Nigeria needs stronger stance against tobacco control – ERA

At least 4.5 million Nigerian adults use tobacco products and another 3.1 million are active smokers, according to the Global Adults Tobacco Survey conducted in 2012, in addition to 6.4 million exposed to secondhand smoke. An estimated 20 billion sticks of cigarettes are consumed each year in Nigeria, where activists say tobacco industry is interfering […]

At least 4.5 million Nigerian adults use tobacco products and another 3.1 million are active smokers, according to the Global Adults Tobacco Survey conducted in 2012, in addition to 6.4 million exposed to secondhand smoke. An estimated 20 billion sticks of cigarettes are consumed each year in Nigeria, where activists say tobacco industry is interfering with policies against them. Anti-tobacco lobbyists want to reduce the ability of [tobacco industry] to recruit young ones, said Akinbode Oluwafemi, director for corporate campaigns at Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria.

Is it very clear to understand how tobacco industry is interfering with policies against their products?
 Everywhere they are, tobacco industry is trying to interfere or undermine every effort to ensure they are properly regulated. We have seen all over the world they do that to continue to maintain their market share or gain social acceptability either through direct or indirect lobby, through memorandums of understanding and partnerships, or through corporate social responsibility.
 They want to present themselves to government as being there to work. They actually want to see themselves as stakeholders in tobacco control. We see tobacco industry as the vector of a disease, and what the vector does is that it spreads diseases and death. When you want to discuss malaria, you dont call mosquito to the table.
 Nigeria also signed the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, and Article 5.3 in there says that governments around the world should ensure that when they are making policies, there are also measures to protect those policies from the tobacco industry.
 What we need to talk about is how Nigerian government can move and implement those measures, like putting restrictions on their corporate social responsibility, not signing MOUs with them, government officials cannot take gifts, or go to tobacco company initiated meetings without making open declarations about them.
 We need to talk about how they have used corporate social responsibility, made spurious donations to government agencies and pseudo government agencies across Africa.
 
How much of this have you been able to document?
 We have documented a lot of this. There is a ban on advertisement and promotion. But there is something they do, called secret smoking parties, where they call under-age to those parties. In Nigeria, they escalated their corporate social responsibility, including even sponsoring Nigerian Media Merit Award in order to compromise journalism, including an award called Industry Reporter of the Year, making donations to Customs, to Consumer Protection Council that is supposed to regulate them.
 We want to create that awareness that it is wrong, as signatory to FCTC, for Nigerian government or any government agency to be seen to be in partnership with tobacco companies.

 With that in place, where next would you look at? A law in place?
 The overarching thing is the National Tobacco Control Bill, which is currently before the parliament. We thank God the executive has sent an executive bill to both the House of Reps and the Senate, it should be passed immediately. There are components within that bill that should protect those measures from interference from tobacco companies.

Nigerians reportedly consumed 20 billion sticks of cigarette a year. Up to 80% of Nigerians support one form or other of control on tobacco, according to an opinion poll. Whats your sense of how that support can actually reduce tobacco consumption?
 The only thing is that policy makers should connect what the public is asking for with what they are doing at the National Assembly. If over 90% of Nigerians are asking for comprehensive tobacco-control law, I expect the parliament to now move very fast and say, this is what the nation is asking for and pass the bill into law.