By Godwin Oritse

FOLLOWING the increase in the cost of Automated Gas Oil otherwise known as diesel used to power fishing trawlers and boats, most of these boats have been unable to go to sea to fish, a development that brought about an increase in the cost of fish in the market.

Speaking to Vanguard in Lagos, the Secretary General of the Lagos State Fishermen Corporative Association Capt Oladele Robinson,(Retired Navy Captain) said that the lull being experienced in the n the nation’s fishing and fisheries activities was due to the astronomical increase in the price of diesel.

According to Capt Robinson both industrial and artisanal fishermen until about a year ago bought a litre of diesel for N270 per litre adding that a litre now cost between N1,300 and N1,500 and this is really affecting operators in the fishery sector.

The issue of diesel has affected so much because from about N270 per litre of diesel about a year ago, we are now buying a litre of diesel for N1,300, N1,500 per litre and that is really affecting us. It has made some of vessels to stop going to the sea to catch fish.

And this has resulted in the exorbitant prices of fish and other sea foods in the markets because the few of us that are running on smaller boats and vessels that are able to buy diesel at this prevailing rate have now spread the cost of the products that they are able to catch from the sea.

That makes a kilo of fish like Barracuda or shinenose or croaker jumped from about N2,600 to about N4,000 per kilo now. And this is telling on the purchasing power of the consumer and end users. We do not know how government can help us particularly we that are involved in ocean fishing that is industrial fishing. Even some of our artisanal members that are using engines that are run on diesel and some of them that run on petrol are also being affected right now because a litre of petrol goes for about N300 or N350 now from N170 that is almost double the cost of petrol.

While the artisanal fishermen run boats that are using petrol and the industrial sector use inboard engines that runs on diesel . So these sources of power are so expensive now it has led to an increase in the cost fish and other sea products like Octopus, Inkfish that are highly medicinal to the end users.

In order to enable the masses to be able to afford this very important sources of protein, government should come to our rescue, they should assist us in alleviating the prices of the these sources of power.

The development has affected quite a lot of our members because there are so many fishing companies now that are even going to sea at all, the only ones that are still going are managing to do so like Atlantic Shrimpers, Karlflex and maybe Banarly that are going to the sea once in a while. They do not go like they used to go because of the cost of diesel and petrol.

Some of us that are able to afford the cost of these sources of energy have decided to anchor our fishing vessels at the jetties. Companies like Swan Fisheries, and Zeta Fisheries are not more going to the ocean in the last six months. What we have resorted to doing now is to go to our boat builders at Ibeju Lekki to help us build smaller boats that will be easier to manage in terms of fuelling because bigger boats are not manageable because the cost of managing bigger vessels is high such that at the end of the, when you spread the overhead on the products that are eventually caught and brought back to the jetty, the prices of these products will be high that the end users may not be able to even buy.

The artisanal fishermen are mostly people that run daily fishing boats, two days fishing boats and not more than three days fishing boats because of the fact that they run on smaller boats. Boats whose total capacity of fish they can bring back to the jetty will not be more than 500 kilogrammes. Their capacity is usually not up to one ton. It’s a maximum capacity of 500 kilogrammes because of their sizes. Some of them will go this evening and come back early tomorrow morning, some will go this morning and come in another two days’ time. Some of them that are slightly larger and they stay up to three days in the sea.

The artisanal fishermen are more in the population because I am involved in both the artisanal group and the industrial group. The artisanal fishermen in Lagos alone, in the seven fishing divisions, that is Ikorodu Division, Badagry Division, Ikeja Division, Apapa Division, Lagos Central Division, Ibeju Lekki Division and Epe Division.

The population of artisanal fishermen because recently, embarked on proper enumeration of artisanal fishermen in Lagos through the Divisional Chairmen because all these Divisions I just mentioned are under the control of Divisional chairmen that oversees their affairs in each Division.

In each division, the figures we got recently, were about 300,000 fishermen in each division. The division that had the lowest number of fishermen is Ikeja Division where their total figure amounted to 220,000. So the artisanal fishermen are the ones sustaining this industry now because they mostly run on petrol engines.

Most of them go to the sea and come back within a day or two. Most of the fishes available in Lagos today, about 80 per cent of them are catches from artisanal fishermen. Because to be factual, most of the industrial fishermen that run on bigger vessels before now are acquiring smaller boats so as to remain in the fishing sector because the cost of running a bigger vessel is so high.

