Prying into the proposed ban of Tobacco in Nigeria, EZREL TABIOWO gives an all-round view that captures the sentiments of Nigerians and stakeholders on the Tobacco bill awaiting passage by the National Assembly
The Senate determined in its bid to ban tobacco production, consumption, and promotion in Nigeria has commenced moves to so do when it considered a bill on the September 24, 2014, seeking the regulation of tobacco in the country.
The bill which was presented by the Chairman, Senate Committee on Health, Senator Ifeanyi Okowa, PDP Delta North, had senators divided over whether Tobacco regulation should be enforced through legislation in Nigeria or not.
Also, the bill sought the repeal of the act on tobacco manufacturing, sale, promotion and sponsorship in the country.
Recalling the intense controversy generated by a similar bill during the sixth senate, the Senate President, David Mark, lamented that powerful individuals who were against the ban and regulation of tobacco in Nigeria influenced the Presidency to withhold assent to it when initially passed by the National Assembly.
But the Senate President explained that the bill, merely seeks to regulate advertisement about smoking in the country, given the health hazards inherently associated with its consumption.
He said: “The essence of the Bill is to highlight the dangers inherent in smoking and it also seeks to regulate advertisement about smoking. We have gone one step further to ban it also but when it goes to public hearing, then we will get public opinion on that.
“Let me remind us that we passed this bill actually in the Sixth Senate and Senator Olorunmibe Mamora was the sponsor. He talked extensively and we had a similar debate the same way we talked now.
“Powerful groups are behind the bill and I remember that in the Sixth Senate a lot of lobbyists were all over the place when this bill was being debated. So I am not surprised that we eventually didn’t sign it but we should have courage to at least do something. I don’t think we should just leave it that way this time around,” the Senate President said.
He added: “The dangers inherent in smoking are very obvious and I think that at the end of the day we would be able to get feelers from the general public. My prayer is that this time around once we pass this bill I hope that it will be signed because we were just left hanging at the moment. It is neither here nor there. Nothing has been done. Hopefully this time around the executive would be able to sign it. Those who would determine will be the general public – Nigerians – but let me remind us also that this Bill is not just a Nigerian bill. It is far more important because there are a lot of countries that have tried to debate the issue of total ban on cigarette and smoking.”
The Senate Leader, Victor Ndoma-Egba, PDP, Cross River Central, in his contribution to the debate said: “I support and concur with all the arguments as canvassed in the lead debate by Senator Ifeanyi Okowa but I want to ask that in this bill, there is the health component just as it has the economic component. In spite of the dangers of tobacco, we have to deal with the use of tobacco in such a regulated manner that it doesn’t create any economic distortion because if we don’t address the economic issues properly, then we will end of with more of smuggled tobacco that is unregulated and our own tobacco industry here will become un-protective. So when it gets to public hearing, I want to urge the relevant committees to balance the health issues with the economic issues.”
On his path, Senator James Manager, PDP, Delta South, said: “This is a very harmless bill about something that is very harmful to human health. I used to wonder why the world is shying away from banning tobacco. Instead, they are advertising it. We should not talk of the economic benefit of something that is harmful to human health because you need to be alive for you to enjoy economic benefit of something. Tobacco consumption supposed to be banned. This tobacco, I don’t know how it tastes, by the grace of God, Mr President, I have never attempted to smoke it and I don’t want to know.”
But kicking against the passage of the bill was Senator Abdul Ningi, PDP, Bauchi Central, who argued saying, “I think we should only look at clearly what this bill seeks to achieve. This bill seeks to regulate and then control the production – the manufacturing and promotion of tobacco.”
He continued: “One of the cardinal principles of creation of human beings is for him to be able to identify what is good and what is right. The issue of banning tobacco hinges on fundamental human rights of an individual and therefore, if you ban tobacco, you must ban several other things. Example, you must ban corruption, you must also ban chewing stick, you must also ban illicit sexual intercourse, you must also ban lesbianism.
