Testimony by Mr. Oluwafemi Akinbode Tobacco Control Advocate Environmental Rights Action (ERA) for a strong Framework Convention on Tobacco Control(FCTC) at the Public Hearing organised by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in Geneva ,October 12&13, 2000
Good Morning. My name is Oluwafemi Akinbode and I am the Tobacco Control Advocate of Environmental Rights Action (ERA), a Nigerian advocacy non- governmental organisation. On behalf of my organisation, I want to thank the World Health Organisation (WHO) for organising this public hearing on the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC). It is our belief that this forum would further strengthen the resolve of organisations and individuals of conscience worldwide to pursue an international instrument and multilateral actions that would curtail the globalisation of disability, poverty and death which the tobacco industry symbolises.
ERA has two has two main objectives: (1) to act as a peaceful pressure group, campaigning for change in the policies of governmental, non-governmental and commercial organisations where those policies are likely to act against environmental human rights; and (2) to enable local people to defend their environmental human rights in law. The organisation is currently concerned with exposing the environmental and human rights atrocities of the multinational oil companies, especially Royal-Dutch Shell in the ecologically threatened Niger Delta and the depraved practices of tobacco merchants in our country. We in ERA see a link between vultures like Shell, Chevron, Agip etc and Philip Morris, R J Reynolds, British American Tobacco, Japan Tobacco etc which is their demonic desire for profit.
ANTI-TOBACCO CAMPAIGNS
The Tobacco Desk of ERA has been waging relentless campaigns against the glamourisation of nicotine by tobacco transnationals and their local collaborators. Though the tobacco industry has for several centuries, fed fat marketing lethal products through which they inflict monumental health and economic costs on the whole of humanity, it has however, specifically targeted the third world for liquidation since the developing world's market became strangulating for its operations . Tobacco transnationals have viciously invaded Nigeria with their monstrous wealth through which they glorify their venomous sticks in every given space or medium. ERA therefore, decided to take these demons of profit headlong through massive media campaigns, press conferences, media interviews, and TV appearances. ERA has also organised lectures and roundtables to unveil the health hazards inherent in tobacco consumption in some of Nigeria's institutions of learning. We have, in addition, initiated alliance processes towards forming a National Coalition for Tobacco Control through which we will further push our campaign for Nigeria's support for a strong FCTC.
ADVERTS OF DECEIT
Tobacco companies have frighteningly taken over Nigeria's media, both print and electronic, its arts, entertainment and sports. Apart from the numerous spot advertisements, they sponsor regular programmes on radio and TV, and events including St Moritz Soul Selection, Rothmans Groove, Rothmans European Soccer, Rothmans 100 Goals Competition, Benson and Hedges Golden Tones Concert, Benson and Hedges Golden Tones (radio&TV), Benson and Hedges Grab the Mic Competition, Performing Musician Association of Nigeria(PMAN) Patron Nite among many others. Besides, the nation's roads and streets are now replete with giant and glitzy tobacco billboards. The tobacco transnationals led by Philip Morris have also taken brand- stretching to an obscene level as they now have their logos and names printed on match boxes, fez caps, T- shirts, school bags etc, which in some cases are distributed freely. The adverts paint tobacco in golden colours while saying very little or nothing about the dangers of smoking.
OUR WORRIES
We are worried that the tobacco giants now value profits more than the lives of our people. An enumeration of these worries as they affect the youths, children, pregnant women, the poor and the environment is pertinent at this juncture.
Youths: The characters used in the numerous billboards and TV adverts are usually young men and women. They are presented as successful, sophisticated and sociable. These adverts carry an unambiguous message for the youths, which simply is that they must smoke to show that they are no longer mothers' pets: a way of asserting their 'adulthood' and freedom to choose.
Children : Today, every Nigerian child can recite at least one tobacco advert. The sad truth is that most of them recite two to four different types. Tobacco adverts are also placed in magazines that most often find their ways into the hands of our children who are becoming more conscious about the world around them. We believe there is a deliberate attempt by the smoke merchants to imprint tobacco smoking on the minds of children so that they can grow to become smokers.
PREGNANT WOMEN: Only paltry information exists in Nigeria about the dangers of smoking to the foetus and to the mother herself. Yet, the tobacco companies have continued to place their adverts in gossip magazines mostly read by women. It should be noted that in some of these adverts a woman smoker is presented as free, sophisticated and urbane.
