On August 3, 2016, the Minister of Communications introduced me to the Nigerian Postal Service’s management as Postmaster General of the Federation and Chief Executive Officer of NIPOST. I came from the private sector, the first person from that background to lead the organisation. I was convinced that a postal service defined by the movement of letters had no future. Digital commerce was expanding. Banks needed reliable customer identification. The government needed to know not just who citizens were, but where they could be found, verified and served.
Ten years later, the National Identity Management Commission and NIPOST signed a Memorandum of Understanding on postcodes. While this deserves everyone’s support, it comes with an unfinished history.
During my tenure, NIPOST ran the Digital Addressing System and Address Verification System, known internally as DAS & VAS. It connected physical addresses, digital location references, identity verification and service delivery, and in 2018 the Address Verification System won a World Summit on the Information Society Prize in the e-employment category, recognised for supporting identity verification while creating work for field agents.
I visited NIMC’s then Director-General twice to propose linking NIMC’s identity infrastructure to NIPOST’s addressing and verification system. The logic was simple: a national identity number identifies who a person is; digital addressing and verification establish where that person can reliably be reached. The National Identity Number, tied to a resolvable location, becomes more useful than either half alone.
