FIIRO trains entrepreneurs on fish export

Youths and women across the country are currently undergoing training at the Federal Institute of Industrial Research Oshodi (FIIRO) on fish smoking technology aimed at equipping them for export of dry fish.
Speaking at the opening ceremony of a three-day training workshop on ‘Fish Smoking Technology’ (Batch B) held Monday in Lagos, Gloria Elemo, director general (DG) of FIIRO, said that at the end of the training, participants would have armed themselves with the requisite knowledge to produce high quality smoked fish for the local and foreign market.
Elemo noted that unemployment should have no room in Nigeria considering the great potential and abundant human/natural resources available in the country.
This, according to her, compelled the institute to developed home-grown technologies that would transform the economy and industrial landscape when transferred to investors and entrepreneurs across the country.
She added that FIIRO would soon start implementing its various job creating strategies in collaboration with several agencies aimed at reducing unemployment to the barest minimum in the country.
“One of such programmes is the National Techno-entrepreneurship Development Initiative, designed by FIIRO with the support of the federal government of Nigeria,” she stated.
According to her, this initiative has the capacity to train two million unemployed youths and women annually at full implementation, in addition to various numbers of small and medium enterprises that will grow there from.
“The training workshop could be conceived as one of the immediate intervention programmes of the federal government to reduce unemployment through empowerment of youths and women who in turn would graduate to be job providers rather than job seekers,” Elemo posited.
Commending FIIRO, Bolaji Daniel, coordinator of the Ikorodu Fish Farmers, stated that by being trained by FIIRO, the international market would no longer reject dried fish from Nigeria.
“This training will help us to do the right thing, in terms of moisture content, nutrition composition, and all the processes of cleaning up which we never knew. A lot of people smoke fish, but without the real knowledge and training,” she said.