Business and Maritime West Africa Editorial
Nigeria has a vast coastline, extensive rivers, creeks, lagoons, lakes and water reservoirs, yet it remains heavily dependent on imported fish to feed its growing population. The country has the natural resources to become a major fishing and aquaculture nation, but much of that potential remains either poorly exploited or progressively destroyed.
The latest attempt to change this situation came on Thursday when the Minister of Marine and Blue Economy, Adegboyega Oyetola, inaugurated a Technical Committee on Accelerating Fish Production in Nigeria. The committee has eight weeks to examine recommendations from a strategic roundtable held with the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS) in October 2025 and produce an implementation roadmap.
On paper, it is difficult to fault the assignment. The committee has been told to identify priority interventions, responsible institutions, timelines, costs, funding sources, performance indicators and opportunities for private-sector investment. Oyetola was also explicit that the committee should not produce another policy document or establish another parallel programme.
That last instruction may be the most important part of the exercise.
Nigeria does not particularly suffer from a shortage of policies, committees, workshops, summits and roadmaps. What the fisheries sector has lacked for years is sustained implementation.
The country’s fish deficit illustrates the scale of the problem. Government figures presented during last year’s NIPSS roundtable put annual demand at about 3.6 million metric tonnes, against domestic production of roughly 1.4 million tonnes. The resulting gap of more than 2.2 million tonnes is largely met through imports.
Other recent sector assessments put the deficit at about 2.4 million tonnes and estimate that Nigeria spends more than $1 billion annually importing fish and fishery products. The fisheries and aquaculture sector provides an important share of animal protein and supports millions of livelihoods.
The irony is that Nigeria is not a country without fish. It is a country that has not adequately developed the capacity to protect, harvest, process, preserve and market the fish it has. This distinction matters.
The committee inaugurated by Oyetola has correctly identified several constraints: expensive feed, inadequate quality fingerlings and broodstock, weak fish-health systems, poor access to finance, post-harvest losses, inadequate cold-chain facilities, weak research, poor data, inadequate standards and traceability, and weak market development.
But these are not in any way new discoveries. They have been known for years.
The more difficult questions are what the government intends to do about them, how much money will be committed, who will be held accountable and when Nigerians should expect results.
There is an even bigger problem that a fish-production strategy cannot afford to ignore: Nigeria is gradually destroying some of the natural environment in which its fish resources are supposed to thrive.
In the Niger Delta, pollution of creeks, rivers and coastal waters has become a serious threat to fishing communities. A 2025 investigation documented the impact of oil contamination on fish and fishing livelihoods around Bodo Creek, while a recent Amnesty International report again highlighted the damage caused by decades of oil pollution in the Niger Delta to fisheries, livelihoods and the wider environment.
It is difficult to tell communities whose fishing grounds have been degraded to produce more fish without first restoring the waters in which fish are expected to survive.
The environmental question is therefore not an optional component of the blue economy. It is its foundation. The country cannot be talking about exploiting its marine resources, but could not do much to prevent degradation of those resources.
The same contradiction exists offshore. For years, Nigerian fishing interests have complained about the inability of local operators to compete effectively in deeper waters, while foreign fishing vessels have been accused of illegally and unethically exploiting the country’s maritime resources. Coastline pollution and climate change is pushing fish into deeper waters, making life increasingly difficult for coastal fishermen, who lack the vessels and equipment required to follow the fish offshore.
This is where the issue of modern fishing vessels becomes critical. A serious national fishing policy cannot be based almost entirely on aquaculture while neglecting marine capture fisheries. Fish farming has enormous potential and should certainly be expanded. But Nigeria’s marine resources are too valuable to leave underdeveloped while the country spends billions importing fish.
Local fishing companies need modern trawlers, appropriate fishing gear, affordable finance, insurance, cold storage, processing facilities, reliable landing infrastructure and access to markets. They also need a regulatory environment that protects legitimate operators while making illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing increasingly difficult.
Without those interventions, the situation becomes self-defeating. Nigeria’s waters contain resources that could create jobs and generate wealth. Yet local operators are unable to acquire the vessels and equipment necessary to harvest those resources commercially. Foreign illegal operators then fill the vacuum, while Nigeria imports fish to satisfy the consumers who live beside the waters from which the fish are being taken.
That is hardly the economic transformation envisaged by the blue economy.
