Internet of Things: The Present Status, Future Impacts and Challenges in Nigerian Agriculture

Internet of Things (IoT) is a recent technology that is gaining widespread awareness and acceptance in several fields due to its practical relevance in everyday life improvement. IoT has found its utility in transportation, environmental monitoring and forecasting, home and office appliances, agriculture, health, security and energy conservation (Bamigboye and Ademola 2016). In Nigeria, agriculture serves as one of the main resources for income generation for individuals, private and public organisations. However, agriculture in Nigeria as an enterprise and food security outlets for her populace is still backward in the use of IoT. Internet of Things has the potential to improve, enhance and absolutely change the face of Nigerian agriculture to a world-class standard.

Internet of Things (IoT) is the network of physical objects, devices, vehicles, buildings and other items which are embedded with electronics, software, sensors and network connectivity which enables these objects to collect and exchange data (GSI 2015). The Internet of Things allows objects to be sensed and controlled remotely across existing network infrastructure, creating opportunities for more direct integration between the physical world and computer-based systems, and resulting in improved efficiency, accuracy and economic benefit. IoT is any object which is capable of identifying, connecting and communicating with other objects (Santucci 2011; LOPEZ Research Series 2013; Reddy 2014).

Agriculture is a profit-driven oriented business; hence, factors that influence the profitability of a farm are of great paramount and interest to the farmer. IoT can be made relevant if it can address the general needs of a locality, be made available and affordable, easy to use and packaged in the local/indigenous languages. With intensification of crop/livestock production systems and increased market demand of animal based products, the importance of information is growing in many developing countries (Morton and Matthewman 1996). Hence, there is need for continual exchange of information and data, decoding and interpretation as well as actions taken to achieve desired success.

(Sasidhar and Sharma 2006) have emphasised that the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has potential to change the economy of livestock, agriculture, and rural artisans in India. (Tiwari et al. 2010) argued that the livestock sector should come up with need based, location specific and local language contents in the form of computer software and other electronic material in regards to livestock disease control, dairy herd management, livestock production and for marketing of livestock and livestock produce. ICT based information delivery to livestock sector can significantly improve the quality of decision-making in livestock farming system. In this process of structural change and potential growth in high value products (Gulati et al. 2007), ICT based livestock advisory services for knowledge dissemination to the farming communities for better and informed decision-making at the farm level, have become essential.

Nigeria has witnessed a great deal of set-back due to corruption at all levels in every sector; agriculture inclusive. IoT in form of E-wallet was employed to address agricultural inputs and services corruption. Most times, subsidized inputs do not get to the practicing farmers but are rather lost in transit to the rich and influential few that repack and sell at exorbitant prices.

In Nigeria, the Internet of Things is just becoming popular in all facets of life. However, its usage in agriculture is still backward. Mostly, IoT usage in agriculture is believed to be only profitable to large-scale farmers. But very few farmers in Nigeria practiced large-scale farming. Hence, most farmers have not seen the need for its usage on their farms.

Effective tracking of nomadic cattle-grazing and movements enabled by smart tracking devices would greatly minimize the number of community clashes between nomadic herdsmen and the settled rural farming communities. This would go a long way to help settle the persisting conflict and communal disputes, tensions, which most often degenerate into communal wars between the people (Ume and Haruna 2018). Indiscriminate killings and destruction of properties in the recent time by Fulani cattle herders can be tracked and curbed. Animal theft can be drastically reduced to the minimum.

Since rural communities are sparsely populated, transportation of farm products can be a problem. IoT technologies can empower the transporters by providing them with information of farmers who require transport. Therefore transporters do not need to wait until they have a full truck load of farm products to start off, they can leave any time provided they are aware that there are farmers waiting for transport ahead (Bamigboye and Ademola 2016).

Furthermore, farm workers can receive real-time notifications from farm machinery equipped with wireless sensors as issues arise. The ability to perform preventative maintenance and repair issues immediately could lead to tremendous cost savings in decreasing down time and protecting valuable assets (Farrell 2015). The health of farm animals such as cattle or chicken can be monitored to detect potential signs of disease. This can be linked to a central system which can trigger relevant advice to be sent to farmers, and contribute towards analytics that can be used to identify any outbreaks or trends (Farrell 2015).

Through the use of Near-Field Communications (NFC), the farmers and buyers can benefit from paperless transactions and this helps minimize on theft and fraud. Similarly this is beneficial to rural farmers who have no access to banks within a reasonable distance to deposit cash from purchases or withdraw cash to buy farming inputs. The use of livestock or crop smart health cards which store information related to affected livestock or crops can be beneficial to both the veterinary or agriculture officer and the farmers in Nigeria. This can lead to efficient and effective diagnosis and prescription of medicine since the officer has access to all the historic information of the affected livestock or crop. If satellite transmission is made available in the deep rural area, this has the potential to create jobs for local businesses who could offer low-cost solutions, access and wireless network services cheaper to the communities. Satellite transmission can also enable farmers in rural areas obtain information on markets for their products and prices, government services that they can access, and their rights. The system can also connect to government departments and local and international markets. With the introduction of the mobile internet and low-cost sensors, farmers could interact directly with consumers and cutting off middlemen who usually exploit them. This is beneficial to farmers because they can make better profits on their products (Haas et al. 2011).

Internet of Things in Nigeria is still at the formative stage. However, future prospects were identified. Nevertheless, the sustainability of IoT in the country is being faced with some challenges.