LEVEL OF ACCESS AND USE OF ICTS FOR AGRICULTURAL COMMUNICATION BY NGO WORKERS IN NASARAWA STATE, NIGERIA.

The study ascertained the level of ICT usage for agricultural communication by NGOs in Nasarawa state, Nigeria using a well structured questionnaire; data for the study were generated from one hundred and twenty five NGO staff in Nasarawa state. The data obtained were analyzed using percentage, mean score and multiple regression. The findings show that some of the agricultural/rural development activities of the NGOs included microfinance/agricultural credit scheme (96%), women/youth empowerment programmes (62.4%) and agricultural extension services (49.6%). On the ownership of ICT facilities by the NGO staff majority (98.40%) of the respondents had mobile phones, followed by radio (93.60%), television (84%), video player (75.20%), audio player (68%) and personal computers (47.20%). Majority (M-1.82) of the respondents used radio for communicating agricultural information to farmers, followed by mobile phone (M=1.79), television (M=1.79), computer (M=1.64) and Internet (M=1.32).The major ICT channels for communicating agricultural messages by the respondents were telephone calls (M=1.76), text messages (M=1.75) and emails (M—1.17). The result of the regression analysis of the effects of respondents’ socioeconomic characteristics on their level of use of ICTs shows that gender, working experience, number of ICT facilities owned by a respondent, income level, length of computer training and membership of social organizations all had positive relationship with the level of ICT use. However, only one variable (Number of ICT owned) had a significant effect (p<0.05) on the level of ICT usage. The study therefore recommended that NGOs in Nasarawa state should focus more attention on agricultural activities such as farm inputs distribution, environmental management/climate change mitigation and conflict resolution/management. These critical needs of rural farmers were not given prominence in the activities of the respondents. The NGOs should equally provide on- the- job training on ICT applications for their staff to improve their capacity in the use of ICTs for agricultural communication, especially areas where such skills are lacking.