“A human brain is created with the freedom of choice. There is no doubt that tobacco affects somebody’s health and that is what the bill seeks to achieve but no human being will tell me what to do and what do do because I have human capacity to choose what I want. Therefore, some of these choices, we must be caution sometimes when we try to do things that infringe on the choices of human beings. Some people, if they don’t smoke tobacco, they go into coma. There are people who cannot work without tobacco, what we need to do as a parliament is to identify the cardinal problems with a view to regulate. This bill is not aimed at banning tobacco and therefore we should not even go there. Nobody, no nation, no country has gone there and Nigeria should not go there.”
Earlier, in his lead debate, sponsor of the bill, Senator Ifeanyi Okowa explained that scientific evidence has unequivocally established that tobacco consumption and exposure to tobacco smoke cause death, disease and disability.
According to him, the bill provides generally for protection of present and future generation from the devastating health, social, economic and environmental consequences of tobacco use and exposure to tobacco smoke.
He appealed to senators to support the passage of the bill, explaining further that the bill seeks to regulate tobacco products and disclosure of information about tobacco production to the government in order to effectively exercise its regulatory powers.
He recalled that the World Health Assembly, WHA, at its 56th meeting, adopted a treaty on World Health Organisation Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, saying the treaty, which came into force on February 27,2005, became the first WHO treaty adopted under Article 19 of the WHO constitution that was legally binding in 176 ratifying countries of which Nigeria was one.
Tobacco ban in Nigeria
The National Tobacco Control Bill which was proposed in 2009 is yet to be law, five years later. Although the Senate passed it on to the President for ratification in March 2011, it took almost another three years for the President to send it back to the Senate to iron out what it noted were a few “technical irregularities” contained in the bill. The delay in the passage of this bill would seem to indicate that tobacco control is a low priority for the Nigerian government, which is dealing with a terrorism crisis and high levels of poverty, amongst other problems.
Nevertheless, there is a general movement towards tougher anti-smoking laws (as indicated by the passage of a public smoking law in the largest city of Lagos in 2014).
The National Tobacco Control Bill recommends the banning of smoking in public places, establishing a minimum legal smoking age and restricting advertising, as well as more significantly banning the sale of single cigarettes. It is, however, not expected that the bill will significantly impact smoking habits in Nigeria, given the lax implementation of such laws in the country historically.
The Lagos State Government also recently passed a Public Place Smoking Bill which introduces partial ban on smoking in public places. The law lists the different places where smokers can and cannot smoke. Both the Tobacco industry and the Anti-tobacco lobbying groups have applauded the passage of this law.
The Lagos tobacco control bill will see that anyone caught smoking in public is fined N10,000 and/or three months in jail. Additionally, failure to display ‘No Smoking’ signs at public establishments such as restaurants will see owners of those establishments paying an even bigger fine and the possibility of an even longer jail term (up to six months).
The Law which became effective on the 17th of August 2014, six months after the Governor’s assent as stipulated in the Law, allows for Smoking in open places such as on the streets, roads and highways as well as in private homes and residences. It also allows for owners of Hotels, Bars, Night club and Tertiary institutions i.e. (universities etc.), to demarcate at least 10% of their premises as a Smoking Area.
Health Hazards of Tobacco products
It cannot be disputed that some tobacco products, especially when used as regularly as cigarettes often are, will have health implications on the individual and then the wider society by extension.
Globally, six million people die annually from tobacco-related diseases. More than ten per cent of those deaths are non-smokers who have been exposed to the threat of tobacco-related diseases either by a close relative or at public spaces such as restaurants. In Nigeria, 29.3% of non-smoking people surveyed in the nation’s Global Adult Tobacco Survey (GATS) identified as being exposed to tobacco via the latter (GATS Nigeria 2013).
Twenty-seven per cent of smokers did agree that as a result of seeing health warnings on cigarette packing, they had wanted to quit smoking (Nigeria GATS 2013). The implementation of a law such as the NTCB 2013 will therefore have its benefits as it would reduce the exposure to cigarette smoke for those who have chosen not to smoke and will facilitate the decision to quit for the 27% of smokers who choose to, but understandably due to the natural addictiveness of tobacco, cannot.
