Quote:
Originally Posted by Waves
Why are you obsessed with Big D's article when you have the Minister's statement which clearly talks about distributing phones. Well let me help you because I was a little bit involved in this. There is a fund called "Universal Access Fund" (being managed by NCC and to which all Telcos and govt contribute a percentage ). The idea is to use this fund for the project. My former employer had this "Rural Telephony Project" which was designed to provide basic services at very low cost to rural areas (no data access for instance) and this UAF is supposed to be used to subsidise the project. So incase you don't understand how govt works, it is quite possible to purchase and distribute these handsets without seeing the provision for it in the budget.
Am I against this initiative? Yes. First, of the 16 issues identified as affecting farmers in Nigeria (Gov Nyako was part of this project and should have shared it with the Minister during their Eonomic Team meeting), communication only has a tangential mention (under access to Extension services and Price Discovery). For your information, Fertilizer was 13th and Tractor 14th. Second, GSM access is very limited in areas where the intended farmers live (don't be deceived by what you see in the Cities and the roads). GSM companies are really reluctant to erect N40m Cell Site in a rural town. Third, the Handsets will hardly get to the Farmers. Try and find out what happened during the last farming season with FG share of fertilizers. Because the FG has no network or infrastructure to contact these farmers, the FG usually relies on the States which don't share Adeshina's ideas. Eventually, these handsets will be a PDP thing.
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Oga waves,as per the bolded I'm sure we all agree that no one will want to, but isnt the primary reason for the
USPF to ensure said villages have access to telephony? To me, Adeshina is showing he can synergise his goals with others.
I'm totally against spending billions on phones that a lot of farmers might already have sef, that part of the policy might suck, but the general idea behind the policy has a hell of a lot of merit, or are you saying that all of the examples(in the proshare article) of how the policy might benefit the farmers will not yield any fruit? even if it's so they can call relatives in the city to send money for fertilizer it is an advantage.
@Oga Oracle,
during my NYSC days, I reached one village called Yelwa in Niger state, they didn't have any NEPA poles so no electricity, yet when we brought out our generators to help the kids cut their hair na so people come dey bring phones for us to charge, if you see as I shock...
P.S. If to say I be politician, I for don call world press conference to accuse you guys of saying telephones are not for the farmers a la David Mark
hispy99
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