Within a three-year period, Nigeria has received the sum $1.2 million (about N150 million) from the Universal Postal Union as grant to improve postal services in the country.
Nigeria Postal Service (NIPOST) chief, Kola Aduloju, who disclosed this while briefing newsmen on Nigeria's participation at the 24th UPU Conference scheduled to hold in Geneva, Switzerland, said NIPOST is judiciously expending the grant on such projects as procurement of vehicles, as well as on track and trace system, even as it expects more support from the union.

It becomes worthwhile, therefore, for Nigeria to participate in this year's congress in order to seek further collaboration with not just the global postal union but also other key players in the industry,” Aduloju said.
Public Relations Manager of NIPOST, Hussaina Charity Ato, also hinted that Nigeria's participation at the UPU Congress would afford "the opportunity to hear industry leaders speak on all key issues, including best practice, regulatory matters and increasing competition. She said the congress serves as a showcase for postal administrators and creates an environment to view and discuss operational developments and strategies, as well as exhibition of new technologies, which administrators can buy-in to further improve their system."

She further noted that Nigeria was attending the 2008 Congress as the current chairman of the Finance Committee of African Postal administrators, in addition to being a member of 16 different committees of the global body.
Nigeria will also seek re-election as chairman of the committee and also seek election for the membership of postal operations council; council of administration as well as membership of telematic operations committe.

She said the post service has a basic mission which is to provide a public service and in carrying out this mandate it is expected to adopt a more commercial and business like approach in order to serve the customer better and keep cost under control, saying that the post is undere pressure to modernize its operations.

To this end NIPOST is set to deploy 1,500 very small aperture terminals, VSAT in the post offices across the 36 states of the federation. Nigeria is collaborating "with France to finance building and deployment of vsat across the 36 states of the federation and this should be completed in 15 months. This will now make it possible for us to provide so many services you can make fund transfer using nipost, and cyber cafe services in rural areas."
This project is said to be at the implementation stage as basic things have been done.