‘Why Nigeria may not be able to export fish’
How has the institute impacted on the Nigerian economy? We need to go back to the history of the research institute to be able to comprehend the advantage of having a fishery research institute in Nigeria. As a result of the construction of the Kainji dam in the late 1960s by the federal government, there […]
How has the institute impacted on the Nigerian economy?
We need to go back to the history of the research institute to be able to comprehend the advantage of having a fishery research institute in Nigeria. As a result of the construction of the Kainji dam in the late 1960s by the federal government, there was the need to improve the economy and the power sector was very important. It was decided to have a dam at Kainji town, the lake that had been formed is about 1200sq kilometers, which is a distance of about 135 kilometres in length and 20 kilometres in width. With the coming of the dam, the fisheries of the area became very vulnerable, consequently Kainji Lake Research Institute was established to comprehensively deal with the problem of resettlement of people that were displaced as a result of the creation of the lake.
Over the first 20 years of the Kainji Lake Research Institute was multidisciplinary consisting of agriculture, livestock, fisheries, forestry, socio-economics, medical research, etc. In 1988, with the importance of fisheries emerging globally and even locally, the federal government decided to create an institute for inland fishery research which is now National Institute for Fresh water Fisheries Research.
The mandate of the institute is to conduct studies on the fisheries of our rivers and lakes and then to improve on it to enable the country become self sufficient in fish production. That has been our mandate ,to do research, to solve problems, extend these problems to the farmers through Agricultural Development Projects, ADPs and hopefully in the end fish production would be enhanced and Nigeria would be self sustaining in i fish production, reduce hunger and poverty and to export the surplus to earn foreign exchanges.
You talked about Nigeria attaining self sufficiency in fish production, what is the potential of fishing in Nigeria?
Fishing is agriculture based occupation but unlike agriculture and livestock rearing, over the years fishing has been a commodity that is free for all. There is no limit to the number of fishermen that can go and fish in a particular lake or river because it is a common property. Rivers and lakes are common property of either the communities or local governments, states or federal government. Also because of rapid economic development, industrialization, ecological changes in the landscape, the quality of water has been deteriorating hence our lakes and rivers can no longer support the quantity of fish we require. Nigeria has between 12-14 million hectares of fresh water and if all these can be stocked with fish, allowed to grow to reach maturity then there will be enough for every body. The problem is of enforcing fishery law in the country, it requires support from the government, private sector and the traditional community, etc.
Fish from our rivers and the lakes have dwindled considerably over the years. Getting as much fish to feed the population is by adopting fish farming or aquaculture. In Nigeria it is mostly fish farming that we have been using to increase the quantity of fish to feed the population.
At present the entire production of our rivers and lakes is hovering between 500,000 to 700,000 metric tons of fish per annum but the country needs a minimum of 2 million metric tons of fish to feed a population of over 140 million. If we want to improve on aquaculture to increase fish production, then we have to put use these idle million of hectares of fresh water by encouraging people to learn simple techniques of growing fish. This research institute has produced certain things that are directly relevant to fish farmers. For example, we are the first to study what is called induced fish breeding, making the fish to produce in captivity and not in the wild. If you can manipulate the environment of fish as it is naturally there, if you can simulate the environment you make sure that it is just like producing in the lake they operate. We have done this with a lot of cat fishes and other types of fish, we have pioneered natural fish food, instead of importing fish feeds for the young ones or fry.
We have done quite a lot on genetics, that is production of hybrid catfish. We have been able to combine one or more fish from different specie and then breed them so that in the end their off springs will become bigger than either of the parents.
What is responsible for the decline of the traditional method of fishing in the country. How can the aquaculture fill the gap?