The financing question is particularly disturbing. The Cabotage Vessel Financing Fund, (CVFF), was established precisely to help develop indigenous vessel acquisition capacity. It has been trapped in administrative delays for more than two decades. In April 2025, Oyetola directed NIMASA to commence disbursement. NIMASA subsequently announced eligibility requirements, engaged primary lending institutions and eventually opened an application portal in January 2026.
As recently as August 27th 2026, there was still no verified evidence that any indigenous shipowner had actually received any CVFF funding. The fact that NIMASA is still discussing the terms of the disbursement one year after the minister’s directive, exposes lack of purpose.
Therefore, the lesson for the fisheries committee is obvious. Finance cannot remain a talking point. If the government wants Nigerian fishing companies to acquire modern vessels, the financing mechanism must actually deliver vessels.
And this is where the Minister faces a credibility test. Oyetola has repeatedly spoken about ending Nigeria’s dependence on imported fish. In July 2025, he declared that Nigeria must pursue self-sufficiency in fish production and promised policy support, technical assistance and financial inclusion.
In November that same year, his ministry announced that it had began discussions with the Bank of Industry over single-digit loans for fishermen, specifically to address the fish-production deficit and combat illegal fishing.
There have therefore been announcements. There have been consultations. There have been committees. There have been promises of finance. What the industry needs now is evidence of implementation. The new committee must therefore resist the temptation to present marginal improvement as transformation. Its job should be to identify the interventions capable of closing the gap.
That means putting aquaculture and marine fisheries on complementary tracks.
Aquaculture requires cheaper feed, better fingerlings, quality control, technical extension services, affordable electricity and water, improved disease management, insurance, finance and modern processing. Feed is particularly important because it can account for more than 80 per cent of production costs for small-scale aquaculture operators.
Marine fisheries require something different: modern vessels, fishing technology, navigation and safety equipment, functioning landing sites, cold-chain infrastructure, affordable working capital, effective surveillance and firm action against illegal fishing.
This is why the committee’s composition matters. It includes government officials, academics, fisheries associations, researchers and industry representatives. That breadth could be useful if the committee listens to operators who have experienced the sector’s failures first-hand rather than simply validating policies already written in Abuja.
The committee should also examine the institutional fragmentation that has historically made fisheries management difficult. Fish do not recognise bureaucratic boundaries between ministries, agencies, states, rivers and the sea. Pollution originating in one location can destroy livelihoods hundreds of kilometres away. Fishing vessels operating offshore can affect coastal communities. Aquaculture depends on water resources, feed, electricity, transport, finance and markets.
A genuine fisheries strategy must therefore connect the dots.
The Federal Ministry of Marine and Blue Economy cannot increase fish production if environmental agencies fail to protect the waters. It cannot build a modern marine fishing industry if indigenous operators cannot finance vessels. It cannot stop illegal fishing without effective surveillance and enforcement. It cannot reduce post-harvest losses without cold storage and processing infrastructure. And it cannot expect farmers to increase output when production costs make their businesses barely viable.
The blue economy, in other words, cannot be built by slogans, announcements, grandiose ceremonies and promises.
The most uncomfortable question facing Oyetola, is whether this committee will become another addition to Nigeria’s long list of grand government initiatives that generate impressive ceremonies and documents but little change at the point where citizens actually feel the economy. The fish committee should not suffer the same fate.
Nigeria’s fish problem is not simply an agricultural problem. It is a food-security problem, a foreign-exchange problem, an employment problem, an environmental problem and, increasingly, a maritime-security problem.
The country is importing fish because it has failed to fully exploit and protect the resources around it. That is the paradox the blue economy was supposed to solve.
Oyetola now has an opportunity to make the fisheries initiative different from the familiar cycle of policy announcements. The committee can become useful if it concentrates on implementation, financing and accountability rather than producing another beautifully written roadmap.
But the Minister must also confront the issues that lie outside the committee’s immediate mandate. He must ensure that the financing promises made to indigenous maritime operators become real. He must push the relevant agencies to make the CVFF produce tangible vessels and capacity. He must strengthen the fight against illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing. He must make environmental restoration part of fisheries policy rather than treating pollution as somebody else’s problem.
And he must protect the legitimate fishing industry from being crowded out by better-financed foreign operators.
Nigeria does not lack fish. It lacks the infrastructure, investment, governance and environmental stewardship required to turn its aquatic wealth into sustainable economic value.
The new technical committee therefore has a relatively simple task, despite the complexity of its mandate: prove that government can move from talking about Nigeria’s fish resources to actually developing them.
