The Nigerian Government has launched a National Digital Alphanumeric Postcode System aimed at reducing missed and failed deliveries and improving location identification across the country.
The Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy, Bosun Tijani, announced the launch on Thursday in a statement shared on his official X account.
The system, launched through the Nigerian Postal Service, is designed to improve emergency response, security, commerce and public service delivery while addressing losses linked to poor addressing.
Tijani said Nigeria loses an estimated ₦50 billion to ₦80 billion annually through missed and failed deliveries caused by inadequate addressing.
He, however, noted that the problem extends beyond deliveries, affecting emergency services, 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 asked.
He highlighted the practical importance of accurate location data, including identifying where an ambulance should go during an emergency, where a business is located and where the government should direct critical services.
Under the new system, every addressable building is assigned a unique 11-character alphanumeric postcode linked to its geographical location.
The code is structured across five levels: state, local government area, district, area and building.
The postcode is assigned to the building rather than its occupant, meaning it can remain with a property even when the people living or working there change.
The system is designed to complement conventional address details by providing a standard digital reference that can be used across different platforms.
Tijani urged Nigerians to find 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 added.
The Federal Ministry of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy described the initiative as a critical component of Nigeria’s Digital Public Infrastructure, designed to provide a unique and verifiable location identity for public safety, security and service delivery.
The system is GIS-enabled and covers addressable buildings in both urban and rural communities.
Through NIPOST’s official platform, Nigerians can search for, save and share their postcodes. The platform also provides a process for requesting a postcode for a building that has not yet been captured.
Organisations can integrate the digital postcode into their platforms and workflows, allowing different services to use a common location reference.
Tijani linked the initiative to the Nigerian Government’s wider digital economy agenda and President Bola Tinubu’s ambition to build 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.
He urged Nigerians to visit the official postcode platform, find their codes and begin sharing them with businesses, service providers, family members and others who need to locate them.
The Postmaster General and Chief Executive Officer of NIPOST, Tola Odeyemi, had earlier described the initiative as a machine-readable framework for identifying addressable buildings nationwide.
“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 ₦50 billion and ₦80 billion annually through misdeliveries.
Odeyemi stressed that the system was not merely a postal reform but a piece of national infrastructure with applications in logistics, e-commerce, emergency response, financial services, security and public planning.
For businesses, the postcode can provide a common location reference for customer records, deliveries, e-commerce and other transactions.
Government agencies and emergency responders could also use the system to identify locations more accurately when planning services or responding to incidents.