Former President Olusegun Obasanjo at the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential library (OOPL), Abeokuta, Ogun State, subtly berated President Muhammadu Buhari over loss of control of the country’s economy, decrying that the rising cost of diesel has adversely affected fish business in the country. He decried that the leadership of Nigeria is no longer what it used to be, and as such, things have gone so bad.
The former President noted that the high price of diesel may turn fish farmers into bankruptcy.
At the current price of N800 per litre of diesel, Obasanjo calculated the production of one kilogram of fish at N1,400.
According to him: “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 of today.
“So, if I sell my fish around N1,400 I cannot make a profit.”
Obasanjo in a statement by his media aide, Kehinde Akinyemi, cautioned that farmers must not sell at less than N1,500 as anything short of that would lead to “outright loss”.
Obasanjo stated: “If we don’t come together as an association, nationally, we will sink individually. If we come together, we will swim and survive together.
“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.
“Then, what will happen is that particularly those of us who have to use a bit of diesel in producing fish, we will completely go bankrupt, and when that happens, Nigerians will still have to eat fish.
“And you will go jobless, poor, and indigent. So, what do we have to do? To come together… we want to sustain fish production, and we must be able to take care of those who are going to eat and those of us who are producing.”
Dr. Obasanjo maintained that fish production would be out of reach, and “then people will be producing fish outside Nigeria and dump it here”.