A new Postmaster General of the Federation and Chief Executive of the Nigerian Postal System will soon emerge, the Special Assistant to the Minister of Communications, Mr. Victor Oluwadamilare, has said.
Oluwadamilare, who spoke in an interview with the PUNCH in Abuja, said it was because there could not be any vacuum that acting PMGs had in recent been appointed to run NIPOST.
NIPOST workers had been worried about the lack of direction by the organisation because of the absence of a substantive helmsman for more than one year.
The last substantive helmsman of NIPOST, Mr. Ibrahim Baba, retired from service in August 2015 and since then, the organisation has passed through three hands who have managed the postal organisation in acting capacities.
The minister’s aide said NIPOST was strategic in the plan of the present administration, thus the need to select a proper person to run the organisation.
Although the government threw open the process of hiring a new helmsman for the postal organisation, it nonetheless has delayed in announcing a substantive CEO for NIPOST.
Meanwhile, the Minister of Science and Technology, Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu, has said that the Federal Government will explore all avenues to diversify the nation’s economy.
Onu said this while receiving the Chairman of an Israeli company, DOR Chemical, Gil Dankner, in his office in Abuja on Thursday.
The minister said the Israeli company would help Nigeria to utilise efficiently the enormous and abundant natural gas resources in the country by producing methanol as well as protecting the environment and growing the economy.
He said, “Biochemical will be very helpful in this respect. They (the Israeli firm) will do research. They will produce in Nigeria. They will be able to transfer technology to our nation because what they are bringing is something new.
“They want to help Nigeria to move in the direction that other developing countries are moving; start diversifying the sources of fuel. Many developing countries now get their fuel from methanol. We should also key into this because it is cheaper; it will help us to create jobs and protect our environment.
“Nigeria has a lot to benefit by moving from resource-based economy to innovation-based economy, which is technologically driven. We cannot continue to rely on just commodities and primary products for our economy.
“We must add value to what we have and we also must close all technology gaps in the country. We are the largest economy in Africa. We have the largest population in Africa. We should become more self-reliant. We must start producing the things that we need.”
