The House of Representatives has urged the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources, the Nigerian Navy and the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency to put measures in place to curb illegal fishing activities in Nigeria’s waters.

The House also urged the Federal Government to review its licensing policy ‘that tends to favour foreign trawlers at the expense of their local counterparts and encourage indigenous investments into this agricultural sector’.

Also, the lawmakers urged the government to prevail on the Gulf of Guinea Commission to urgently introduce a legally-binding framework to check excessive fishing or overfishing in the region.

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The House Committee on Agricultural Production and Services was also mandated to investigate the matter and report back within three weeks for further legislative action.

These resolutions were sequel to the unanimous adoption of a motion moved by Mr Patrick Ifon, titled ‘Need to curb fishing by foreign vessels on Nigeria’s territorial waters’.

The lawmaker also noted that Nigeria as a nation, with a large coastal area, was rich in marine species, yet over half of the fish being consumed were imported from China and the Netherlands.

Ifon said, “The House is worried that Nigeria loses a whopping sum of $70m annually to Chinese and other European trawlers due to illegal fishing activities in the nation’s waters as observed by the Nigerian Navy in 2017.”

He noted that Nigeria was the fourth largest importer of fish in the world, with about two million metric tonnes per annum for an estimated population of over 200 million people.