Nigeria produces 1.2m mt of fish out of 3.8m mt required yearly
By Jeph Ajobaju, Chief Copy Editor
Nigeria produces 1.2 million metric tonnes (mt) of fish yearly and needs to import 3.6 million mt to fill the gap in the 3.8 million mt required for full nutritional content in the diet of its population, says the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.
The point was made in Abuja by the ministry’s Fisheries and Aquaculture Director, Ime Umoh, who disclosed that 2.6 million mt of frozen fish import is used to meet local demand.
Umoh spoke at the Internal Coordination Meeting of Implementation of Fisheries Governance Project Phase 2, where he said the 1.2 million mt Nigeria produces come from artisanal, industrial, and aquaculture.
“Frozen fish importation is being used to bridge the gap not actually that we are going to have 2.5 million metric tonnes in the country but we have a situation to just supplement this with frozen fish importation to be able to have a leeway for the farmers,” he explained.
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Promoting regional cooperation
African Union-Interafrican Bureau for Animal Resources (AU-IBAR) Director Nick Nwankpa said the project would leverage on their mandates to promote regional cooperation on fisheries and aquaculture to gain political commitments and facilitate implementation of activities.
He added that the Fisheries Governance Project (FishGov) Phase 2 seeks important partners to facilitate the implementation at regional and national levels, per The Nation.
Ernest Aubee, head of agriculture and food security division of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Commission in Abuja, said the Commission has a FisGov looking at the entire fisheries and aquaculture value chain.
He stressed that the fisheries sector is very strategic and ECOWAS has been able to put in place a regional fisheries strategy so that all the 15 member-states can develop their fisheries sector in a coordinated manner.
Panduleni Elago, senior Comprehensive African Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP) of the African Union Commission, urged African countries to support small scale farmers to produce enough for consumers.