The Poor: A survey by ERA in some Nigerian cities indicates that the number of tobacco billboards in areas occupied by the poor and middle income earners far exceeds those in areas occupied by the rich. In some of the adverts, a smoker is depicted as somebody successful; a deceit the tobacco industry sells to the poor to make them think they are celebrating success by burning their hard earned Naira in smokes. The London Tobacco Company (LTC) has a rather obscene one for its London cigarette. In Nigeria the west is an Eldorado of a sort so LTC designed the advert titled " Welcome to London", designed to give the illusion that a smoker is merely behaving like someone who has visited London. It also tells them that since they smoke, they are naturally welcomed in London.
Culture: As I was preparing this testimony, the British American Tobacco entered into an agreement with some organisations to sponsor the first Pan-Africa Broadcast Heritage and Achievement Awards (PABHAA) scheduled to hold in Abuja. We are piqued because the tobacco companies are not only damaging our health but that they want to infiltrate our culture and rewrite our societal values. Africans are traditionally conservationists but the tobacco giants want to give the on-coming generation an orientation that will make smoking socially acceptable. Environment Nigeria is a tobacco-growing nation. From the tobacco farms mostly in its Savannah area, the country turns out 15,000 tons of tobacco yearly. The problem is that the soil and the waters in the areas where tobacco is cultivated are at the mercy of pesticides and highly toxic fumigants. These chemicals are hazardous to the environment, the health of farmers and their children.
HAVEN FOR SMOKE MERCHANTS! It saddens the heart that while success stories about tobacco control are recorded daily in the western world, Nigeria appears to be furnishing a safe haven with a very big ashtray for the tobacco industry. With a population of over 120 million people, a weak and unimplemented anti- tobacco laws and a government bogged down by overarching problems of dwindling economy, corruption and many others associated with its past military years, Nigeria is indeed, on its path to becoming the biggest ashtray in the new millenium. It is the new bride of tobacco companies. We on our part in ERA at different fora have canvassed the constitution of a National Committee for Tobacco Control NCTC); comprehensive ban on cigarette advertisement whether in-door or out-door and Nigeria's support for the formulation and early ratification of a strong FCTC and its accompanying treaties among others. We are pursuing these demands with our strength to ensure that nowhere in the world is made a safe haven tobacco trade.
THE IMPERATIVE OF A STRONG FCTC The government while still dilly-dallying on our demands, recently reduced Excise Duty on tobacco products from 50 per cent to 20 per cent. Till date, nobody or company has been prosecuted under the Tobacco (Control) Decree 20 of 1990 nor advert agencies sanctioned for flagrant breaching of the Advertising Practitioners of Nigeria (APN) Decree which supposedly restricts tobacco advert to certain periods of the day.
What we are witnessing in Nigeria, as we have said before, is the replacement of one dictatorship with another: a dictatorship of the transnational companies backed by a monopolistic agenda bound to affect our present and future. Sadly, this agenda is now encouraged, by a religious wave sweeping across certain parts of the country. The Sharia legal system forbids the use of alcohol but current reports indicate that residents of these areas have shifted to the massive use of cigarettes and colanuts, a local fruit, based on an erroneous belief that the two used together could intoxicate like alcohol. A confused Ministry of Health recently raised an alarm over increasing rate of smokers in the country. The ministry had earlier put the figure of smokers in Nigeria at 10million. A disaster is looming and yet our health facilities remain in the Stone Age form. Nigeria is indeed set to contribute more than its own share of the 10 million people projected to die yearly from tobacco-related illnesses as from 2030.A strong FCTC is thus an imperative.
A strong FCTC is needed to serve as benchmark, for efforts at curtailing the tobacco epidemic looming in my country. Advancements in technology have made facilities like Internet, cable TV etc possible. There is also globalisation and the WTO buffs. Tobacco control efforts must therefore, move from regional approaches to multisectoral global instrument. This instrument must be strong enough to save not only Nigeria but the whole of Africa from this new colonisers whose mission is nothing but to ruin the health of our youths, our children and keep Africa perpetually depressed. The instrument besides tackling tobacco smuggling, advertisement, packaging etc, must also contain realisable action on transition programmes for tobacco farmers to allay the fear about the fate of local farmers in the wake of global clampdown on tobacco. We recommend a well-funded programme that will encourage farmers to shift attention from tobacco to other healthy crops.
Lastly, realising that Nigeria wields enormous political influence in Africa, ERA has decided to intensify efforts to get Nigeria into the train of countries routing for a strong FCTC but to also rally the support of other African countries for its early ratification.
Thank you