Nigeria yet to implement tobacco law

 

The Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria has described the implementation of the National Tobacco Control Act by the Federal Ministry of Health as “very discouraging”.

Akinbode Oluwafemi, Deputy Director at ERA/FoEN, said Wednesday that nothing had been done by the implementing ministry towards the law.

“There are basic steps that the ministry ought to have taken by now which have not been taken, and that to me shows some level of indifference on the part of that ministry to the effective implementation of that law,” Mr. Oluwafemi.

The National Tobacco Control bill was passed in May 2015 by the last National Assembly, and signed into law in the same month by former president Goodluck Jonathan.
“We’ll continue to engage them but we were thinking things would move faster than it has moved since that bill was passed into law and assented by the president,” said Mr. Oluwafemi.

“We are expecting that the ministry would move faster because this has to do with lives of the people and the more we delay the more people will be dying as a result of addiction to tobacco products.”