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Nigeria spent $866 million on frozen fish and seafood imports in 2025 despite its extensive maritime resources, as foreign industrial trawlers, overfishing and other threats continue to undermine the country’s fisheries sector.
The Director-General of the International Maritime Institute of Nigeria (IMION), Thaddeus Udofia disclosed this at the 2026 National Conference on Sustainable Fishing organised by the Maritime Correspondents’ Organisation of Nigeria (MARCON), with the theme, “Sustainable Fishing in Nigeria: Pathways to Growth, Food Security and Coastal Livelihoods.”
Udofia said Nigeria’s frozen fish and seafood imports rose from $606 million in 2023 to $688.5 million in 2024 and $866 million in 2025, representing a compound annual growth rate of 19.54 per cent.
According to him, Nigeria’s inability to translate its fisheries resources into seafood sufficiency and food security was linked to how the country manages its aquatic resources. He identified aggressive overfishing, climate change and illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing as major threats to the country’s maritime ecosystem.
He said Nigeria faced a paradox of having abundant fisheries and aquaculture potential while lacking sufficient seafood to meet the needs of its growing population. “Ironically, Nigeria remains one of the largest importers of seafood in Africa. Expending hundreds of millions of scarce dollars annually to bridge the huge domestic supply deficit,” he said.
He also raised concerns over the activities of foreign industrial trawlers operating within Nigeria’s Exclusive Economic Zone, alleging that destructive fishing practices were affecting marine habitats and the livelihoods of artisanal fishermen.
“Foreign industrial trawlers operating like predatory ghosts within our EEZ are systematically troubling our marine worlds and illegally depredating our sovereign aquatic resources. They do not merely steal fish.
They actively sabotage our micro-economic growth through destructive, uncontrolled bottom trawling.”
He said destructive bottom trawling also affected local fishermen who depend on fishing for their livelihoods.
“When a local fisherman in ventures out to sea and returns with an empty net, that is not simply a simple bad day at work. That is a direct, violent hit to Nigeria’s national food security.”
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Udofia said the country needed a coordinated approach involving regulation, research, technology, investment and community participation to address the challenges confronting the sector. He advocated stronger cooperation among maritime security agencies, economic regulators and fisheries departments to improve enforcement against illegal fishing.
He also called for greater use of scientific data in determining catch limits, closed seasons and marine protected areas, arguing that fisheries management should be based on credible information about fish stocks.
Speaking earlier, The President of MARCON, Ismail Aniemu, said Nigeria’s fish resources should form part of the country’s blue economy, noting that the sector could generate jobs and wealth if properly developed. “Fish itself is part of our national economy. We can’t be discussing blue economy and keeping fish in isolation.”
Aniemu said Nigeria had remained overly focused on oil and gas while paying insufficient attention to fisheries, despite the country’s extensive coastline and other aquatic resources. He also called for greater participation of Nigerians in fishing and related activities, particularly at the artisanal level, as well as more investment by state governments in the sector.
“You can have the waters, but when you are not fishing it means you are not reaping the value of that waters.”
The conference also identified inadequate infrastructure for handling and moving fish as another constraint to the development of the sector.
The Managing Director of Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), Abubakar Dantsoho, on his part said specialised fishing terminals would provide the infrastructure needed to handle fish efficiently, particularly because of its perishable nature.
Dantsoho who was represented by Assistant General Manager, Corporate and Strategic Planning, Mr. Adebite Adewunmi said such terminals required cold-storage facilities, ice plants, processing facilities, navigational channels, loading and unloading areas and efficient road, rail or inland-waterway connections.
He said the NPA had already designated a special terminal as a dedicated fish terminal, with cold-storage and export-processing facilities available for operators. He added that Nigeria could adopt the model of countries such as Spain, where specialised port terminals are designated for different categories of cargo, including fish.
