By Seyi Odewale
A former Postmaster-General of the Federation, Barr. Bisi Adegbuyi, has urged the Federal Government to expand the newly announced partnership between the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) and the Nigerian Postal Service (NIPOST).
He said Nigeria needs a comprehensive digital location infrastructure rather than a postcode system alone to drive economic growth, security and public service delivery.
Adegbuyi said the recently signed Memorandum of Understanding between NIMC and NIPOST presents an opportunity to build an integrated national digital addressing framework capable of linking identity records with verified locations and strengthening governance across all sectors.
Writing in a policy paper made available on Monday titled “Beyond the NIMC–NIPOST MoU on Postcodes: Ten Years After: Why Trusted Location May Be the Missing Operating Layer of Nigeria’s Development,” the former postal chief argued that Nigeria should leverage the agreement to establish trusted digital public infrastructure instead of limiting collaboration to postcode development.
“Identity answers who. Location answers where. A functional digital society requires trusted answers to both questions.”
Adegbuyi recalled that during his tenure as Postmaster-General, NIPOST developed the Digital Addressing System and Address Verification System (DAS & VAS), designed to integrate physical addresses, digital location references, identity verification and public service delivery into a unified platform.
He noted that the initiative received international recognition after winning the 2018 World Summit on the Information Society Prize for its contribution to address verification and digital employment.
He disclosed that efforts were made to partner with NIMC by linking the National Identity Number (NIN) with the digital addressing platform. Still, the initiative was never fully implemented despite its potential.
“A national identity system becomes considerably more useful when the identity holder can be connected, with measurable confidence, to a real-world location.”
According to Adegbuyi, NIMC already possesses millions of address records that can be transformed into valuable national assets through data cleaning, geocoding, administrative resolution and digital verification, without waiting for the completion of a nationwide postcode rollout.
He proposed a layered architecture in which NIPOST would provide official postcodes while NIMC manages identity-linked location intelligence, describing the approach as complementary rather than duplicative.
“NIPOST supplies the official postcode. NIMC supplies the trusted identity relationship. Address intelligence connects, resolves and continuously improves the information between them.”
The former NIPOST boss argued that trusted location intelligence could significantly improve security operations, emergency response, social welfare programmes, agriculture, trade, logistics and oil and gas administration by enabling government to identify people, businesses, infrastructure and communities accurately.
He added that the system could also support Local Government autonomy by equipping councils with reliable geographic data for planning and service delivery.
He further maintained that Nigeria’s ambition of becoming a $1 trillion economy would depend on the country’s ability to identify and digitally connect farms, businesses, markets, logistics corridors and productive citizens across its 774 local government areas.
“Nigeria’s ambition should extend beyond connecting the NIN to a postcode.”
Adegbuyi urged the Federal Government to empower local governments with digital location tools and encourage indigenous innovation in digital mapping and identity technologies, insisting that trusted location infrastructure would improve investment, taxation, financial inclusion and governance.
He concluded that Nigeria’s addressing challenge has evolved beyond postal services into a broader national development issue requiring coordinated institutional action.
“Nigeria’s addressing challenge is not merely a postal problem. It is an identity problem… a security problem… a Local Government capacity problem… and increasingly, a national trust problem
