Fish importation to end in 2022, says minister

The Federal Government has asked fish importers to consider producing fish locally as it plans to ban its importation in the next two years.

Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Sabo Nanono, said this on Monday in Abuja at the 35th Annual Conference of the Fisheries Society of Nigeria (FISON).

He said this was part of measures to prevent capital flight and implement programmes in the agriculture sector geared towards diversifying the economy.

The minister, who was represented by the Director of Federal Department of Fisheries, Mr Imeh Umoh, described fisheries as one of the value chains in the ministry.

“Let me inform you that the vision of Mr President is to grow Nigeria’s agriculture sector to achieve a hunger-free nation, through agriculture that drives income growth, accelerate the achievement of food and nutritional security, generate employment and transform Nigeria into a leading player in the group of food and fish markets, and to create wealth for millions,” he said.

The minister said currently, the total demand for fish was 3.6 million tonnes annually while Nigeria was producing 1.1 million tonnes, leaving a deficit of about 2.5 million tonnes to be supplemented by importation.

Nanono noted that an estimated over 12 million Nigerians were actively engaged in primary and fish production, adding that contribution of fisheries to the national Gross Domestic Products was about 4.5 per cent.

He said the government had directed all fish importers to go into backward integration for local consumption and export to international market as part of the measures of the ministry to reduce this importation and generate employment.

He said several companies had complied with the policy and that the ministry was optimistic that in the next two years, Nigeria would have no business with the importation of fish.

He said it is in this regard that the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development was pursuing a holistic approach to the development of the fisheries subsector through the diversification programme along the value chain process.

“In line with the theme of this conference, the ministry has developed various programmes to increase domestic food/fish production and the main target is the empowerment of the youth and other groups especially the women,” he said.

He added, “All these programmes are tailored towards wealth and jobs creation, arrest and prevention of youth restiveness.”

Nanono added that the contributions of the fisheries and aquaculture sub-sector to the Nigerian economy and the ongoing economic recovery programme of the current regime were significant in terms of employment, income generation, poverty alleviation, foreign exchange earnings and provision of raw materials.

President of FISON, Mr Adegoke Agbabiaka, said in order to achieve self-sufficiency in food fish production, the government in the last decade had made a paradigm shift under the Agricultural Transformation Agenda and was considering agriculture, including fisheries, as a business.