Women
should use their hands and brains
By CHRIS UBA
Monday, January 9, 2006
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Jerry Uwheraka
Photo: The Sun News Publishing |
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Are you a woman in search of what to add to your family income?
Please don’t look to the roofs, look by your sides,
you will find so many things of interest to engage your brain
and hands.
This is the piece of advice Mrs Jerry P. Uwheraka, a fish
farmer, is giving to women. According to Mrs Uwheraka, who
also heads Frijay Consult Limited, a consulting outfit that
specialises in marketing and fish farming, opportunities abound
everywhere in this country.
“The only problem is that we have not taken time to
study our surroundings enough to be able to see these opportunities.
Instead, most of us are looking to the roof rather than looking
at our sides, hence we go about complaining of lack of opportunities,”
she said.
Although, a fish farmer, Mrs Uwheraka can best be described
as an integrated farmer because her farm includes poultry,
where she rears chicken and snails. Her specialties include
production of fingerling, fish fillets, shrimps, chicken,
smoked fish, fresh and smoked snails. A NEPAD award winner,
Uwheraka, who has now processed her farm products to give
them value spoke with Daily Sun recently. Excerpts:
Background
I did not study fishing. In fact, I did not study anything
related to that. I attended St. Luke Ibadan; then I went to
Rimax Computer School in Lagos. I am a computer operator.
I developed interest in farming when I was in secondary school,
because I was a member of Botanical Society. I believe in
doing a lot of work with my hands. I am from Delta State,
but I have lived in Lagos, Ibadan and Aba. So I am everywhere.
Even when I was in Aba, I was into farming. I was doing a
little farming business there. I went into paper recycling
business too. So, when I came back to Lagos, I went into farming.
I have always been self-employed. I have always been interested
in how I can create wealth out of nothing. You don’t
have to wait to get millions before you can venture into business.
You start with the little you have. This has been my principle.
And this is the advice I give to people. Every woman, if you
like, be a professor, if you like be a doctor, you must learn
a trade because one day, as a professor, you will retire.
Well, you may go into writing but after writing what else?
My principle is that women should make use of their hands
and brains. You will be happy when you see that the things
you have invested on with your hand have grown.
How I started
I started in 1992. I started with one fish pond. I bought
fingerlings from Talabi Farms and was feeding them with kitchen
wastes, and what have you, because there was no particular
feed for them. So, by 1997, I went into harnessing of fingerlings.
Gradually, I was watching them and taking care of them. I
made a lot of experiments. I was also buying hybrid, growing
them. I was able to identify the speed of growth and all that.
By the year 2001, I decided to go into fish farming on full
scale. Or should I say, I became a full time fish farmer.
Now, I am into integrated farming. I have poultry where I
rear fowls and snail. I started out with one pond, today I
have eight.
Why I went into fish farming
I went into fish farming for commercial reason. I am a patient
person. Any place I go to, I study the environment. What I
look out for is the economic use of things. There are so many
things that are being wasted. I always try to identify their
commercial values. I want people to emulate me to empower
themselves. I like to be self-sufficient. You see a lot of
women suffering. They always look on the roof, they don’t
look at the sides, on the ground where they can make success.
They are always looking for somebody who is successful. Success
starts from somewhere. The place I live now, when I moved
in, there was nobody, but today there are houses all over
the place. Then, there were only there houses I was planting
vegetable. The owners of the land were in Lagos busy looking
for money meanwhile, I was collecting money at home.
Initial capital
I cannot give you a specific figure, but all I know is that
then, one fingerling sold for N5. While my first pond was
built with just N7,000. I used tarven. I started with tarven.
That was where I raised the money. I attended a workshop on
fishing in 1998, from the knowledge I gathered and from what
I have read on fishing, I was able to put them together. The
people who wrote the book did not really expatiate. But what
I learned from the book is how to raise capital for fish farming.
You do not need to gather the whole amount in the world. I
tried those things I heard from the workshop and they worked.
