By Ahmad Alabira, Dutse
A Non Governmental Organization, Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC) has tasked Jigawa State Government to domesticate law against Tabacco smoking in order to save thousands of lives.
According to CISLAC over 18 billion cigarettes are sold annually in Nigeria.
CISLAC made the call during it’s one day Stakeholder Engagement Meeting in collaboration with Tax Justice Network Africa (TJNA) held over the weekend in Dutse, Jigawa State capital.
The CISLAC Executive Director, Auwal Ibrahim Musa Rafsanjani said tobacco smoking in public has caused a lot of damages on lives of the users and the innocents.
Rafsanjani, represented by Muhammad Murtala said “We are calling on Jigawa State government to domesticate the National laws and policies on Tabacco usages into the Jigawa context to save lives of it’s citizens.
“Nigeria is the most populous country in Africa and has one of the leading tobacco markets in Africa, with over 18 billion cigarettes sold annually.
“As Nigeria continues to sustain tobacco control efforts in the country, there is need to expand the advocacy down to Jigawa state with the aim to save lives of thousands of youths in the state,” he added.
The Meeting warned that the use of tobacco remain one of the leading causes of deaths in Nigeria generally.
“Tobacco use remains the leading causes of death resulting from non
communicable diseases (NCDs) as tobacco use is directly linked to high burden of cancer, heart diseases and stroke.
“There are around 1.1 billion smokers worldwide and about 80% of these live in low and middle income countries (LMICs), where
more than two thirds of smoking related deaths occur.
“The WHO estimated
about 13 million smokers in Nigeria in 2012, with over 16,000 deaths attributable to smoking”, he lamented.
He identified some tobacco control measures, as WHO FCTC recognizes tax and price measure as the most cost effective tool for tobacco control as it reduces affordability especially among low income earners and reduces initiation of children to smoking.
According to him, this tobacco control measure is also described as a win-win tool for public health and government revenue as it contributes to reduction of tobacco affordability while improving government revenue generation.
“To achieve this target, CISLAC embarked on building capacity of CSOs on their role around the control of tobacco usage to strategize and advocate to raise the price of tobacco,” he concluded.
