By Luminous Jannamike, Abuja

The Federal Government has concluded arrangements to organise training for young graduates and school leavers in aquaculture and fish processing.

The Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer, National Film and Video Censors Board, Alhaji Adedayo Thomas, said during the pre-workshop conference; that the programme was part of the Federal Government’s initiative to tackle poverty, adding that it was aimed at ensuring food security in the country as well as providing empowerment for citizens.

Thomas, who was represented by Mrs Bola Athar, the Board’s Director of Service Innovation, said the training would cover aquaculture data management, fingerling production; as well as value addition through processing.

According to him, the government wants the target participants to contribute to Nigeria’s economy in the area of food security and employment generation.

The CEO of AA&T Consulting Services, Tajudeen Audu, said the workshop programme targeted unemployed graduates, youths and women.

He said, “We expect that people will be deployed nationwide to carry out data collection and to also arrange for the training of the targeted graduates.

“We have professionals in aquaculture that will educate the participants for the two days, on basically all they need to know about the organised production of animals and plant in the aquatic medium.”

He added that the programme would include post-production such as fish product development and marketing.

Lamenting the poor awareness of aquaculture in the country, Dele Oguntebi, a management consultant, said, “We have a lot of depletion of aqua life in the country. We have a lot of pollution going on across the world. Now, we need to cultivate healthy sources of protein from the water sources and for you to do that, you need adequate knowledge of what is required to actually have a healthy multiplication of aqua life.

“Because the awareness of this huge aquaculture gap is not understood by most people across Nigeria, most of the fish and creatures from the sea that we consume are imported and we lose a lot of revenue for the country doing so. Now, we have to start cultivating them so that we can feed ourselves without relying on other nations.”

Vanguard News Nigeria