With over 14,500 ponds spanning five clusters located on miles of swampy land, the Uvwie Fish Farmers Multipurpose Society in Uvwie Local Government Area of Delta owns what is arguably one of the biggest fish farm settlements in the West African sub-region.
About six to nine tons of catfish is produced daily from the ponds, owned by over 6,500 members. This fish flood the markets of Effurun, Warri and other neighbouring towns. This has helped stabilise the price of fish in the past three years.
The Chairman of the society, Deacon Henry Ogbodu, told a team of United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) recently brought in by the Delta State Ministry of Poverty Alleviation that with technical support and assistance his members could produce catfish to feed a good percentage of the nation’s population.
Already, he said the intervention of the Delta State Government through the Commissioner, Dr. Antonia Ashiedu in the past four years has boosted production from barely over 1,000 pounds in Ekpan to its present capacity.
Interestingly, the farm is owned by thousands of hitherto unemployed locals, who decided to take their destinies in their own hands instead of waiting for government to provide job. These entrepreneurs now employ thousands of youths from Ekpan and other communities in Uvwie Local Government Area. This has in turn reduced the restiveness in the crisis-prone kingdom.
Ufuoma Idama, an Industrial Mathematics graduate of the Delta State University, owns six large ponds. He told our reporter that he gave up on job hunting after several years of scouring the ‘Wanted’ pages of newspapers for opening and hundreds of job interviews ending with promises of “We will get back to you” that never materialised.
When The Nation visited the massive farm located off Ufuoma Street in Ekpan recently, the young man was bustling with confidence. Why not? He owns six ponds, some of which are ripe for harvest that could yield profit of up to N500,000 each after six just months.
“It is not all rosy; it takes a lot of hard work because this business is really cabbage in cabbage out. You must invest money, time and your attention to get the best of the farm,” he told our reporter.
Ogbodu told the team led by UNIDO’s Senior Industrial Development Officers/Chief Rural Entrepreneurship and Human Security Unit, Aurelia Calabro-Bellamoli that fish produced from the farm were as tasty as those from the river because they are bred with water from the nearby river, which is channelled or piped through webs of canal through the ponds. He explained that the six-hourly high and low tide of the river fill and drain the ponds, eliminating stagnancy which is harmful to the fish.
He commended the government for its support, particularly in the area of providing infrastructure, including tarring the road leading to the farm; technical and manpower development training, which saw the training of over 200 members at the Nigerian Institute of Oceanography and Marine Research (NIOMR) in a train-the-trainers programme that has benefited thousands of its members.
The most viable support, he said, was the micro credit loans given to member, which led to production leaping by over 1,400 per cent in the past four years. The loan, which has grown to tens of millions over the past two years, he said, has helped members expand to no end.
Yet, the fish farmer said the society was not without challenges. He listed some of the tests facing his members to include fund for expansion, technical support, particularly in the area of fingerlings, value addition through packaging, smoking and marketing of their products.
He said: “We need technical support to produce feed to reduce our cost of production. We also need funds for new and improved fingerlings, water treatment. We also need value addition because the local women who buy from us cannot cope with the volume of fish we produce. We want to be able to export to other states and possibly outside Nigeria.”
He further added, “For instance, our members cannot produce optimally in order not to create glut in the market. We can only harvest about nine tons daily, even though we have the capacity to produce up to 15tons.”
Of the nine tons of fish produced daily, he said about 10 – 20 percent were smoked by women who have located their businesses in the heart of the farm to provide ready services to consumers.
However, Ogbodu, whose ponds have increased from two to 200, recalled a sad period when crude oil from a leaky barge wiped ponds of his members in 2011. He said efforts to get the alleged pollutant – neighbouring Chevron Nigeria Limited – to compensate his members who lost millions of naira failed.
“What was lost as a result of that incident put so many of us out of operation. Credit facilities that were taken for cultivation went down the drain. The issue remains a very bitter experience for us, but we believe that one day justice will be served,” he added.
Calabro-Bellamoli commended the leadership of the farmers, noting that “in those days the big fish eats the small one, but with cooperation, the small fishes now eat the big ones.”
While urging the coops member not to sleep, the UNIDO team leader assured that it will work with the Delta State Government to bring the fish farmers “a little ahead through value addition that is sustainable.”
Other members of the team include Frank Hartwich and Jesse Ojobo, agric experts as well as Jaroslav Cabak, who is a leather product expert. They promised to have more interactive sessions with the farmers in order to find the best form of help to offer them in the areas listed by Ogbodu in his address.
