The ever swooning agonizing pangs of Nigerians have been greeted with yet another downing ripple in the Agricultural sector too early in the New Year. No doubt, the displeasure of Nigerians on the profligacy in government, politicization of strategic government programmes, the soaring nature of corruption in the corridors of power, the nepotism and the social discrimination in our national life have assumed worrisome heights. The latest being the moves of the federal government to distribute mobile phones to 10million Nigerian farmers.
Nigerians as usual have swarm to the internet to vent their displeasure and it is hard to know who at the corridors of power is answerable for such worrying policy. The anticipated project is expected to gulp a whooping N60b tax payers’ money. The defense from some quarters of government is that the phones are expected to be a link between the government agencies and the accredited farmers, serve as a means of disseminating latest agro related information to the farmers, as well as serve as a medium of cutting out fraud which has fraught the access and distribution of fertilizers to qualified farmers. Albeit the innocuous intention in government quarters, the policy has been widely described as not only upsetting but another wasteful venture of the President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration.
Nigerians are asking, if the funds could not be used for other more reasonable schemes in the agricultural sector like reviving the long neglected farm settlements, rehabilitations of poor link roads to the farms, zero-interest loans to the accredited farmers, amongst other creditable agricultural venture rather than another agrarian shindig that is intended to satisfy the interest of some few political faithful.
In other sane economies, the thrust of government policies is to use public funds to satisfy the lingering collective interest of the people in whose interest it held powers. In this regard, the following questions prevail; what are the inter-sectoral benefits of the phone distribution? Are the phones going to be manufactured in Nigeria? Aside just serving as an instrument of information dissemination, what are its job creation potentials? This is so, because, a viable public policy must possess forward-backward linkages, and if the phone distribution agenda of the Federal government lack these assimilations, it should be jettisoned before it further strain the livelihood of the mass of Nigerians whose standards of living have already been made impoverished by this present administration.
In fairness policy injunction should be designed and articulated in conjunction with the pulse of the people. Where the contrary prevails, it only means the agenda is lopsided. Another set of questions that comes to mind; were the farmers contacted before a decision was reached? Was it collectively agreed that mobile phones are the best alternatives in view of the challenges confronting the agricultural sector? If there were such wide consultations what are the criteria used in selecting the inundating 10million farmers? How does the government arrive on the 10million population? Is phone distribution the singular most suitable means of forestalling fertilizer racketeering in the sector?
For an economy that seeks to diversify its economic base importing ten million phones can only be said to be ridiculous! We might inevitably go down in history as the largest single importer of mobile phones in a single year as an economy! It is preposterous for an economy battling spiraling unemployment to start providing jobs in other economies. This is a country where the total earning of the non-oil sector (inclusive of the agriculture) in 2011 was less than 10%, greater percentage of the return been earned from a foreign company based in Nigeria! In same year, the oil sector contributed an overwhelming 97%.
In one of his twitter responses Reno Omokri replied, Adamu Hassan, one of the dissenting Nigerians on the significance of the mobile phones “so the ministry of agric can send SMSs on useful farming tips in order to maximize their yield for our National Food Security”, what he however did not tell him, is the estimated implied impending cost of service the bulk SMSs to which he referred. This to me appears another conduit of diverting public funds to serve some personal interests. If the farmers are so poor as to lack the resources to purchase a N6000 worth of phone, then they might as well have been so poor not to be able to afford formal education? So how would they read the SMSs? No doubt, many of our farmers are readily uneducated.
At a time when every sector of the Nigerian economy yearn for honest and sincere attention because of long standing years of neglect, the presiding government must learn to migrate from years of derisive politicization to strategic performance that optimize the use of public resources in a manner that it better serve the wider interest. As a nation, we must rise from the decrepit and relics of seeking economic diversification in a manner that makes mockery of our political and economic grandstanding among the comity of nations.
Elijah Olupona
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