The Minister of Agriculture, Dr. Akinwunmi Adesina, has said the Federal Government does not intend buying telephone handsets for 10 million farmers as earlier reported.
Rather, Adesina said what the government contemplates dping is to subsidize the cost of the telephone handsets for the farmers.
Speaking with State House correspondents on Monday, Adesina said the farmers require the telephone handers in order to improve their farming skills.
The position of the minister contradicts that of the Permanent Secretary in his ministry, Ibukun Odusote, who said in December 2012 that the government was going to procure 10 million handsets for farmers at a rate of N4,000 or N6,000.
Odusote said: “We are talking about 10 million handsets.
“Each handset would be costing may be N6000 or N4000 because it is in large number.
“We are not going to buy in pieces like that.
“We will buy directly from the manufacturing companies.
“We have agreement with some organisations in China and some in the United States.
“They are going to provide all these handsets for us because they are also interested in investing in the agricultural sector in Nigeria.
“So, you have the idea and estimate of the cost.”
But Adesina contradicted this when he said: “There will be no direct procurement of phones by the federal government.
“We are also not going to give anyone contracts to import phones from China or anywhere else.
“Let me also state loud and clear: there is no N60 billionanywhere to be used to buy cellphones.
“The Ministry of Agriculture and Ministry of Communications Technology are partnering together to implement this policy.
“Phones will be sold directly to farmers by local mobile phone service providers.
“The government simply subsidize the cost of the phone directly to the farmer.
“Government will work with interested mobile phone service companies to achieve its goal.”
Adesina, however, defended the decision to procure cell phones for farmers at subsidized rate.
He said: “Some people are asking questions like: ‘Why cellphones for farmers?’ ‘Will the fertilizers and seeds be attached to the cellphones?’ Some people think that our farmers are uneducated and cannot use cell phones. The evidence does not support that. Under the Growth Enhancement Scheme, we made it possible for farmers to transact business in their own local languages using their cellphones.
“From data we collected based on farmers’ use of cellphones to access fertilizers and seeds last year, we found that the total number of transactions done by phone with respect to the GES scheme was 4.9 million. Of these, 1.2 million were in English, 620,000 were in Pidgin, 2.2 million were in Hausa, and 854,000 were in Yoruba and 344 were in Igbo.
“From this data, we have no doubt that our farmers are well able to use cellphones. Nigeria is the first country in Africa to launch a GES scheme that delivers farm inputs to farmers using cellphones. We are very proud of this achievement.
“We found that 71 per cent of farmers sampled did not have cell phones. This shows that many of our farmers in rural areas are quite poor and are excluded from the benefits of the mobile phone revolution going on in Nigeria. These farmers cannot access the GES scheme without cellphones and we must find a way to include them. They must not be left behind.
“Some are asking how we arrived at the figure of 10 million farmers. The National Bureau of Statistics has estimated the number of farmers in Nigeria as 14 million. The Food and Agriculture Organisation also has reported a similar number. From the result of our sampling, which showed that 71 per cent of farmers do not have any phones, we can project to the larger population of 14 million and arrive at an estimate of 10 million farmers who probably do not have phones.
“We intend to get about two million phones to farmers who do not have phones this year. How will these phones be paid for and how will they be distributed?
“As Minister, I cannot use hype to guide policies. I must use evidence to guide.
“Our future lies ahead of us. We will rapidly modernize the agricultural sector. The days are gone when town criers were used to transmit information in our rural areas. This is a modern world.
“For those calling for my crucifixion, let me say that I have stolen no man’s silver, nor demanded any man’s gold, and will continue to drive bold innovations and reforms to fully modernize and transform the agricultural sector.”
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