The growth of the Internet and mobile phone services in Nigeria is gradually killing postal services as most people no longer use surface mails to send messages.
The effect of this can be seen in the latest report by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) which shows that the total revenue generated from postal activities in 2022 fell by 17.05 percent from N3.63 billion in 2021 to N3.01 billion in 2022.
The report also said the total number of Post Offices and Postal Agencies decreased by 19.43 percent from 2,794 in 2021 to 2,251 in 2022, while the total number of boxes installed in 2022 was 836,731, showing a decrease of 0.08 percent from 837,428 in 2021, with Lagos state having the highest number of boxes installed in 2022 with 143,416, while Jigawa recorded the least with 1,800.
The report says even the number of private mail bags (PMBs) available in 2022 stood at 20,775, showing a fall of 8.44 percent from 22,689 in 2021.
However the NBS said the number of postal articles handled in 2022 increased by 102.05 percent from 17.7 million in 2021 to 35.7 million in 2022.
This is a sharp contrast with figures from telecommunications where the total number of active voice subscribers in Q1 2023 was 226,161,713 from the 199,558,540 reported in Q1 2022, indicating a growth rate of 13.33 percent. While the total number of active internet subscribers in Q1 2023 stood at 157,551,104 from the 145,851,496 reported in Q1 2022, showing an increase of 8.02 percent.