Once again, the Nigerian federal government is speaking in big grammar and grand declarations, this time through the Minister of Marine and Blue Economy, Mr. Adegboyega Oyetola. He has pledged to end fish importation, boost local production, empower women and youth, and reposition aquaculture as a core driver of food security and job creation.
But as a citizen, a fish farmer, and a patriot who has watched the repeated cycles of government deception over the years, I am here to say the bitter truth: we’ve heard it all before. The same promises, the same headlines, the same empty meetings with stakeholders, and the same absence of real, measurable progress. It is nothing but a performance of false hope, dressed in the language of policy reform.
For decades, Nigeria’s successive governments have used aquaculture as one of their favorite tools for political propaganda and budget padding. Every few years, they gather so called cooperatives, announce billions of naira in support, parade a few staged beneficiaries, and move on. Meanwhile, real farmers — the backbone of local fish production are left out, overlooked, and treated as mere statistics.
Aquaculture loan programs have become instruments of financial manipulation, controlled by party loyalists, cronies, and faceless corporations with no ponds, no hatcheries, and no connection to the sector. These programs are designed not to empower the poor but to recycle wealth among the elite. They set up committees and portals, hold flashy stakeholder events in Abuja hotels, and then release nothing but PDF promises and camera smiles.
As someone deeply involved in aquaculture at the grassroots, I can tell you that the problem has never been lack of funds or vision. The problem is lack of political will, sincerity, and revolutionary reform. The same federal government that claims to support fish farmers also allows cheap imported fish to flood our markets, crushing local production and discouraging investment. How can you grow a local industry while empowering foreign competitors?
They speak of scaling up domestic production, but most farmers can barely afford feed. Hatcheries are decaying. Extension officers are ghosts. Fish diseases are rising. Insurance remains a theory, not a practice. And access to finance? That’s reserved for friends of the system. Ask 100 local fish farmers how many of them have accessed any government loan, and you’ll discover what’s truly going on, systematic exclusion masked as empowerment.
They talk about empowering youth and women, but youth are unemployed, underfunded, and forgotten. Women are often used as token faces in project launches and quickly abandoned once the media coverage fades. They speak of sustainability, but their policies are short-term, corrupt, and often disconnected from the realities on ground.
And now, they want us to believe that the same failed system will suddenly become effective because of a consultative meeting in Abuja? The same system that has failed rice farmers, maize farmers, poultry farmers, and cassava processors now wants us to believe it will treat fish farmers differently?
We’ve seen the Oyan Dam model mentioned. How many people in the aquaculture space truly benefited from that so called model? Which region has it been replicated in? Where are the independent reports? Where is the traceable success story? It is the same federal pattern — float a project, publicize it, underfund it, politicize it, then abandon it.
The talk about working with the World Bank and NAIC (Nigerian Agricultural Insurance Corporation) is another well-packaged distraction. They’ve used this same strategy before. Bring in international agencies, use them to build credibility, siphon funds through project accounts, and offer little or no direct support to the actual farmer. If the funds arrive, they are rarely disbursed. And if they are disbursed, they go to the politically connected, not the hardworking farmer sweating under the sun in Warri, Epe, Gwagwalada, or Aba.
We must ask ourselves: where are the past aquaculture intervention results? What happened to the Aquaculture Value Chain program of the Ministry of Agriculture? What happened to the anchor borrower schemes for fish farmers? What happened to the NIRSAL loans for aquaculture? The answer is simple, these programs died in silence because they were never designed to succeed in the first place.
Now they want to draft a new “Sustainable Livelihoods and Fish Food Security Initiative” worth N75 billion. Noble proposal. But how different is it from previous ones? How can we trust a government that has failed to deliver on smaller promises to manage such an amount transparently? Until the people are liberated from the stranglehold of political oppression and economic exclusion, no blueprint — no matter how brilliant, will work.
Real development comes with justice, transparency, and grassroots ownership. We do not need another Abuja-based plan; we need a people-powered transformation rooted in the knowledge, struggles, and solutions of the actual farmers. No more empowerment-by-proxy. No more signature-driven cooperatives. No more billion-naira headlines without billion-naira impact.
I say it boldly: Nigeria will never develop its aquaculture sector, or any agricultural sector under this current structure of injustice and elite control. We must dismantle the false systems. We must challenge the lies, resist the political exploitation of farmers, and demand a new order where the wealth of the land belongs to the people who till it, fish it, and feed the nation.
Until Nigeria is truly free — politically, economically, and socially, no aquaculture policy will succeed, and no fish farmer will rise above the poverty line with government help. We must build alternatives from the ground up. We must organize, mobilize, and resist. Because our liberation will not come from another ministerial press statement, it will come from the power of a conscious people who have had enough.
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