We pay due called pay as you go. Our members in each division when they go to the sea or the Lagoons and come back with their catch the following day, the divisional Chairman under which the fisherman operates, has an established avenue through which they collect these levies from the fishermen. Then the divisional Chairman will now pay this levies to the coffers of the Lagos State Government and the State issues receipts to us in respect of these payments and that is why we are also getting assistance from the Lagos State Government on a yearly basis. They give us fishing equipment like fishing gears, engines and fishing nets . Sometimes they give us fishing boats. They are really helping the artisanal sector.

What we are telling the Lagos State Government is to extend the same gesture to the industrial sector, so we have been talking to them on this.

By now more than 600,000 jobs have been lost to the lull in the fishery sector both directly or indirectly.

Let me explain how I arrived at that figure. On each fishing trawler not less than 20 or 25 sailors work on each vessel directly, now, more than a 100 fishing trawlers have been grounded.

Now those that are affected indirectly are member of the Maritime Workers Union of Nigeria, MWUN that used to help off-load the catch because when the vessels come from the sea, they come with as much as 60 to 80 tons of fish. So when they come to jetty like that , it is the Union that will give us their labour. Since more than 100 vessels are not operating this category of people are out of jobs. Now the fish mongers in the various markets that buy from us at Ijora, Badagry, Aiyetoro market, Epe and various fish markets that come to the jetties to buy fish from us, most of them are out of the business because they do not get the regular supply they used to get. Those of them that process fish smoking, smoking of crayfish and prawns are equally out of their jobs. So we have really lost a lot of jobs both directly and indirectly.

Nigeria is yet to meet the fish need of its citizenry because we have not reached the level of self-sufficiency in fish protein. You know Nigeria is a very large country, we have a population of over 200million people and the kind of support from government especially at the Federal and State level. Though we are getting some support from Lagos State Government as I said earlier on but more can still be done. But the Federal Government is not assisting us at all . As we speak today, we want them to wake up we have quite several littorals states in Nigeria.

These coastal states have a lot of fishing communities with lots of fishing activities. We will need quite a number of assistance if we are to meet our self-sufficiency level of fish protein in Nigeria. The Federal Government has to wake up and assist the fishing sector just as they are assisting the people in animal husbandry because we know that the people in animal husbandry are getting quite a substantial amount of assistance from the Federal Government. They should also help those of us in the fishing sector because fish protein is also very important, especially to anybody above the age of 40 years. It is not advisable to continue to consume red meat which is gotten from cows. Red meat is good for children that are still growing.

On the Volume of fish importation

Before this current government came into being, the volume of fish import was more than the volume of fish caught and produced locally, but since the government of President Mohammed Buhari decided to put fish on the list of items that cannot access forex, the volume of fish import has reduced drastically, increasing the volume of locally caught and produced fish. The volume of fish caught and produced in Nigeria has increased and it is more than the volume of imported fish because not many people are importing fish now because of the difficulty in accessing forex.

That is the reason the government has to help us in order to increase the volume of our production.

Pirate attacks on Fishing vessels

The attack has been very rampant in the past but we do now that has made the attack at sea have subsided is that we are settling the pirates and the sea robbers. We settle with them, and that is it. I am saying it quotes me. If you do not settle them, they attack your vessel, they will remove the catch your sailors have made and sell on the sea by themselves the high sea robbers and pirates. We give them money, sometimes we settle them with our catches, and sometimes they demand bags of fish. Averagely, a bag of fish is about N40,000 sometimes they might tell you to give them 200 bags or 300 bags.

Otherwise they will kidnap your men, which has happen to us several times. And whenever they kidnap our men like that we carry money, sometimes as much as N50million, N100million to them on the high sea for our members to be released. Even some of our Chinese members were killed in the some of these attacks, they were kidnapped and taken to unknown destination and at the time they were releasing them to us after payment of ransom, two of them had died. This happened about three or fours ago.

So what we do now is that we settle with them because sometimes you do not find the Naval patrol crafts in sight. The Naval patrol boats usually goes on patrol quite alright and they form a reasonable part of the securing our people at sea. But sometimes, when these boys want to launch attack their attack, they would have surveyed the whole place make that no Naval boat is in sight then they launch their attack.

Before, we used to carry security men with rifles but they killed some of them because they will come at a time when the security on board the vessel are not prepared for those attacks. And even when you are prepared, how many security men will a vessel carry, maybe maximum of two or three but when these boys are coming, they can come with four boats and in each of their boats, they may have up to ten men fully armed and they will surround the boat.

So even when you have security men on board, sometime, your security men will have to surrender to them. So the best thing is for us to go into settlement with them which we are doing