From Juliana Agbo, Abuja
Fish under the aegis of Fisheries Cooperation of Nigeria have disclosed that the country is only producing about 1.2 metric tons which is not up to half of the estimated consumption of 3.3 metric tons.
The Acting National Secretary of the Cooperation, Usman Shettima, disclosed this at the opening of a fish section at Wuye Ultra-Modern BOT Market, Abuja.
Shettima highlighted the challenges of fish production to include, high cost of feeds, which consumes about 70 percentage of total investment, lack of modern fishing practices, and inadequate data of fish produced and the farmers involved.
Shettima, while noting that there are about 10 million people involved in the fishery industry both directly and indirectly, said the fishery sector would assist in revenue generation, if farmers are able to meet up the gap.
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“COVID-19 and insecurity has affected our farmers seriously, if we are able to meet up this gap, we will be saving a lot of our foreign exchange for the country.
“We also need budgetary allocation for the three tiers of government into the fishery sector. The sector is not well recognised in the budget, consequently, we tend to have post-harvest losses which also count against us”, he said.
He however appealed to the CBN, NIRSAL, development partners as well as other financial institutions, so as to meet up the 2.2 metric tons deficit.
Speaking, Director of Operations of the Market, Balogun Oluwasegun, said the opening of a fish section at the Wuye market is aimed at bringing the product closer to Abuja residents.
“We have offered them the free space for the period of six months so as to give them opportunity to expand their market.
Furthermore, representative of the Ministry of Agriculture, John Onoubiona, said the government would continue to assist fish production.
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