up their businesses due to the unfavourable business environment and poor regulation from the government owned Nigeria Postal service, NIPOST.

 Investigation traced the genesis of the calamity that has befallen the private courier operators to the improper regulation from NIPOST following its battle for survival when the telecoms revolution started affecting the business of NIPOST.

Business is no more booming for the private courier operators who once were actually the drivers of the industry, and the operators blame the dual personality of NIPOST as an operator and a regulator for their predicament.

It was gathered that the present state of regulation in the industry, as well as government’s unwillingness to respond to their plight made the fortunes of the sector nose-dive.

For instance, sometime in 2013, NIPOST introduced new regulations into the industry, which according to the small courier firms was cleverly designed to push them out of business.

NIPOST through its Courier Regulatory Department, CRD introduced new licensing and renewal fees under which, new companies or individuals seeking to float courier firm would forward application form to the Senior Assistant Postmaster General, CRD, with the license fee of N2m for domestic or national operation, or N10m for international courier operations together with a non-refundable fee of N20, 000.

An inspection team from CRD would visit at least five branches and head office of the prospective courier operator and the success of the inspection entitle the prospective operator to a new courier license.

Also, under the new fee regime, renewal fee was pegged at N500, 000 for domestic operators while their international counterparts are to pay N2m.

Some of the information required from the prospective companies include, but limited to Certified True copy of Certificate of Incorporation; Memorandum/Articles of Association; Company’s Tax Clearance for the last three years (originals to be sighted); Leasehold Certificate or Tenancy Agreement in respect of the company’s registered office and Evidence or information to show capacity to operate courier service including but not limited to indemnity insurance policy of Five Hundred Thousand Naira, capital base of Two Million Naira or a bond of that value, among others.

General Secretary, Association of Nigeria Courier Operators, ANCO, Mr. Okey Uba  revealed that courier business requires expertise to succeed but that government left the huge industry in the hands of NIPOST, which later considered it as an income generating business that resulted to the introduction of new fees.

The NIPOST regulation brought into the courier business a lot of businessmen who lack the expertise to manage a courier firm but had the money to pay for the fees.

Unfortunately, investigations revealed that the regulation from ANCO has not been able to flush-out the quacks because it lacks statutory responsibility to do so.

 Uba further revealed that regulation from NIPOST has also not been able to prevent local government officials and inter-state revenue collectors that harass courier trucks on delivery trips across the country.

Very often he said that the trucks were detained by the revenue collectors who are unaware of the importance of the content of the truck to the courier clients saying that the industry needs a separate commission for proper regulation.

Such commission, he should be able relate with the several government agencies that harass courier trucks on transit across the country.

He said that if there is a proper regulation from NIPOST, the revenue collectors across the country that harass courier trucks would be able to appreciate the difference between courier truck and other commercial trucks that ply the nations highway.

Presently, there are those who engage in courier business in the country without operational license from NIPOST, and the regulator has not been able to effectively address the situation, even ANCO has not been able to address.

It was discovered that there are corporate bodies across the country that operate dispatch services offering courier services. Such organisations include banks, eateries, transport companies, legal and telecoms firms as well as government agencies.

It was also discovered that the regulator is aware that almost every companies in the country have courier services department that ply the road engaging in courier services on motorbike.

According to Uba the pricing structure of these other bodies as well as that of the transport companies that engage in courier services is major a drain on their profit from the business.

According him, these companies can collect any amount from their clients noting that the business of the private courier services lacks professionalism.

Investigations revealed that NIPOST has been doing everything to ensure that the private courier companies are driven out of business by the kind of policies that is churned out by NIPOST.

Unfortunately, it was also discovered that the planned convergence championed by the Minister of Communications Technology, Dr Omobola Johnson in the draft national draft policy on ICT in 2012 did not favour the courier operators.

While the other sectors in the industry have an unbiased regulator, only the courier operators do not have such.

General Manager, Courier Services, Cross Country, Toyin Adeojo, who works for Courier Master, one of the indigenous courier companies said that the cry of the private operator is a Commission that will effectively regulate the industry.

He said that a level playing field must be created in the  sector so that there will be a restructuring avoid of overlapping interests saying that the present state where NIPOST is both a regulator and operator is contentious.