So now, I have about eight fish ponds. I was rearing chicken
along with fish. In other words, what I am doing is integrated
farming. But specifically, I was rearing the chicken for my
barbecue here. I use the meat to prepare chicken suya which
you have seen here. I rear them, say 200 or 300, and when
they are matured I bring them here to make suya for my barbecue.
So, it continues like that. That is how I raise capital for
my farming business. I did not go to bank to raise money.
Marketing
When the chicken are about nine months old, I will sell about
200 and keep the rest. What I mean is that if I buy like 500
I will sell 300 and keep the rest. I sell fish but for some
time now, I have not sold because the ones I have now have
not matured. But most of my outputs, I bring them here to
prepare fish pepper soup. I grill some of them for people
to buy. I just don’t sell them fresh like that except
the fingerlings. Some times, such as festival time, I grill
cat fish. My only problem is that I have not been able to
get into the bigger market.
Fish processing
I went into fish processing because, anything I want to do,
I make sure it is complete. I discovered that most of the
time, when we go to the market to buy fish, the fish on the
surface might be looking good and fresh, but inside, it is
rotten. My grandmother used to make dry fish in those days
in the village. Then, she was using clay pots as oven. With
that curiosity, I began to process not just fish, but all
that I produce in the farm. The reason I process them is for
preservation.
With the way this one is, they can be there for six months
without decaying because they have been well-preserved. All
you need to do is just to take them and start cooking. There
is no foul smell. So, I took interest in doing the processing,
it is a better way of preserving the fish. Also, because I
want to explore the export market.”
Something that I can export that bears the mark of Nigeria,
that everyone out there will love to eat. Nigerians outside
Nigeria, Nigerians within Nigeria will like to have quality
things.
Those are the reasons I went into processing. Because of this
I constructed a factory where I process the fish, meat, snail
and pomo and crayfish. I have got approval of the NAFDAC for
things I processed. I have the approval of NAFDAC. It is unique.
You can see the packaging. I believe that if you want to do
something, do it well. I don’t have the machine that
produces packaging materials for me. I buy them. I tell them
what I want and they do it for me.
Every waste is converted
In my farm there is no waste. Every waste is converted into
something useful. There is no waste in the sense that, for
instance, if I process fish all the intestines are dried up
and converted into seeds for feeding the fish. I also use
it to feed the chicken.
Challenges
To hit the bigger market. Bigger market in the sense of getting
bigger organisations to buy from me. Most fish farmers sell
at loss. Instead of them to come to us to process their fish,
for them, and have value for their money. So, the challenge
facing us here is to have bigger market. Our fish farmers
do not process, and that is why many of them sell at loss.
Luckily, now, we have a union. Lagos State Cat Fish Farmers
Association, we meet at ADB Office at Oko-Oba, Agege, every
second Tuesday of the month. I also, belong to Cat Farmers
Association. We meet at Obasanjo’s Farm at Ota. I also
belong to Fisheries Society of Nigeria (FISON). All these
are forums for fish farmers to come together to share ideas
and information.
Consultancy
In FRIJAY we have different fields. We have consultancy for
commercial farming, we plan and arrange it for you. Your farm
doesn’t need to be in the forest. It does not need to
be in a large expanse of land. Your farm can be in your house.
You can do so many things without disturbing your neighbour.
You can do many things on one plot of land. So, we tell you
how to maximise your space to get what you want. In Nigeria
today, there are no more vast expanse of land. People are
hustling for land. When your farm is close by, you can manage
it yourself and you can see people working. It is like returning
into a business of comfort. I have not worked for anybody
in my life. If you go to Europe, you will see farmers, they
live in their farms. So, they plan their time. Any time they
want to work on their farm, they can because they live within
the farm. We are also into marketing consultancy. My husband
is a marketer.
Award
I had an award from the NEPAD last year. The last Fish Summit
that was held in Abuja, I had the Best Exhibitors Award for
Fisheries. I am looking forward to going abroad. This has
been part of my business ambition. I was to do a presentation
last month in Mali, but I had to abandoned it to process admission
for my children.
Our union
We have so many fakes who claim to be fish farm experts. You
spend so much money and you don’t get anything. You
lose millions of money without achieving anything. Most of
the so-called experts are not practising farmers.
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