To prevent post-harvest losses, the Nigerian Energy Forum (NEF) with funding from United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), has identified two fishing communities in Lagos where it will provide solar-powered cold room and dryer.
NEF Business Coordinator, Mr. Adebayo Adegoke, said the project was aimed at helping coastal communities improve their fishing.
Research, he said, has shown that there is high level of post-harvest waste, whereby fishermen go into the wild to get fish but by the time they get back there is this high level of waste.
The programme, he further stressed, is aimed at helping them preserve their fish or catch to enable them maximise profit.
He said the NEF team had been to various communities but identified two that needed solution most. They are Langbasa and Sagbokoji.
“The reason we deal with these two communities is because Sagbokoji is peculiar for the fact that it is an island community where there is no power supply and there is no form of electricity where one may hopefully feel they will have freezers and dryers that will help them preserve their products but they don’t have all of these. It is an island in Apapa axis, just away from Liverpool,” he added.
“We also chose Langbasa because it is an open community with fishing history behind it. But being a pilot project, we still intend to reach other communities even outside Lagos State but we will have where to start from, so we picked these two communities to start the project.”
“The solution we are providing there is cold room and dryer. It will be powered by solar. We will use solar panels to power the cold room and the dryer. We know they don’t have access to the national grid so it makes it easier to look for a solution that can be used off the national grid which is solely driven by solar,” he explained.
For Mrs Abiodun Solanke, a lecturer at the Federal College of Fishery and Marine Technology, Victoria Island, Lagos, the importance of the programme to the fishermen and consumers of their fish is for health and safety.
She said: “Our problem in Nigeria is not production. We produce so much but what happens is that when there are no storage facilities, many of the fishes they produce are wasted. Therefore, the importance of this initiative to fishermen is that if they adopt this technology, it will help them to store their fish product, extend the shelf life of the fish product because the shelf life of fish product if you don’t do anything to it within hours like about 1-2 hours after harvest, deterioration sets in. So the whole idea is to provide them with storage facility so that the product can have extended shelf life.
Chief Adesanya Olironise of Lamgbasa, the Odofin of Lamgbasa and Divisional Chairman of Fishermen Cooperative for Lagos Island, Mainland and Etiosa, said: “The programme is for our progress and I’m very happy. Since the programme started last year, I have been expecting them to come. When they came, they told us they want to give us cold room and a dryer. They talked to our fishermen and fisherwomen. We held meetings several times with them, went to the sea together. We even went to our Kabiyesi’s palace together. Two weeks ago, Mr. Adebayo invited us to come here. We would have been more than this number but he said he wanted three men and three women as representatives. We appreciate because we have been expecting what we saw today. With the documentary we watched today, we are expecting them to bring the cold room and dryer. Presently, we have not been trained on how to install and maintain the equipment until the equipment arrives.”