Adeojo who is also the Publicity Secretary for ANCO revealed that there are certain things that the Courier Regulatory Department, CRD of NIPOST should have been doing to protect their interest but the officials of the department cannot do such because of what may be the reaction of the top management of NIPOST.

Although Adeojo will not mention the things, he however said that the annual renewal fee has since its introduction affected the business of the operators.

He said that removing the sum of N500, 000 from their annual income at time when the fortune of the industry was dwindling was a hard knock on the operators saying that in Ghana annual renewal fee is in five years whereas for Nigeria it is once a year.

He disclosed that money bags make their way into NIPOST and get the courier license without the required expertise saying that their activities which are not checked by NIPOST is affecting the survival of the private courier operator.

According to him, the present unfavourable condition and the lack of proper regulation is responsible for the non-payment of salaries of private courier staff.

He said that if the industry has a regulator, individuals will not ply the road on motorbike as courier operators noting that a situation where medical diagnostic centres do dispatch services amounts to doing their job.

He explained that it is not the work of medical diagnostic centres to use motorbike to carry blood sample from one part of the city to another adding, “That is the work of courier operators. They are not trained to do that. It is because no one is regulating them that is why it is like that.”

He continued: “You can imagine Konga that came into the country not too long ago, got registered as courier operator because they can afford the N2 million”, saying that sometimes  Cross Country losses almost about N200.000 each week to the revenue collectors on the highway due to improper regulation.

Investigation also revealed that the failed privatisation plan of NIPOST is creating a major setback for the industry as it is not allowing NIPOST to develop as an operator.

Some ANCO members believed that if NIPPOST is privatised and a commission is established to regulate the industry, NIPOST will not be able to churn out policies that will affect the private operators.

For instance, in the regulation guidelines of ANCO, anyone that wants to join must have studied a courier related discipline in the university or worked in a courier firm for five years in a senior management position.

Unfortunately, most those being registered by NIPOST do not have such qualifications

He revealed that there is a Postal Service Commission bill that was brought to the National Assemble during the tenure of the later Minister of Information, Prof. Dora Akunyili noting that efforts by ANCO to get the lawmaker to look at the bill have proved abortive.

While the crisis in the sector continues and more private courier firms continue to close, ANCO said it has result to counseling of its members on how to survival.

One of such measures, the ANCO scribe said is the advice to its surviving members not to invest in opening of branches across the country but instead they should form synergy with other members that have business in other states of the Federation.

He said that the absence of an independent regulator is preventing its members from considering merger options adding that ANCO is working to protect its members from fraudulent clients.

He added that the complain that telecoms revolution is affecting courier services was not true because in the UK and America courier services is doing well despite the fact that the telecoms revolution took place years ago in those countries stressing that “ours is not doing well because courier services here is not organised.”

He said that while the foreign courier companies get a single digit loan from the banks in Nigeria, the local private operators get theirs at 30 per cent saying that that’s why we need a well funded courier industry.

A business development manager in one of the courier service company who do not want to be named revealed that sometimes to survive they had to use NIPOST facility to do their job, saying that that was why the industry needs the right kind of regulation.

When contact for comment on some of the investigation discovered by our correspondent, Senior Assistant Postmaster General and Head of the Courier Regulatory Department, CRD, Dr. Simeon Emeje declined to give audience. Also questions send by text message to his mobile phone were not responded to as at the time of filing this report.

However, Head of Enforcement, NIPOST, Andrew Ibiloma disclosed that as a regulator, NIPOST is up to the task of making sure that the environment is conducive for all operators to do business.

According to him, the enforcement team was in Ilorin, capital of Kwara State last December for its oversight function of the industry where six unregistered courier operators were clamped down on adding that same month two others had their business shut  down in Lagos.

Ibiloma revealed that very soon the regulator will begin to address the issue of dispatch riders that do not display stickers of the courier companies that they represent saying that NIPOST is aware that there are some organisation that have logistic department that engage in courier services and that it needs the support of the media to tackle the menace.

He explained that if they are not register with NIPOST to do courier service every courier job in that department must be given to courier service companies warning that it is against the law to engage in courier service without proper registration.

He said that there are banks like Union Bank, Union Express, and Access Bank with registered courier company engage in courier services adding that the Enforcement Team rely on the public for information for us raid.