According to a report by the British Broadcasting Corporation in 2013, studies in the United Kingdom have shown a twelve per cent decrease in asthma rates among children in the wake of the application of smoking restrictions in the country. Therefore, there are offshoot benefits from the restriction and regulation of the use and distribution of tobacco products.
Notwithstanding, the implementation of such a control bill should consider all the consequences. Prime amongst them, the economic factor. Currently, Nigeria is the 10th largest tobacco market.
Economic benefits
The Nigerian government earns fifteen billion naira (US$91.2m) in tax revenues from British American Tobacco alone. In total, the tobacco industry earns the federal government US$364m. Furthermore, the tobacco industry makes significant contributions to the job market. Two-thousand people are employed directly, and a further three-hundred-thousand indirectly by the industry even whilst less than 10% of the population use tobacco products.
The Nigerian government is in a process of boosting and expanding its agricultural sector, of which the tobacco industry plays a major part. Investors in Nigeria’s tobacco industry also aide the country’s aims of industrialising as they manufacture their products in-country.
However, the debate on how to sensibly mitigate the health implications of tobacco use whilst maintaining and even expanding the benefits of the revenues it generates should not be restricted to a discussion of economics and health alone. It is the case that such regulations infringe on the freedom laws of smokers, to choose to smoke when and where they would like.
Senator Bukola Saraki, a serving lawmaker in the seventh National Assembly who tabled the bill considers the “high percentage of Nigerians (29 percent) who are non-smokers are inadvertently and dangerously exposed to smoking endangering their health” as a primary reason for so doing.
Implementation of Tobacco law
But mixed reactions have continued to trail the tobacco bill presently with the National Assembly, with experts on the side giving reasons why the federal government may have difficulty with the implementation of the law if the bill is passed and given assent by President Goodluck Jonathan.
Before passage of the Tabacco bill by the Lagos state government, the British American Tobacco Nigeria (BATN), during a public hearing at the Lagos State Assembly expressed its support for a balanced and evidence-based Bill for the industry.
BATN said it is in the interest of all stakeholders to ensure the passage of a balanced, workable and evidence based Bill. This, the company believes, will help reduce the impact of tobacco on public health in the country.
But speaking against its passage the Assistant Secretary General of Trade Union Congress (TUC), Mr Anthony Ibafor, said the union was against the Bill as it would on the long run lead to unemployment.
Similarly, distributors and representatives of Restaurants, Bars and Café owners also agreed that the passage of the Bill in its current form would have a negative impact on their businesses and lead to mass unemployment.
They unanimously tasked the legislators to be clear on the specified smoking areas by including designated smoking areas in the Bill and also to give them enough time to meet up with the provision for display signs.
Presenting their memoranda, representative of Nigerian Tobacco Control Alliance, consisting of 40 civil society organisations, Nurudeen Ogbara commended the house for championing the course of democracy. He faulted the bill as too limited in scope to aid the course of public health.
The Head of Regulatory Affairs, BATN, Mr Sola Dosunmu said BATN had always supported appropriate regulation for the tobacco industry in Nigeria and have cooperated and collaborated with government agencies towards ensuring that existing regulations are enforced.
Against the backdrop of arguments for and against the the ban of tobacco in Nigeria, how does the Federal Government or even the Lagos State Government go about implementing the values of the bill to achieve the desired impact on increasing the standard of life of their citizens?
According to IMANI, a Think-Tank in Ghana, the Federal Government must ensure that any law passed to address smoking in Nigeria must not infringe upon the smoker’s right to choose to smoke and the non-smoker’s right not to.
“It must regard the revenues the country is currently receiving from sales of those products and the added benefits, of the corporate social responsibility investments in the country, to its development agenda over the estimated savings to the healthcare infrastructure in a country where the cost is part-borne by the patient and their family. As such, the federal NTCB would most likely imitate the Lagosian law which allows for establishments to set aside designated smoking areas for smokers,” IMANI said.
The group added that Tobacco regulation must be sensibly done, noting that there is a stark difference from the concessions Lagos State has offered and the laws being proposed at the federal level.
