‘Nigeria Loses N2trn Annually From Shipping Business, Fisheries’

Cat Fish

With a coastal stretch of about 900km, Nigeria is one of the countries in the world blessed with immeasurable marine and aquatic resources.


Sadly, these resources remained largely untapped over the decades, as it concerns fishery and other aquatic resources, as Nigeria’s successive governments over the years merely watched while foreigners helped themselves to the country’s aquatic lives in its territorial waters.

While the Indigenous Shipowners Association (NISA) puts the losses to foreign countries which own the vessels doing jobs in Nigerian cabotage waters in capital flight at N2 trillion annually, being the value of lifting about 150 million tonnes of cargo, including fish products, the loss in fishery is put at N300 billion.

“Nigeria is losing N2 trillion annually from the shipping business and from fisheries.Because we are not protecting our waters, other nations are taking our fish away and we are importing fish instead of getting it from our waters, thus losing about $2 billion (N400 billion). We are also losing out in insurance accruable from ships if they were to be working. So our insurance companies also lose N16.5 billion, and in terms of employment, Nigeria is losing five million jobs,” the former NISA’s general-secretary and president, Capt Niyi Labinjo, said.

As a result of stakeholders outcry, the Olusegun Obasanjo administration in 2007, following the port concession initiative, directed that the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) should make the Kirikiri Lighter Terminal Phase 2 a dedicated port for fishing activities, but the port has remained largely unutilised till today. Experts say that the failure of the NPA to implement the presidential directive on the provision of a dedicated port for fishing and other aquatic resources handling is making Nigeria to lose billions of naira on all fronts in the fishing sector.

The idea, which was conceptualised during the port concessioning period by the Obasanjo-led administration, was to reactivate the fishing sector of the economy. It was a calculated attempt to make Nigeria a fishing hub in Africa. The brilliant idea was conceived and sold to the then President Obasanjo by the Fishing Trawler Owners Association.