Mobile Data: 'Tools for Business Efficiency, Money Spinning for Operators'

 V

oice and data are the key tools in the mobile world, however for Nigeria the trend has been tilted more to favour voice but some operators have been keying into the pontentials of mobile data. Ahead of the Mobile World Congress 2015, the key drivers for mobile data were examined along the money spinning opportunities.  

IN THE last few years across the global, mobile data has become the trend in the telecoms industry following the evolution of several value added services in the mobile services sector as well as the development of an electronic driven financial services economy.

In Nigeria, the trend just began in the early 2000 following the licensing of mobile telephone operators to run the Global System for Mobile communication.

Since then, the industry has been largely driven by voice with little attention being paid to huge potentials of the mobile data for a country that has been captured as the fastest growing in Africa.

The pitiable result was recently reflected in a mobile money report, which rated low, the adoption of mobile money by the Nigerians despite the growing awareness in the economy.

The report revealed that Nigeria has a huge addressable market and a large number of mobile money deployments, but low levels of adoption and usage. And this is just one aspect where mobile data is expected to play a key role.

The report, which was published by Mondato, a mobile financial services industry research and advisory company listed Nigeria among the countries in West Africa where the adoption of mobile money is still at infancy.

Deployments of mobile money have been on the increase of recent as several partnerships between the financial services companies and the mobile operators have been signed.

Access Bank Plc recently entered into an agreement with Airtel Nigeria for the deployment of its mobile money platform, Access Money.

In July 2014, MTN Nigeria launched the MTN Diamond Yellow account, offering mobile financial services in partnership with Diamond Bank.

Also Globacom launched Glo Exchange, a mobile money super-agent network that

created 500,000 mobile money agent outlets in the country through the Glo Xchange, Globacom in partnership with Firstmonie, a subsidiary of First Bank, Ecobank, Stanbic IBTC and Zenith Bank.

A study conducted by a Nigerian research company, NOI Polls, showed that only six of 10 Nigerians know about the mobile money, which is 59 percent while only 13 percent use it.

The responses showed that majority of the 93 per cent operate such accounts in connection with their bank account, while only seven per cent operate their mobile money account separately.

The poll also revealed that 65 per cent use for funds transfer, 54 per cent for bill payment, 36 per cent for money withdrawal and 25 per cent for payment of purchased goods and services.

The opinion poll, conducted between August 5 and 7, 2013, involved telephone interviews of a random nationwide sample. 1004 randomly selected phone-owning Nigerians aged 18 years and above, representing the six geopolitical zones in the country,

While the growth in terms of embrace mobile money still appears to be at its infancy due to its challenges as reported by Mondato, critical apps to drive mobile data is however also at its lowest ebb.

President of the Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria, Engr Lanre Ajayi in an interview with National Mirror expressed worry over the lack of apps and content to drive mobile data in the country when broadband access becomes abundant in Nigeria.

According to him, the country is in dire needs of local apps and content to drive mobile data saying that the absence of such will amounts to waste of whatever broadband access increase that the country will experience this year.

And ahead of the Mobile World Congress 2015, which will be held on March 2-5 in Barcelona, Gartner, the worlds renowned market intelligence revealed that there are going to be key drivers of mobile data that will become money spinners for operators to key into.

According to Gartner, there are key factors that will drive the growth in mobile data traffic adding that communications service providers, CSPs and mobile app developers will lead the market.

Research Director at Gartner, Jessica Ekholm said that mobile data traffic will continue to show double-digit growth in 2015 noting that Gartner expects traffic to grow by 59 percent this year.

Gartner revealed that there will be newer and faster networks, a rise in the number of users of these networks, and more affordable 3G and 4G handsets will help to increase data traffic.

It however, said that the key driver of data growth on a global scale is mobile apps, particularly mobile video apps stressing that network speed and reliability are priorities for many mobile customers, it is really apps and content that are driving traffic volumes as people increasingly chat to friends and family, watch videos on the move, and listen to streamed music.

Gartner predicted that although 4G service prices are likely to fall to 3G levels to make them more affordable, 3G networks will continue to fuel worldwide data growth during the next five years.

“We predict that, in 2018, half of North American mobile connections will use 4G networks, but in the Middle East and Africa 4G users will amount to only 3.5 percent of the region's total. We expect 3G connections to grow by 45.7 percent globally in 2015. This double-digit growth shows the longevity and importance of 3G networks”, the report said.

