The Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth, Nigeria (ERA/FoEN) has condemned the passage of an anti-smoking Bill by the House of Representatives, saying the lower legislative chamber had compounded the issues as they affect tobacco use.

It also described provisions in the new Bill as several steps backward in efforts by the government and civil society groups in the country to reduce tobacco consumption and its attendant health, social, economic and environmental costs.

The House of Representatives on Tuesday passed a Bill which raised the fine on smoking in public places to N50,000, four months imprisonment or both. The existing Tobacco Control Act 1990 (formerly Decree 20, 1990), which the new Bill sought to repeal, had prohibited smoking in public places across the country. The Act, however, stipulated a fine of between N200 and N1,000, one month imprisonment or both for offenders.

ERA in a statement issued by its Programme Manager, Akinbode Oluwafemi, said the promoters of the Bill appear to have deliberately ignored all the gains that had been recorded in tobacco control, fuelling suspicion that it may have been influenced by tobacco industry lobbyists since there are on-going efforts to enact a comprehensive national tobacco control law.

According to the group, Nigeria signed the World Health Organisation (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) on June 20, 2004 and ratified the convention on October 20, 2005, adding that by ratifying the convention, it was obligated among several other provisions to ban all forms of tobacco advertising, sponsorship and promotion, raise taxes on cigarettes, as well as make public places smoke-free.
“There is really no excitement but lots of suspicion about what the House of Representatives has done. They merely raised the fine on smoking in public.”

This falls short of what Nigerians are expecting. This falls short of Nigeria ‘s treaty obligations. It looks very much like an attempt to legislate tobacco industry wishes through the back door,” Oluwafemi said.
The environmental advocacy group also expressed worries that the Bill excluded the classification of airports as public places. It also excludes total ban of tobacco advertising, sponsorship and promotion when the same House passed a Bill prohibiting those activities in March 2001.

“Nigerians are just shocked that our House of Representative has passed a bill to make it legal to smoke at check-in counters, customs check counters and other offices in our airports contrary to a directive by the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) and the global practice of declaring airports tobacco-free. No one expected a debate about whether an airport is a public place or not, and that is why the whole world is suspicious of this bill”, Oluwafemi added.

The group advised the Senate to ignore the Bill, arguing that what the nation needed at this time was the full domestication of the FCTC, which includes among others comprehensive ban of tobacco advertising, sponsorship and promotion; increased taxes on tobacco products to discourage youth smoking; protection of non-smokers from tobacco smoke (tobacco-free public places); mass education about the dangers of smoking and assistance to people who want to quit.