Nigerian government knows how to amuse people with its many comedian politicians. We see them daily in policies they formulate. The latest comedian is the Minister of Agriculture with his comment winning debut joke titled ‘10 Million cell phone for farmers’. According to Yoruba born clown, the Federal Government has a plan to distribute 10 million cell phones to farmers in the country.
The Minister, Dr. Akinwunmi Adesina, while confirming the plan faulted earlier report by the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry, Mrs. Ibukun Odusote, who had said the phones would be bought by the government at the cost of N60 billion. In a correct report, the minister explained that the phones will be supplied to farmers through Public/Private Sector partnership. The scheme is proposed to involve a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the Ministries of Agricultural Resources and Rural Development, Women Affairs and Communication. The minister has explained that the phones are to be given to farmers to trigger an information revolution that will drive an agricultural revolution among agricultural workers who constitute 70 per cent of the Nigerian population. Five million of the handsets, he said, are to be given to women.
First, we remark that the minister is a bad mathematician. If farmers constitute 70 per cent of the Nigerian population as he claimed, how did the ministry arrive at the figure of 10 million phone sets for farmers in Nigeria without a comprehensive database of farmers in the country? How, again, would 10 million cell phones serve the needs of farmers that the minister said constitute 70 percent of Nigeria’s 160 million population?
Top among sectors in the Nigeria economy that do not justify their annual budgetary allocations are agriculture, education, then health. When compared with other ministries, money allotted to agricultural sector has always been a waste. If Nigeria farmers are to adopt the ministry’s techniques of mechanized farming, the whole country will hungry the next day. What an uninformed about the activities of this ministry needs to do is to visit any sample yam farm of the ministry of agriculture. We keep hearing of FADAMA and dam projects but never have we seen produce of dry season farming except vegetable supply by rural women who use un-mechanized methods of irrigation.
It is rather insulting than laughable for a minister saddled with responsibility of ensuring adequate food supply to come up with a plan to squander public naira on procurement of cell phones. No argument can detract the folly of such initiative in a country where its abundant agricultural resources have been neglected in pursuit of black gold economy. The whole plan is an insult to our collective expectation that a servant of such sensitive ministry ought to be a technocrat who should at all times think best ways to boost agricultural production.
Nigeria farmers generally have numerous challenges which communication is the least. Besides non-affordability of farm inputs and implements the menace of pest constantly affects yields; and next there is no security of agricultural produce because of lack of storage facilities like silos. Again, farmers have limited or no access to fertilizers and farm other inputs because experience of recent years has shown that inputs meant for them have always gone to wrong audience who pose as farmers to buy them up and resell at inflated prices. Farmers who manage to produce through improvised implements and manual labour are forced by bad road network and inaccessible good market either to sell them off at cheap prices or allow them rot away. These are challenges that ought to be the priority of a ministry that knows its onions. An agricultural ministry ought to brim with initiatives and policies that will help plot the downfall of these challenges.
It is amazing to see how in the minister’s opinion the cell phones will help to increase farmers’ access to information on climate change and loan opportunities, and boost agricultural production in the country. Giving out free telephones is not the best way to boost productivity as telephone is not the greatest need of Nigerian farmers. It is one thing to have a cell phone and another to have a source of light to recharge the battery and money to buy airtime. The problem of Nigerian farmers is not largely ignorance of whatever sort. Every farmer knows that fertilizers improve yield. But how do they get it more so when the officials of the ministry always divert agricultural loans.
While mobile telecommunication has improved greatly in Nigeria, greater majority of rural dwellers do not have access to any of the networks. Perhaps, government does not need to buy telephones for farmers because those among them who could use such phones, already have them. If information were to be only way to boost productivity in Nigeria, rural information centres, traditional communication models and the radio are much better channels. There are also many more direct initiatives through which the government can boost agricultural production in the country, than provision of telephones.
With a bag of fertilizers selling as high as between N5000 and N7000, one wonders whether handsets pose more difficulties for farmers when a bag of fertilizers can buy three handsets. If farm inputs are more basic to farming, the phone scheme is another fraud of visionless politicians who have aligned with phone suppliers to foist grandiose project on our collective intelligence. There is nothing attractive in the entire scheme. With better handsets in market, the young people whom the minister explained would be lured into farming through the exercise cannot take the quality of phones being proposed for a dash.
What government needs to do is to provide good road network, farms inputs and storage facilities. Above all identifying real farmers who can be assisted with soft loans at reasonable interest rate will help a lot. I have no problem if these are provided through private/public sector partnership. What we need is an improvement on the status quo.
