Ailments linked to tobacco use claims over 26,800 lives annually in Nigeria and over seven million lives globally, including 1.6 million non-smokers exposed to second-hand smoke, yet the country is battling a tobacco control budget crisis.
Robert Egbe, the Media and Communications Officer of Corporate Accountability and Public Participation Africa, (CAPPA), in a statement, said Nigeria’s national tobacco control allocation had crashed from an already paltry N13 million in 2025 to just N9.2 million in the 2026 Appropriation Act.
Egbe said the figure cannot keep a national response alive, let alone strengthen it, at a time when tobacco-related illnesses continue to impose enormous costs on families, the health system and the wider economy.
Fixing this crisis, according to him, has become urgent following a startling discovery two months ago that two bills seeking to amend the National Tobacco Control Act, NTCA, 2015 might have been compromised.
Both bills, HB 1151 and HB 47, were presented to the public on November 22, 2024, during a Public Hearing by the House of Representatives Committee on Healthcare Services, with HB 1151 proposing stiffer penalties and HB 47 seeking to fix defects in the NTCA.
But, Egbe said tobacco control advocates found that the four-page amendments have been surreptitiously transformed to 31 pages, with provisions different from what was publicly discussed at the November hearing.
Alarmingly, the new consolidated bill removes core protections in the NTCA 2015 and seeks to create a weaker, commercially acceptable regime for highly addictive electronic cigarettes, heated tobacco products, nicotine pouches and other non-combustible products, he noted.
Egbe said, “the plan, before it was uncovered, was to quietly deliver the harmful amendments to President Bola Tinubu for assent, a move that bears all the imprints of tobacco industry interference.
He maintained, “this tactic of compromising national legislation by underhand means is straight out of the tobacco industry’s playbook to deny, delay and dilute public health policies that keep the public safe.
Egbe explained that the industry, backed by a multibillion-dollar public relations war chest, has a documented history of scheming to influence policy in Vietnam, United Kingdom, Thailand, India and elsewhere to expand market for its products regardless of lives destroyed.
In Nigeria, the NTCA 2015 and institutions like the National Tobacco Control Committee, NATOCC, and the Tobacco Control Unit of the Federal Ministry of Health and Social Welfare are the basic tools for protection, but they are hamstrung yearly by funding constraints, he said.
He recalled that in January 2025, CAPPA called on the National Assembly to raise the allocation to at least N300 million, arguing that even N10 million was grossly inadequate to meet responsibilities imposed by the NTCA 2015.
Egbe said the NTCA places heavy obligations on government, including policy coordination, public education, monitoring and enforcement, research, protection of smoke-free spaces and action against tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship, all of which require NATOCC to function effectively.
He warned that without sustained public education and enforcement, the industry will continue to outspend public health with sophisticated marketing to addict children and young adults to nicotine via social media and fashionable narratives.
Egbe stressed that tobacco remains one of the most preventable causes of cancers, cardiovascular and chronic respiratory diseases, adding that if Nigeria is serious about a stronger, modern tobacco regulation that keeps tobacco and nicotine poison at bay, N300 million is the starting point.
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