Cellulant boss urges youths into agriculture information Technology

The CEO Cellulant Nigeria, Mr. Bolaji Akinboro

The CEO Cellulant Nigeria, Mr. Bolaji Akinboro has urged more youths to harness the potential opportunities in agricultural activities to empower themselves especially in the use of Information Technology (IT) in giving extension services and inputs to farmers thereby posing an alternative to older hands in the public and private sector of agriculture.

Mr. Akinboro in an interview with Food Farm News in his office said more youths need to get into changing the agricultural sector through IT saying their ingenuity will change the face of the sector to more vibrant economy especially in the face of the dwindling oil in the world market with more emphasis on repositioning to the real sector of agriculture as alternative source of revenue generation.

Cellulant Nigeria is a private company that powered the compilation of farmers’ data used for the Growth Enhancement Support of the Federal Government’s inputs subsidy to over fourteen million farmers in the country thereby curbing over 30 years corrupt practices in the fertilizers in less than 100 days as the product given to end users can now be well accounted for in terms of what is distributed and taken.

According to Cellulant CEO “There is compelling evidence of an aging farmer population in the country, which must be addressed to facilitate sustainability in agricultural production.  Most farmers in Nigeria are over 55 years and our life-expectancy averages is between 55-60 years and as the country already relies heavily on food imports to feed its growing population, reversing the trend will mean that the youth must take up the mantle and venture into agriculture where there is a lot of potential for the youths who are IT inclined, but it’s about identifying the right opportunities. The youths are strategic to the success of any effort to boost Nigerian food production,”.

Mr. Bolaji also submitted that Nigerian farmers would soon experience more positive change in terms of government intervention going by the body language of President Mohammadu Buhari during his meeting with Permanent Secretary of FMARD added he was optimistic that the GES programme would be up scaled saying “the President believes that the continuation of the GES will help curb corruption that is uppermost in the priority of this present government.

 Already many states are beginning to make orders for fertilizer input thereby trying to go back to old practices which farmers have decried and it is likely to bring a crack to the federal government Growth Enhancement Scheme”.

Mr.Bolaji advocated for the use of modern technology to develop agriculture urging the federal government to bring in more sophisticated technologies to further fasten the development of the sector.