Why ERA is at War with Tobacco Firms in Nigeria

Why ERA is at War with Tobacco Firms in Nigeria

FOREMOST environmental rights advocacy group, Environmental Rights ASction (ERA), has given reasons whythey want to fight the mega billion naira tobacco industry in Nigeria to a stand still.

Media Officer of the group, Mr. Philip Jakpor, claimed in a telephone interview with AkanimoReports on Tuesday that the future of the country's youths are at risk.

According to the ERA Spokesperson, ''our advocacy project against the tobacco industry is aimed at rousing the authorities to act in order to save the lives of millions of our youths. Our reseach findings tend to show that our youths now stand threatened by the activities of British American Tobacco Nigeria (BATN) and other tobacco merchants''.

ERA's position, according to its Executive Director, Nnimmo Bassey, ''is reinforced by the fact that as Party to the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, the Federal Government of Nigeria owes her citizens an obligation to domesticate the treaty.''

Bassey, who is also the Chair of the Friends of the Earth International (FoEI), a global federation of environmental rights advocacy organisations, said while owes citizens an obligation to deliver good governance and promotion of public health, ''the intervention of Abuja and further actions to save an anti-tobacco bill in the National Assembly, will be appreciated''.

ERA is however, praying government to, as a matter of national urgency, to commence all the necessary process required to ensure that the legislative arm of government, debate on the report of the Public Hearing on the bill and pass into law.

Before now, the group has been imploring Senate President David Mark, to follow through his remarks last year on the readiness of the Senate to speedily pass the National Tobacco Control Bill (NTCB) into law, cautioning that further delay on the draft legislation will cost the nation more lives.

In a petition to the senate president signed by the ERA boss, Bassey, the group also urged government to sanction BATN for targeting young Nigerians in what they described as ''a desperate bid'' to recruit them as replacement smokers through glamorization of smoking and ‘secret smoking parties’ held in Abuja, Lagos and other parts of the country.

Continuing, they argued that the non passage of the Bill was responsible for the increased rate of smoking among young people in Nigeria as reflected in the recently released Global Youth Tobacco Survey (GYTS) and the mammoth sum that most states are now paying for healthcare of victims of tobacco-related illnesses.

The National Tobacco Control Bill, sponsored by Senator Olorunimbe Mamora went for Public Hearing July 2009 and received overwhelming support from members of the house but the report of that Hearing is yet to be returned to the Senate plenary for eventual passage into a law.

''The result of the Global Youth Tobacco Survey conducted in some states recently which revealed that many more school children fantasize smoking is indeed telling of what the tobacco companies have done to the psyche of our youth. In some areas in Adamawa State the youth smoking rate was put to 33.9 percent, a very disturbing trend'', ERA said.

Adding, they said, ''it is saddening that even after the complimentary comments of the Senate President, who declared last year that action will be taken on the Bill within two weeks of the Public Hearing, nothing has happened even after a year.''

ENDS

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