The Nigerian Postal Services (NIPOST) has again warned Nigerians to be careful of those offering them courier services.
NIPOST warned that unregistered courier operators are now used to carry out other illicit businesses around the country, including drugs trafficking.
Addressing reporters in Abuja to mark his two years in office, the Postmaster General of the Federation, Dr Ismail Adewusi, said it is no longer business as usual for such operators as there is an ongoing clampdown on them.
The Postmaster-General said licences have been available to duly registered operators while the clampdown of illegal operators has since commenced in major cities across the nation.
He said one of the things the agency has achieved was to enforce compliances with regulations and clamp down on illegal courier businesses.
He said the agency was not carrying out this responsibility outside the laws, insisting that NIPOST is empowered under the regulation to ensure that all illegal operators are phased out.
“This is going to be a continuous process, Nigeria is very vast, there is no way we can do this all at once, what we have done is to start from places where we have noticed this, there are so many of them in the major capital cities of Nigeria.
“We started from Lagos, we have been to Abuja, we are going to Benin, this year, we are going to continue with other states.
“We are determined to ensure that full compliance is achieved and nobody will be parading the streets anywhere in Nigeria without a licence and he is operating a courier service, that will not be acceptable.
“When we allow that to happen, a lot of implications are there, many of the illegal courier services are used as an avenue to carry illicit drugs
He said the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) had already taken note of this trending issue where some of the so-called courier operators are using their motorcycles to carry drugs.
The Postmaster-General said, for this reason, the agency has forwarded the list of duly registered courier operators in the country to NDLEA so that in the course of discharging their duties, they can easily spot the illegal operators and arrest them.
