From Hope to Home: The Journey of Ornamental Fish from Nigeria

inA Ornamental live fish from Nigeria is not just fish. It is the hope of a mosquito-bitten fisherman to feed his children, the grind of a supplier to make a little profit from his ultra-risky trade and sometimes gamble due to a subpar transportation network in Nigeria and the sleepless, almost unending, night of the final exporter whose expectation of exporting his fishes, a symbol of hope and life from the players above, may just get bashed by the numerous unintended adversaries on delivering the mixed bags of toil and hopes to the final consumer which might be a young boy who loves the long and usual “ trunk” of Gnathonemus petersii or the playfulness and intimacy of the numerous puffers. Or, any species of the numerous Polypterus could be delivered to the monster fish lovers.

Let me give you an exporter’s view of this process.
First, let me tell you a little about my country.

Nigeria is synonymous to diversity. There is diversity in everything Nigerian. From culture to our food, ethnic groups to languages and even to the fish species we offer. With Polypterus species from the far sun-stricken desert north, Hydrocynus species from the well watered middle belt where River Niger and River Benue meet, and unique puffers and cichlids from the rich creeks in the south, the ornamental fish industry has not and cannot totally exhaust what we have. It’s just not possible. But we have also been met with a diversity of challenges. From insecurity to bad government policies, scarcity of airlines to unnecessarily long flight time, bad eggs among exporters to dubious importers to mention a few.

When you send an order we are excited. We love receiving orders because it’s a chance to export our bags of hopes and diversity to our most esteemed clients. But bad road networks to rivers and creeks where the fishes are gotten from makes this harder than it should for suppliers and raises the cost to transportation for them. Regardless of these challenges, our suppliers and fishers tap into the strength of being a Nigerian and get us our fishes when we need them in good and healthy conditions.
When they get to our holding facilities, we then have to grapple with bad electricity supply but we have deployed innovative solutions to keep our fishes and quarantine them in other to make them as healthy and comfortable as possible. But that costs us sleepless nights and extremely long working hours. We are convicted that we have to take of this God-given creatures and make them as comfortable as possible. They are not just commodities for business. Also we gain strength from reminiscing on our wives and children being well taken care of as a result of our resilience to stand strong regardless of a system.

Our next obstacle after packing our fishes is transporting to the airport. Remember the bad roads networks? A journey of 45 mins can be extended to a 3 hour drive with the weather blazing at 33 degrees Celsius or 91.4 degrees Fahrenheit. Again, we conquer that with appropriate and innovative packaging to best suit the weather and make our lovelies swim in 22 degrees celsius cool water in their boxes.
You will expect we will get to the airport and things are good. So do we, unfortunately, it is another uphill movement. If your flight is successfully booked, then you now have to pay numerous charges to a lot of government agencies. I say ‘IF’ because some airlines and airline staff are incompetent and have total disregard for the fragility of live fish, so, they may not book your flight till you bring in your product, sometimes we must have paid earlier. Then they tell you the flight is fully booked and painfully, exporters need to return their fishes back to their facilities and wait for another 2 or 3 days for the flight to be available for them to repack. We avoid such incidents because we know how stressful that experience is for our fishes. But the one percent time it happens to us, we know how to cater for our fishes, feed them adequately and maintain their water quality and health, while our competent agents make ways for us to repack and send our lovelies to their new owners as quickly as possible.

At this point, we are getting close to solace. Airlines are so few in Nigeria made worse with the pull out of Emirates airline and Etihad shortly after the 2020 covid-19 pandemic. We have few airlines to work with and some routes have disheartening long arrival time. This can be discouraging at times. Thankfully we have experienced hands and the technical knowledge to pack efficiently and cost effectively for even a 60-hour transit time from our facility to a client’s facility.

But then we have the airline staff to face. Depending on the airline, we meet the sweetest staff causing you to rest and have peace that your work over a week will finally yield fruit and you can rest or concentrate on another order. Or you may meet the rudest and most insensitive staff and your blood pressure rises a bit because you never can tell if the way you are treated by the staff will be how your precious fishes, which at this point we have an emotional attachment to our fishes that we almost give them pet names, will also be treated. But then we are rest assured because our packing is ‘abuse proof’.

Next, We present our carefully filled-out documents. Taking extra care in dotting the ‘i’ and crossing the ‘t’. We have heard of shipments either returned or destroyed for lack of proper documentation. But not us. We love our fishes, fishermen and suppliers too much to allow that. Whether it’s the United States, the European Union, Britain, China, Hong Kong, Taipei, we are excellent with documentation.

Now it’s time to pay. The cost of freight has gone up over 100% in the last 5 years. Some genuinely from the airline, other times airline staff inflate the cost of freight. But we do our due diligence to ensure we are paying to the right account and not getting ourselves involved in some shady business and causing our clients to over pay because of some greedy staff. Also, we have packed our fishes with proper quantity per box so they are comfortable and our pockets are also comfortable.
At this point we have carefully exported our hopes and diversity to the tank of a little boy or an organisation with our kind of vision in another field.
We don’t just export ornamental fish. We export a piece of ourselves, we export pieces of Nigeria to our clients.
This is not just my story. It’s the story of every tropical fish exporter, every Nigerian ornamental live exporter, West African Fish Exporter, every African Fish Exporter, every Asian Fish Exporter and every tropical fish importer.

We also share the story of our brothers in Congo, Mali, and Cameroon because we are also West African Ornamental Fish Importers. Properly preserving and delivering pieces of themselves to you. Importing live fish can be a challenging task, and finding the right partner to do it with can be even more daunting. But when you choose us, you’re not just choosing a partner – you’re choosing to be part of something truly special. Ornamental fish from Nigeria and all over the world are not just fish; they are a symbol of beauty, passion, and connection. With every shipment, you’ll not only receive high-quality fish, but you’ll also become part of a community of like-minded individuals who share a love for these magnificent creatures. So why settle for anything less? Choose us as your partner in live fish importation and join us in something bigger than just fish.