Gartner further revealed that the availability of more affordable 4G handsets is also fuelling growth in data traffic saying that the increase in affordable 4G-enabled handsets and 4G services, which are becoming priced on par with 3G services, will collectively boost traffic.

For 2018, Gartner predicted that 4G users will generate 46 percent of all mobile data traffic explaining that this is because, by 2018, each 4G smartphone will use nearly 5.5GB of data per month, which is three times more than a 3G smartphone.

On what mobile apps will drive double-digit growth over the next few years, it was revealed that mobile video is by far the biggest driver of mobile data.

According to the global market intelligence group, data that was collected from various mobile providers suggested that mobile video is generating 50 percent of all mobile data saying that it expects video streaming to account for over 60 percent of mobile data traffic in 2018, as consumers increase the number of videos they watch and upload.

Gartner observed that fast, uninterrupted, video experiences encourage people to increase their video usage stressing that the growth in the number of users of video-calling services is also noteworthy.

In terms of traffic, Gartner said five minutes of 3G FaceTime video calling uses up to 15MB of data adding that there are many users, of which the collective total amount can be large.

In addition,

The report further revealed that mobile music streaming can easily generate hundreds of megabytes of data, but this varies greatly between mobile music apps for example, a user actively listening to music may consume more than twice as much data as a user of Pandora.

On what should CSPs and mobile app developers do to harness this growth, Gartner suggested that the amount of time consumers spend on the Internet, whether via mobile phone, tablet or PC, will continue to increase.

And as such CSPs will need to focus on creating new pricing with a focus on data access, such as shared plans saying that they will also need to refine the services they already provide, with a focus on creating richer, more immersive and more personalised experiences, to increase their customer numbers.

“As the mobile app market matures, app developers will have to sharpen their focus on the marketing and transparency of their apps, in order to retain customers”, the report.

 Gartner's research indicated that although affluent people and traditional early adopters are the leading users of new technologies and devices, younger, less wealthy people make greater use of mobile apps.

It observed further that young people's greater acceptance of apps and mobile content will require app developers to adjust their techniques to address the differences between user groups saying that the future will be tough for CSPs and mobile app developers that decide not to upgrade the user experiences they deliver on their services and products while the winners will be those providers best able to satisfy consumers' demand for high data use, while maintaining their margins.

MTN Nigeria became the first mobile operator in Nigeria to key into this unique opportunity this year when it launched the BetterMe Apps, an all embracing apps that explores the power and accessible via PCs and mobile devices.

2015 Elections: Study Suggests Social Media May Foretell Winners

It is so hard to predict for now how much impact the social media, internet tools may play in deciding winners of the 2015 elections, how there are suggest that Nigeria is no longer far from a situation where both will foretell the winners. 

LIKE never before in the history of electioneering in Nigeria, the social media has suddenly become a beehive of activities. It now seems to offer the permutations as to which candidate will eventually emerged as the winner of elections that will be held few weeks to come across the country.

While some political enthusiast are near jubilations that their candidate are now at the threshold of claiming their mandate even when the vote is not cast, others think that it is too early count chicks since the eggs are not yet hatch.

Google, Communication and Public Affairs Manager, Anglophone West Africa,

Taiwo Kola-Ogunlade in an interview with the National Mirror debunks the claim that the social media has the capacity to determine the winner of an election.

According to him, “it is a bit hard to take one medium as the voice of the people, particularly in this part of the country where you have different views. The election is an activity that is coming up, while the social media is just a tool used to promote it.”

Kola-Ogunlade described the social media as one of the tools that Nigerians are using to promote the coming elections stressing that “this election is one of the most talked about in the country, and the reason is because the social media has played and still playing a big role.

Refuting further the claim that the current political discourse in the social media and the heat that social media campaign has created in the polity, he said that that the internet is a platform that enables democracy, stressing that “what that means is that power and knowledge is no more in the hands of the few, everyone now has access to power and knowledge meaning that everyone can talk.”

He added, “Before now it used to be one newspaper or broadcast station talking to everyone but now everyone, even there are Nigerians that have large followers more than some stations that are now forcing their positions on national issues.”

He explained that “there is now social capital as people are building online followers, so that is the advantage of the social media as it is making people to have a voice. And I am particularly please about that because young people are now speaking out, so it is no long all about age, experience or ideas.”
The Google spokesman said further that what is happening in the social media currently about the 2015 general elections is that ideas from sections of the society are being churned out through the social media.

