Alhaji Sabo Nanono, the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, says the Federal Government can comfortably close borders in respect to importation of fish in the next two years.
Nanono made this known when he appeared on the News Agency of Nigeria programme, NAN Forum, on Thursday in Abuja.
He said that the available and efficient fish ponds that could comfortably satisfy the citizens were enough for the country.
“We are not banning it immediately but I think we are putting them on notice; you know we have so many fishing facilities in this country, natural ones and those created by States as well as Federal Government.
“I know in Kano, Katsina states and some other states, there are so many fish ponds. If you move to South-South, there are quite a number of fish ponds there, same with South-East.
“To be honest with you, we have no reason to even import fish, if you give Nigerians the chance, they will produce all the fish that we will consume.
“Really, we have the capacity to produce the fish that we can eat: last year about two million licenses were issued; this year we are only issuing about one million and next year we will cut it by half.
“So gradually in the next two years, we can comfortably close our borders in respect to importation of fish and we will survive and we will eat locally produced fish.”
The minister said that Nigeria has the capacity to produce the fish that could feed the population in the country.
He said that there were lots of investments in the fishery industry, adding that the major fish ponds were owned by individuals and the fishes were feeding the market.
“The major thing that we produce among most of these ponds is catfish and tilapia across board and there are some rivers that are endowed with a lot of fish resources.
“In fact, right now there are certain fishes that we export such as the catfish, especially the smoked ones, it is being exported to some of the middle eastern countries,’’ he said.
Nanono, however, assured Nigerians that the fish ponds in the country were enough to produce sufficient fish that would satisfy the citizens, “probably in the future even as far as exporting fish’’.
