The Nigerian Ministry of Maritime and Blue Economy has received the green light to implement a raft of measures aimed at increasing the quality and volume of the nation’s seafood output in an attempt to reduce the country's reliance on imported seafood and meet the requirements of export markets.
The measures, which are laid out under the recently approved National Policy on Marine and Blue Economy, include a 10-year roadmap setting out guidelines on how Nigeria can harness its vast ocean and inland water resources for economic growth, job creation, and environmental sustainability.
Nigeria Minister of Maritime and Blue Economy Adegboyega Oyetola said the policy “embodies our commitment to international best practices and sustainable development goals, particularly [the UN’s] Sustainable Development Goal 14, which emphasizes the sustainable use of oceans, seas, and marine resources.”
The new policy calls for enforcing compliance to existing rules and regulations on fisheries operations in Nigeria and setting up a national fisheries surveillance task force, with membership from relevant sector agencies, to monitor the country's fishing industry, including integrating community-based monitoring systems to empower local stakeholders in enforcing globally acceptable fishing standards.
Other measures include enforcing fish catch limits and quotas through a tiered licensing and quota limit structure, which the policy said can be based on the scale of operations, to grant Nigeria better control over its fisheries operations and help reduce overfishing and marine resource depletion.
Additionally, it includes plans to attract more private sector investments in Nigeria’s blue economy, which it has struggled to secure in the past.
According to the policy document, 45 percent of the seafood Nigerians consume is imported, and it attributed this largely to weak enforcement of fisheries regulations.
“This has allowed illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing by foreign vessels, leading to revenue losses and depletion of fish stocks," the document said.
That weak enforcement, according to the policy, has been exacerbated by a lack of relevant data, particularly in assessing the status of the country's capture stocks – a weakness the new policy blames on insufficient monitoring and research capacity.
“[This leaves] critical decisions on fish quotas and conservation measures to guesswork rather than evidence-based planning,” the document said. “There is limited investment in research institutions such as the Nigerian Institute for Oceanography and Marine Research, which has constrained efforts to understand marine ecosystem health.”
The new plans follow investments made in Nigeria’s aquaculture sector.
In July, the state government of Lagos announced that construction had begun on the Lagos Aquaculture Center of Excellence (LACE), a NGN 10 billion (USD 6.4 million, EUR 5.6 million) project aiming to boost food security, job creation, and overall seafood output in the West African country.
The new policy also aligns with the recent announcement that China has promised to buy more farmed fish from Nigeria.
