By Adekunle Adekoya

OURS is a very interesting country, a single fact of which I had convinced myself a very long time ago. Here, there is never a shortage of anything to tickle one’s attention, from, as they say, the sublime to the ridiculous. The interesting nature of events here is what for me defined the uniqueness of the average Nigerian, irrespective of any point of the compass he may originate from. This uniqueness also defines our economy, which has defied all doomsday predictions till date.

Isn’t it a wonder that the national economy has remained resilient despite the serial buffeting it takes from poor managers and bad leaders, not to talk of unrepentant looters? How many economies in the world can withstand the looting which our economy has laughed at, and still continues to laugh at? Not many, if any, I’m sure!

Which brings me to one curious headline several days ago about N60 billion to be appropriated for buying cell phones for farmers! That headline, and the story it headed, set me thinking, again, about the unputdownability of the Nigerian, assuming it was true. What brilliant mind wrote the proposal to the Ministry of Agriculture to buy cell phones for 10 million farmers at a cost of N6,000 each, again, assuming that the story is true?

In this country of ours, who said we have up to, less than, or more than 10 million farmers? Just how many farmers do we have? Do we know? Anyway, the story served a purpose, one of which was that it let us know how the Minister of Agriculture, Dr Akin Adesina has been using an ICT tool, the cell phone to break the fertilizer racket. Anybody who cares to know would have found out that there are millions of farmers, especially in the southern part of the country who have never seen fertilizer, talk less use it on their farms.

The image of the average farmer in these climes is that of a stark illiterate with hoes and cutlasses, suffering all day in good and bad weather as he tilled the soil of his farm for what it can yield. So, what does this farmer need a cell phone for, except take and make calls to his children attending school in the urban areas, who ceaselessly demand for money?

But Dr Adesina now tells us that we have to shed this image of the farmer. His words: “Under the GES (Growth Enhancement Support) scheme, we made it possible for farmers to transact business in their own local languages using their cell phones. From data we collected based on farmers’ use of cell phones 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 cell phones.”

See? If we leverage properly and patriotically on using ICT tools to impact lives here, many of our seemingly intractable problems will begin to be solvable, especially the problem of corruption. If the cell phone can be used to break the fertilizer racket, there must be ICT solutions that will ensure equitable distribution of the little power we generate, and among others ensure that funds appropriated for specific projects are disbursed as specified. Kudos, Dr Adesina of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture. Let other ministers, and commissioners in the states follow suit, and Vision 20-2020 might just still be achievable.