Nigeria Moves to Boost Aquaculture Industry, Welcomes Private Investors

The Federal Government has said that it is intensifying efforts to enhance the aquaculture sub-sector, as part of plans to achieve national food security.

Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Alhaji Sabo Nanono made this known while receiving the Chairman and Management of Kainji Aquaculture Resource Limited in his office in Abuja on Tuesday.

Nanono noted that the government was working out ways to satiate the massive appetite for fish and reduce its importation in the country.

The minister decried that despite the abundance of water bodies on Nigeria’s coast, inshore, creeks, delta, lagoons, inland rivers and lakes, the country is only able to generate 800,000 metric tons of fish per annum

This, he added, was short of the 2.1 million metric tons demand, adding that about 1.3 million metric tonnes deficit is currently being imported annually.

In a statement signed by the Minister’s Technical Adviser on Media, Ahmed Aminu, Nanono noted that Nigeria is quite capable of producing enough fish for its teeming population if private investors will team up with the government to boost fish production.

According to him, existing fishery facilities at Kainji and New Bussa will soon be reactivated while those in Rivers, Akwa Ibom and Ondo States would be invigorated.

Nanono, however, praised the emergence of Kainji Aquaculture Resource Limited to augment the fishing supply in the country.

He called on capable individuals and organisations to key into the industry and leverage its(aquaculture) large market which he described as the largest in Africa.

On his part, the Chairman of the Company, Alhaji Ibrahim Isma’il, disclosed that the $36 million undertaking was raised in partnership with a Norwegian consortium, Niger State Government and other private investors.

According to Isma’il, the aquaculture farm was designed to initially produce five million metric tonnes of Tilapia fish annually.

Production will later be boosted to ten million metric tonnes per annum, the chairman added.

He further expressed gratitude to Nanono for the favourable disposition extended towards the company, noting that it will positively harness the resourceful waters of Kainji Lake.