A Study of Differentials in Imported and Domestic Sourcing of Fish Food in Nigeria

The fish food obtained from the open market in Nigeria is a combination of local products and foreign products. This is because the country is generally associated with grave deficit in domestic fish production, notwithstanding the supply from imports, and local production from aquaculture practised on marine, brackish and fresh water culture environments, and capture from marine and inland sources. As the country is a littoral state, with an extensive coastline, in addition to a rich endowment of inland waters, it is bewildering that fish importation should become persistent. Policy formulation and execution would certainly profit from an empirical gradation of the various sources of the apparently inadequate fish food. It is in view of this that the paper addresses the twin objectives of estimating the trends and relationship between fish exports and fish production, on the one hand; and establishing the relative significance of imports and domestic output as sources of fish food, on the other. The study relies on secondary data spanning a 39-year time series and sourced principally from the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations. The methodology adopted is the ex post facto research design of the quasi-experimental research family. Specifically, an ordinary least squares regression was applied in objective one while an equivalence test was done in objective two. The analyses were carried out at a significance level of 0.05. Two critical findings of the study are to the effect that fish exports are directly related to aquaculture and inversely related to capture; and, domestic output is of greater significance than imports in fish food sourcing. These formed the bases for conclusions and recommendations for policy.