Former President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, has disclosed that the increasing price of diesel is threatening his fish farming business.
Obasanjo made this known at the Southwest Fish Farmer’s Congress held at the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library (OOPL) Auditorium, Abeokuta, Ogun State, on Tuesday.
According to a statement released by his Special Assistant on Media to the former President, Kehinde Akinyemi, Obasanjo stressed that quick intervention is needed as the situation was worrisome on the farmers using diesel.
The former president alerted that “Farmers in fish farming will completely go bankrupt” if urgent and collectively attention was not given to the issue.
“If we don’t come together as an association, nationally, we will sink individually. If we come together, we will swim and survive together,” he said.
“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.
“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 N1400. That’s about what it cost as at today. So if I sell my fish around N1400 I cannot make profit.”
He added: “If there is no change, some will go bankrupt and if that happens, Nigerians will continue to eat fish, but, it will be out of reach. And people will be producing fish outside Nigeria and they will be dumping it here.
“That means you will go jobless, you will go poor, you will go indigent, so what do we do; come together.”
He disclosed that the success of the congress from the Southwest region would determine the move to other parts of the country’s region.
Obasanjo further clarified that the congress was not meant to do away with plans to merge the existing associations, but, “to quickly intercede with the challenges facing the industry”.
