Courier operators are anxious to see that the postal bill is ratified to allow the Postal Service Commission, an independent body that will regulate the postal and courier industry come on stream.
Okey Uba, managing director /chief executive officer of the company spoke to Nigeria Communications Week at the company’s corporate office in Lagos and said the regulatory body is long expected to be constituted if the postal bill had been passed even as he said further that the Postal Service Commission is something everybody that knows his onions in the courier industry has long been expecting
Uba said the fear about the new regulatory body that is being anticipated increasing the capital base for courier operators from the present two million naira to whatever is not necessary as he believes the body will be headed by technocrat who must have taken into consideration the terrain of operation, capacity and capability of courier operators in Nigeria before coming up with adjustments.
In the face of the uncertainty over which area  the anticipated independent regulatory body may effect new changes, Uba said Ebony Express, one of the leading indigenous courier companies, is positioned to think ahead of time and quipped that in corporate business one really has to expect changes-whether in legal aspect or method of doing businesses.
Even as the managing director doesn’t want to speculate and try to pre-empt what the new directive may be, he said Ebony Express is poised to accept the law and is also ready to meet up with new requirements that may be introduced for the operation of courier business in Nigeria.” I don’t want to beat the gun and wouldn’t also  want to speculate the angle the new law will come out from. It may not necessarily be in terms of financial capability because as far as I am concerned courier business requires two important things – honesty and contentment”, he said.
Uba said courier involves situations where valuable and expensive items are being moved for clients by courier companies and declared that one who doesn’t have honesty and mind of contentment may possibly not carry out the job well.
Some big corporate organizations including Union Registrars and Intercontinental Bank have recently discovered the courier industry a worthy place to invest. Union Registrars registered the Union Express as a courier outfit belonging to the parent company, Union Bank Plc., while the Intercontinental Bank applied for license to the Courier Regulatory Department under the name IRS Express whose license Nigeria Communications Week investigations reveal may be out in a matter of weeks from now. Such a development thrills Uba who feels the integrity of the  courier industry has been restored..
According to him “Let’s look at it this way, if a business has been regarded as a ragtag business and all of a sudden, the organized private sector (OPS) comes into that business, it goes a long way to show that this is a business for noble people and one that confers a lot of integrity on the operators and for them to venture into it helps to build up the image and patronage of the courier industry “, Uba said.
He said that courier is now being regarded and respected and is ready to be seen as rendering core value to the national economy. However he advised that those courier companies that don’t have the financial muscle to compete with such big players  can carve a niche area where they can operate because according to him” Courier is not really a place you come into to start chasing shadows”.
On the reduction in volume of business for the industry, Uba said Information and Communications Technology rather than Nipost activities has actually reduced the express business. He also said that the arrival of motor transport companies into courier  business is one area that has reduced the volume of business in the sector. Some of them he said, engage in price undercutting and he has identified this as one principal thing  that is killing the business. “Courier is door- to-door. When you begin to see a situation where an addressee has to come to your office to pick up a mail, then you are not rendering courier service. Somebody is supposed to sit in the comfort of his home or office and a mail is delivered to him and proof of delivery (POD) delivered back to the shipper. These are issues I believe the Postal Service Commission will address”, Uba submitted.
He advocates for price regime whereby every courier operator will have a standard price   for services taking into consideration the cost of doing business. He said the more operators stick to the price regime , the merrier they will become.
Uba said for Ebony Express, a company that thrives on integrity and honesty to continue to be abreast of challenges of modern day business that its workers undergo refresher courses even as he said the company’s Research and Development department is working tirelessly to bring out new ideas and roadmap that will foster the company in the minds of Nigerians.