By Emmanuel Elebeke

ABUJA — The Nigerian Postal Service, NIPOST, Wednesday, said it intercepted 45,571 items and scam letters with counterfeit financial instruments worth N13.74 billion in 2012.

Disclosing this in Abuja,  during the 2013 World Postal Day Celebration, the Post Master General of the Federation, Alhaji Bori Baba, said that NIPOST officials were able to intercept the scam mails whose monetary value runs into many billions of naira as a result of physical inspection of documents and postal packets by the company’s officials.

Alhaji Baba, who was represented by  the Deputy Post Master General, DPMG, Yashim Isa Bitiyong, said over “45 milllion mail items were handled by NIPOST last year out of which 10.3 million came from abroad and delivered in Nigeria while 2.4 million items were dispatched abroad” from the country the same year.

According to him, letters posted and delivered in the country last year amounted to 33 million.

The NIPOST boss said the government owned courier company had handled 20m mail items between January and June this year out of which 5m were received from abroad while 2m were dispatched abroad, adding that a total of 13m mail items were posted and delivered in Nigeria during the period.

He said due to security challenges in some states and coupled with lack of proper addressing and street naming in the country, the company found it difficult to deliver some mail items within the set delivery target of 72 hours and that made it lost 10 percent of its revenue in  the year.

He said the federal government has installed close circuit televisions (CCTV) and bomb/metal detectors in major post offices across the country.

He also said a committee set up by the Minister of Communications omobola Johnson is currently working on National Addressing System with a view to coming up with a well articulated addressing system for the country.