By Modupe Gbadeyanka
The federal government has promised to resuscitate the Ebughu fishing terminal located in the Mbo area of Akwa Ibom State.
This pledge was made by the Minister of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Mr Muhammad Nanono, when the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Niger Delta, Mr Ita Enang, paid him a courtesy visit last week.
Business Post gathered that the Ebughu fishing terminal, established in 1985, was last operated in 2001 and several calls by members of the community to revive the abandoned facility have not been answered.
In February 2020, the federal government had promised to look into the facility, which was built to provide onshore services to fishing vessels, but this has not been fulfiled.
A few days ago, Mr Enang appealed to the Minister to take an urgent step “in activating terminals to encourage our team and investors who are building trawlers and training Nigerians on deep-sea fishing for prawns and shrimps and other deep-sea species.”
According to the aide of President Muhammadu Buhari, “much of the prawns processed in Europe for Africa and other international markets are from Nigerian territorial waters and the Gulf of Guinea.”
“As at today, it is more of portfolios farmers who are able to properly document their companies that are accessing the facilities.
“It would be better to risk a few Naira than to get to a position of national food scarcity that may necessitate emergency food imports to feed our citizens and sustain production chain of feed such as the current maize situation,” he added.
“We pray that your ministry does provide some inputs for rice, cassava maize, oil palm etc as grant for the farmers. While the farmers are approaching the financial institutions for other aids for the farms,” Mr Enang said further.
While responding, the Minister promised that his ministry will assist in the provision of seedlings, land clearing and other technical assistance like soil mapping to ensure the success of the programme and work with relevant stakeholders to resuscitate the Ebughu fishing terminal.
He also advised stakeholders in the Federal Government Emergency Agricultural Programme in the Niger Delta region to streamline their projects and focus on areas of comparative advantage like fishing, cocoa and cassava etc.
