*Demand for fish in Nigeria exceeds 3.6m metric tons – FG
*Local production hits 1.2m metric tons.
- FG grants licences to 164 fishing vessels to operate on territorial waters.
Hauwa Ali, Fatima Saka and Omotayo Edubi
The Federal Government says the demand for fish exceeds 3.6 million metric tons but the country is only able to produce about 1.2 million metric tons.
Mr Ime Umoh, the Director, Fisheries Department in the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, made this known at the Second Dialogue with Regional Economic Communities (RECs) implementation of Fisheries Governance Project phase 2 (FISHGOV-2) on Monday, in Abuja.
The three-day dialogue is co-hosted by African Union Development Agency, AUDA-NEPAD, and African Union-InterAfrican Bureau for Animal Resources, AU-IBAR, with the support of European Union, EU.
According to Umoh, Nigerian fish industry can only produce 1.2 million metric tons of fish from industrial, artisans and aquaculture sub sectors.
Umoh, who said that Nigeria had benefited from Phase 1 of the FISHGOV project, and the success was glaring, expressed optimism that the Phase 2 would also boost fish production in Nigeria.
“The Minister of Agriculture has a very big passion for fishing production because we believe that fish is the cheapest source of protein and the total fish for the country is more than 3.6 metric tons”.
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“But we are not able to meet up this target because of some of the issues that we are going to be discussing in this dialogue”.
“We are only able to produce about 1.2 metric tons in all the sub sectors in the industrial, the aquaculture, and also the artisan sub sector,” he said.
Mr Umoh also disclosed that the Federal Government has granted licences to 164 fishing vessels to operate on territorial waters and exclusive economic zone.
Umoh said this was one of the achievement recorded by the Department in its activities, saying local production has been boosted.
“For the artisans, we help them with training, provide inputs, like lake enhancement, which we take fingerlings to boost some water bodies that lack fish”.
“For aquaculture, we normally establish fish farm estates, where we establish it for youths and women, and also provide them with feed because of the flood we had in 2020 in collaboration with National Emergency Management Agency, NEMA”.
“We are intervening in 15 states providing fish feeds, fingerlings, nets, canoe, and that is what is going on presently in Nigeria”.
“On industrial, we install Vessel Monitoring System, VMS, not to finish everything of the artisans”.
“What we do is in collaboration with Navy and other security agencies when we install the equipment in the vessels so that we will be able to monitor what they are doing; the type of fish, vessels that is being used, equipment that is being brought into the country”.
“For example, they can use the vessels for smuggling and every other activity”.
“We have to prevent all these from the trawlers being used for other obnoxious activities”, he said.
