Lokoja, where fishing is wealth

Every community in Nigeria has particular businesses or trades that are peculiar and traditional to such community. Such commercial activities are passed from generations to generations and they become veritable sources of contributions to the economic development of the country.  For the people of Lokoja, fishing is their major and traditional business that they have been involved in over the years and through which they have been able to earn a living for themselves and also contribute to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the country. Men and women, old and the young ones in the community engage in one fishing activity or the other. While most of the time the men go to the river to catch fish, the women, back home, sell to the users or prepare them for commercial purposes.

Many families have been able to train their children with proceeds from the trade, whild they have also enhanced their status in the society by acquiring some of the things being used as yardstick for status measurement like building houses, buying cars and some other status symbols.

But good as the business is with its accompanied positive sides, many of those involved in the trade are not insulated from the economic crisis facing the entire country. Fishermen and fish traders now have tales of woe to tell because of the effect of the harsh economy on their businesses. Many of them that have been making thousands of naira daily from the trade now struggle to break even as the cost of production has affected the prices, while the non availability of money in circulation, largely due to non payment of salaries of government workers has affected sales.

For those fishermen that are involved in fishing, this period is not the best of time because of the raining season, while those operating artificial ponds are also not having it rosy.

Aishat Mohammed, a 38 years old indigene of Lokoja, started the fish trading about 20 years ago and she has made fortune from the trade when the economy was a bit better. Speaking with the Nigerian Tribune on her sojourn in the fish trading, she said, “this is the only business I have been doing since I was born. It is not by inheritance, I just decided to go into it and I thank God for how far I have gone. When I started the business it was very profitable, but now, things have changed, particularly now that workers are not being paid, the business is not moving, the market is going down and we can’t make it as we would have wanted to.

“Formerly I used to sell about N150, 000 worth of fish in a day but now before I can make sale of N30, 000 I will have to try. Government should pay workers their salaries to improve our business because before now if we bought a basket of fich for between N12,000 and N13,000, we could sell same for N16,000 and make some profit, but now, the cost of a basket has been increased to N18, 000, now for us to be able to sell over N18, 000, we find it difficult, atimes we sell at a loss as we may not be abke to get more than N15, 000 on a basket”.

Another fish trader, Ladidi Danjuma, a Nupe woman in the town, said she had been selling fish for over 25 years and that the trade had contributed to her economic development and that of her family. According to her, she had been able to send her children to school with the proceed from the business with one of them already in the Kogi State University, Anyigba.

The 45 years old mother of four said fish trading was no more lucrative like it used to be, lamenting drastic drop in sales and profit.

She said, “We cannot compare what we have now with what was in operation before as things have really changed. Before now I used to have a daily sales of between N30,000 and N50,000 but now I hardly make sales of N10,000 per day. Also, we don’t have so much fish now because the water level is high as the rains are here”.

However, in an attempt to assist the fish traders make maximum profits from their trades, a member of the national assembly from the area, Hon Buba Jubril, recently donated a fish market to the people. The move was aimed at boosting their trade and increasing  their production capacity.

The fish market complex include 55 stalls, two cold rooms and three gas/coal powered modern smoking rooms with a borehole and 250KVA power generating set to ease preservation of large quantity of fish. The two cold rooms have a combined capacity to accommodate 3,000 tons of fish at a time.

The market stalls and the cold room were said to have been donated by the lawmaker to further improve trading in fish, which is a major economic activity of the people of Lokoja.

This was a follow-up to the training given to no fewer than 150 fishermen from the community in the areas of fish farming and preservation through the Small and Medium Scale Enterprises Development Agency ( SMEDAN).

Speaking at the inauguration of the facilities in Lokoja, the Kogi state capital, Jibril, who is the deputy majority leader in the House of Representatives, said that he built the ultra-modern market to boost fish trade and encourage local fishermen to remain on the trade.

The member representing Lokoja/Kogi federal constituency in the House of Representatives, said he would ensure that efforts were made to increase the income of the fishermen in the area. This, he said, would be achieved by curbing wastes associated with local fishing and trading among the people.

Findings have revealed that fishing, like other business activities in the country, has been affected by the economic downturn, which had made the stakeholders.

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