Nigeria: Antics of a Proposalist

18 January 2013
opinion

A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle: and that-ha! ha!! ha!!!-is supposed to mean that matters have reached the limits of their irrelevance to the situation at hand. And if not for the seriousness of their implication, some things are better laughed off or laughed out at--and out of court. And there are many of such matters nowadays: which immediately reminds you of the cellular phone-to-farmers programme.

It was about a fortnight ago that, in what may sound like a welcome, but downrightly uncreative, departure from dreary officialise, Nigerians were treated to a dour run of official tragicomedy. It was tragic, no doubt; and there was nothing comical about it. On Tuesday January 8, Mrs Ibukun Odusote, the permanent secretary in the ministry of agriculture on Tuesday, January 8, announced that 60 billion Naira had been set aside by the government for the purchase and free distribution of ten million telephone handsets to Nigerian farmers in rural areas in order to--of all things!--boost agricultural production in the country. And you drew your hand over your eyes to wake yourself up, in case you were asleep; but it was no joke and it was not a dream.

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