The federal government, in collaboration with the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has launched a N200 million support initiative to boost aquaculture in Nigeria.

The initiative is also expected to help meet the country’s annual fish demand.

Director of fisheries and aquaculture, federal ministry of marine and blue economy, Wellington Omoragbon, spoke at the inauguration of scaling fish farming through finance (Access to input finance under the FISH4ACP project) at Eriwe fish farming cluster in Odogbolu, Ogun.

Mr Omoragbon, represented by Paul Opuama, Director 11, said the initiative was aimed at promoting the sustainability of Nigeria’s fisheries resources.

He lauded FAO and other development partners for supporting Nigeria’s government to improve on its fish production capacity.

He disclosed that Nigeria with its enormous water bodies should be able to harness these resources to improve on fish production.

Mr Omoragbon explained that the challenge of access to finance with reference to the skyrocketing cost of feeds were major difficulties the fish farmers had to battle with in the country.

“We know that one of the major challenges confronting the fish farmers is finance with skyrocketing prices of feed.

”But with partnership like this, we shall be able to support our farmers and bridge up the fish production deficit,” he said.

In his remarks, the representative of FAO in Nigeria and West Africa, Koffy Kouacou, called for action to end the annual two million metric tonnes of fish import in the country.

He explained that the project, funded by the European Union in collaboration with other development partners, was primarily to make funding more accessible for the fish farmers to boost fish production in the country.

He said that under the pilot scheme of the project, 40 fish farmers would collect between N2.5 million and N5 million totalling about N200 million to upscale their fish farming business and production.

”We are supporting 40 pilot, each pilot farmers, will receive between N2.5million and N5million to boost there production,” he said.

He disclosed that the essence of the initiative was to strengthen the fish farmers capacity to produce more fish locally, create more business opportunities in the aquaculture and help end fish import in the country.

“So we are here at Eriwe fish cluster in collaboration with both Ogun and federal government and the partnering financial institutions to launch this project.

”It will help the farmers to access required finance to upscale their fish farming business and cover the deficit of fish production in the country.

The programme manager, agriculture, European Union Delegation to Nigeria, Hugh Briggs, said that the FISH4ACP project was being implemented in 12 countries of the world with Nigeria getting the lion share of the grant.

The Ogun State commissioner for agriculture and food security, Bolu Owotomo  lauded FAO and other development partners for the initiative.

Mr Owotomo, represented by the director of fisheries department, Victoria Ojelade, appealed that the similar gesture be extended to other fish clusters in the state. 

(NAN)