He said, “the thing about ideas is that ideas can come from anywhere in the social media, such as the #thebringbackourgirls campaign and such other movement that have brought about changes that affect nations. The very recent one is the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris where people are unwilling to back down on terrorism.”

He however noted that the thought or ideas of people from the social media cannot decide who wins an election because of the present number of Nigerians on the internet, and the fact that not all of the will eventually cast their vote.

He stressed that “In this part of the world the internet is just growing, as at today, there are 49 million Nigerians online, and we are about 170 million. Let us assume that 60 per cent of that is of the voting age and that figure is still bigger than the number of people that use the internet but the internet does help to form and build opinion.”

Nevertheless, he said, “The potentials of the social media is a major reason why the presidential candidates have social media campaign strategy doing a lot stuff using all sorts of social media platform like Tweeter, Google+, Google hangout and Facebook.”

He stated that that was the governorship candidate of the People’s Democratic Party, Jim Agbaja recently hand a Google hangout where he was discussing with people about his campaign promises noting that “since you don’t know what particular time people will be looking for content, it therefore becomes a multiple kind approach and it’s so good that we are seeing it at this time of our existence.”

According Kola-Ogunlade, recent studies showed that people are most receptive when they are online than when they are watching television or looking at billboard saying that “if It was strong enough to engender people to come out and protest during the fuel crisis, it could affect their decision.”

While assessing the performance of the two presidential candidates, Muhammadu Buhari and President Goodluck Jonathan in the use of the social media to drive their campaign, he said that both of them have done very well stating, “I cannot say which has done better but it can only get better.

However, social media rating analysis result recently obtained using Tweet Archivist revealed that the People’s Democratic Party,PDP, candidate,  President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, GEJ, was far ahead of his opponent of the All Progressive Congress, APC, Muhammadu Buhari.

The tweet analysis for GEJ showed that he had 67 tweets with 483,128 impressions in the period between January 19 and 26 while his opponent had 2 tweets with 494 impressions for just January 25 meaning that Buhari was absence from tweeter between January 19 to 24 and 26.

The only Tweet on Buhari which had a message reads: #Muhammadu Buhari is only an agent 4 Change to reclaim Nigeria so that our country can rise again & be a source of our hope & pride.

While tweets on GEJ were mostly those confirming the authenticity of the GEJ which members of the opposition camp had being drumming during the period in other social media.

An internet tool but not a social media platform was also used to assess the presidential declaration speech so as to find out possible issues that their party will address if or when voted into power.

Known as Wordle, it is a tool for generating “word clouds” from text provided. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text.

The prominent words, that feature in  the speech of  contesting candidate tells a lot about the direction of the candidate, and can tell what to expect from the candidate when voted into power.

And because the apps also make it possible for the result of the Wordle to be shared online, it therefore makes it possible for it to be used as a tool to form voter’s opinion. Wordle uses the number of times a word appears in a text to determine its relative size. And so if you look at the Wordle image, it pictures some text larger than the others indicating the frequency of occurrence of the word in the text.

The declaration speech of the APC candidate, in Wordle format has been labelled Figure A while that of the PDP presidential candidate is labelled Figure B.

As seen in the Wordle of the APC candidate are in the order of the sizes are: Nigeria, PDP, Government, Employment, Corruption Economy, Growth, Injustice, Challenges and Community while some key issues based words that do not feature prominently  in the speech are: Oil, Integrity, Rights, Elections, Tracks, Development, Farming

For the PDP presidential candidate words that feature prominently in his speech are: Nigeria, Opportunities, People, Young, National, Nigerians, Expanding, Initiative, Children, Forward, Years, School, Naira, Hydro-Power and Support.

However, some key issues base words do not feature prominently in the speech such as: Peace, Daughters, Food, Hungry, Rural, Projects, Education, Constitutional and APC.

According to Kola-Ogunlade although these social media platform and internet tools have great role to play in forming the opinion as per the choice of candidate that the electorate may vote for but the fact that the numbers of Nigerians on the internet is not large enough to pull a vote for a candidate, it is obviously not likely to decide a winner.

He said that once the cost of internet access drops, there is a reliable internet access and more Nigerians that vote are aware of the potentials then we see social media and internet tools deciding the winning candidate in the country.