Traditional method of fishing is called captured fishery. In captured fishery, as I mentioned earlier, the lake and river is a common property of the community. Once someone goes to the river to fish he will not want to leave any thing behind because his competitor is going to catch since it is a common property. Fish can also migrate. They can move over long distances. So there is a lot of competition in trying to catch the fish and in competition people use all sorts of methods fair or foul. Some people use poisons, mosquito net size to fish, some use explosives. A typical Nigerian lake today is over fished. And over fish in water bodies means there are not enough adult fish in the water to reproduce and reach maturity to your table. Over fishing is one problem that is affecting our natural water bodies. The other problem is pollution, from the water that comes from the land, fertilizer, for example is a great pollutant, industrial waste from industries that normally go into the rivers and lakes have harmful effect, they enter the environment of fish and stop some of them from breeding, once breeding stops you cannot have supply of fish. Habitat distraction and over fishing are major problems in the water bodies.
How will certification of fish farms improve fish production in the country?
The certification generally is targeted towards external market. If you satisfy your domestic market you can export the surplus. By the position of Nigeria on the world map, majority of markets are not far from us. It is very easy for you to take fish from Kano airport and in the next four hours, for example, you are in the Middle East or South Africa or in Britain or USA or even South America. Whatever excess we have, if they are well processed and meet the quality of international standard, there is no reason why we can not export them because when we export we can hard currency to boost the economy.
What is the potential of fishing as a tool for promoting tourism?
If you remember, Argungu fishing festival has now gone beyond the border of Nigeria, it is international. The central thing in Argungu is the fish but many other things have been incorporated; boat racing, hotel business, car racing, etc, people go there to see what is happening. But the climax of the Argungu fishing festival is the grand fishing where people win prizes for catching the biggest fish. We have all the records of all the fishes that have been caught in Argungu , their sizes we also have all the records of the fishing festivals in Nigeria which we are now compiling a document on. With this it will be possible Ministry of Culture and Tourism to for example encourage people to go to fishing festivals. The festivals will bring about commerce within the local environment and people will take the advantage of the visit of people from different parts of the world to make money. Fishing has always been part of tourism in Nigeria. Most water bodies have people called Sarkin ruwa, people who are in charge of the water, and without their permission you can not be able to go and fish. Fish potential for tourism is important. In New Bussa we have Kainji National Park, apart from the forest, part of the lake is relevant for them, when people come to the lake they have an opportunity to cruise on the lake, and that is good for tourists, parks like Chad Basin also has a lake near it, there are a lot of national parks that are situated on river courses.
Most Nigeria’s agricultural products in including fish are lost annually because of lack of preservation facilities, what technology has the institute developed to address this problem?
In the area of preservation the institute has developed and patented a gas smoking kiln, it is there in the market, we are ready to produce it. We have other types of smoking kilns, there is one we call banda smoking kiln; banda smoking kiln can give clean quality smoked fish with no infestation of insects and also there is saving of wood because you don’t need to use much wood to produce a kilogram of smoked fish, people have been coming to train on this.
We have gone into solar energy preservation of fish. We use what is called a solar tent. A solar tent is a simple mechanism where you put some black stones on the ground, put a rack on top of that stones, put your fish on the rack and cover every thing with white polythene bag and the principle of green house will take effect. What happens is that the ray of the sun will be able to penetrate the white polythene bag, heat the ground and then converted into heat but that heat will not escape out of the polythene bag. It is that heat that will reduce the water from the fish, bring out, smoke it and dry it completely. We have been doing solar drying of Nigerian stock fish in this institute and if you place it side by side with imported stock fish there is no difference. Every body can do it, you can use it as mobile fish processing unit.
We are discussing on canning of tilapia, we want to collaborate with other government agencies, for example, Nigerian Institute of Oceanography in Lagos and National Biotechnology Agency in Abuja are ready to partner with us. We have sent people on training in India to study about tilapia because tilapia is very easy to grow and you can multiply them in millions .The problem with preservation and processing of fish is that if you don’t have enough quantity it will be difficult for any body to set an industry for that purpose. So we need to encourage farmers to go into aquaculture to produce enough fish for industries to be established.