The federal government says it has licensed 164 vessels to operate on Nigeria’s territorial waters and exclusive economic zones.

Ime Umoh, the Director, Fisheries Department in the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, made this known at a programme on Monday in Abuja.

The director was speaking at the ‘Second Dialogue with Regional Economic Communities implementation of Fisheries Governance Project phase 2’. He provided details of some of the initiatives embarked upon by the government to assist fish farmers.

“For the artisanal, we help them with training, provide inputs, which we do lake enhancement, which we take fingerlings to boost some water bodies that lack fish.

“For aquaculture, we normally establish fish farm estates, where we establish it for youths and women, and also provide them with feed because of the flood we had in 2020 in collaboration with National Emergency Management Agency, NEMA.

“We are intervening in 15 states providing fish feeds, fingerlings, nets, canoe, and that is what is going on presently in Nigeria. On industrial, we install Vessel Monitoring System, VMS, not to finish everything of the artisanal.

“What we do is in collaboration with the Navy and other security agencies when we install the equipment in the vessels so that we will be able to monitor what they are doing; the type of fish, vessels that are being used, equipment that is being brought into the country.

“For example, they can use the vessels for smuggling and other activities. We have to prevent all these from the trawlers being used for other obnoxious activities,” he said.

The three-day dialogue was co-hosted by the African Union Development Agency, and African Union-InterAfrican Bureau for Animal Resources, with support from the European Union.

(NAN)