“I am already sweating and if the situation does not go down, anybody that is using diesel, I don’t know your calculation, my calculation is that I cannot produce a kilo of fish with less than ₦1,400. That’s about what it cost as of today. So, if I sell my fish around ₦1,400 I cannot make a profit.”
By Deborah Hassan
365Daily – Ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo has lamented that the rising cost of diesel has negatively affected fish business in Nigeria.
If left unchecked, he continued, fish production would be out of reach, and Nigerians would have to rely on imported fish for consumption.
He made this disclosure while speaking at a southwest fish farmers’ congress on Tuesday, August 2, 2022, at the presidential library (OOPL), Ogun State.
The elder statesman, in a statement issued by his media aide, Kehinde Akinyemi, said due to the incompetence of the present leadership of the country, many fisheries are heading to bankruptcy.
Quoting the current price of diesel at ₦800 a litre, the ex-President said it now costs N1400 to produce a kilogramme of fish, without profit.
He stated: “I am already sweating and if the situation does not go down, anybody that is using diesel, I don’t know your calculation, my calculation is that I cannot produce a kilo of fish with less than ₦1,400. That’s about what it cost as of today. So, if I sell my fish around ₦1,400 I cannot make a profit.”
Obasanjo noted that the farmers must sell at ₦1,500 and above in order not to record an “outright loss”.
He told his fellow farmers: “If we don’t come together as an association, nationally, we will sink individually. If we come together, we will swim and survive together.
“And while we are working on coming together, I thought that the situation has arisen whereby we have to do something urgently.
“The price of diesel has gone sky high because the management of this country is not what it should be. And it is as simple as that.
“Then, what will happen is that particularly those of us who have to use a bit of diesel in producing fish, we will completely go bankrupt, and when that happens, Nigerians will still have to eat fish.
“And you will go jobless, poor, and indigent. So, what do we have to do? To come together… we want to sustain fish production, and we must be able to take care of those who are going to eat and those of us who are producing.”