The Federal Government has launched the National Digital Alphanumeric Postcode System to address poor addressing and reduce missed and failed deliveries across Nigeria.
Gatekeepers News reports that the initiative was launched on Thursday through the Nigerian Postal Service (NIPOST), according to the Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy, Bosun Tijani.
Tijani said the system would improve emergency response, security, commerce and public service delivery while addressing losses associated with inadequate addressing.
He said Nigeria loses an estimated N50 billion to N80 billion annually as a result of missed and failed deliveries caused by poor addressing.
According to the minister, however, the challenge extends beyond postal and delivery services to emergency response, security operations, financial services, businesses and government planning.
“For a country to work efficiently, we need to be able to answer one very basic question. Where?” Tijani said.
He said the ability to accurately identify locations was critical to determining where an ambulance should respond during an emergency, where businesses were located and where government should direct essential services.
How the digital postcode works
Under the new system, every addressable building is assigned a unique 11-character alphanumeric postcode linked to its geographical location.
The code is generated through five levels: state, local government area, district, area and building.
Unlike a postcode assigned to an individual, the digital postcode belongs to the building. It can therefore remain attached to a property even when its occupants change.
The system is designed to complement conventional address details rather than simply replace them, providing a standard digital reference that can be used across different platforms and services.
Tijani urged Nigerians to locate their postcodes, save them and begin using them when sharing their locations.
“Every Nigerian deserves to be found. Every business deserves the chance to reach its customers. And every community deserves to be within reach of opportunity,” he said.
The Federal Ministry of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy described the initiative as a critical component of Nigeria’s Digital Public Infrastructure.
It said the system was designed to provide a unique and verifiable location identity that could strengthen public safety, security and service delivery.
The GIS-enabled platform covers addressable buildings in both urban and rural communities.
NIPOST’s official platform allows Nigerians to search for, save and share their postcodes. It also provides a process for requesting a postcode for buildings that have not yet been captured.
Organisations will be able to integrate the digital postcode into their platforms and workflows, enabling different services to use a common location reference.
Supporting Nigeria’s digital economy
Tijani linked the initiative to the Federal Government’s broader digital economy agenda and President Bola Tinubu’s ambition of building a $1 trillion economy.
“As we work towards H.E. President @officialABAT’s ambition for a $1 trillion economy, we must build the foundations that allow more Nigerians to participate, trade and prosper,” he said.
The minister encouraged Nigerians to visit the official postcode platform, find their codes and share them with businesses, service providers, family members and others who need to locate them.
Postmaster General and Chief Executive Officer of NIPOST, Tola Odeyemi, had earlier described the initiative as a machine-readable framework for identifying addressable buildings across the country.
“Postcode is basically a framework used to have a machine-readable standard location address for every addressable building in Nigeria,” Odeyemi said during the validation of the postcode model in June.
She also said poor addressing costs the country between N50 billion and N80 billion annually through misdeliveries.
Odeyemi stressed that the initiative went beyond postal reform, describing it as a piece of national infrastructure with applications in logistics, e-commerce, emergency response, financial services, security and public planning.
For businesses, the digital postcode could provide a common location reference for customer records, deliveries, e-commerce transactions and other services.
Government agencies and emergency responders could also use the system to identify locations more accurately when planning services or responding to incidents.
