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Still A
Cannibal In Our Midst
By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye In June 2002, I
published an essay in a number of Nigerian newspapers entitled: "The
17 Billion Poison House In Ibadan." The piece was my
own way of pouring out my disgust and indignation due to reports
in the media earlier in April that the Nigerian Government under
Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo had celebratorily granted permission to a
so-called "leading cigarette company", British America
Tobacco (BAT), to invest a "whopping $150 million (about 17
billion naira)" in the construction of a tobacco factory in
Ibadan, "the biggest and most modern" of its kind in
Africa. The prominent attraction of the company, according to
reports, was that, when completed, it would provide employment
to 1,000 Nigerians.
Expectedly, the
article, also published in Houston-based newspaper, provoked
immense interest, and was rewarded with an unimaginably wide
circulation on the Internet. In fact, I have continued to see
several links to it on a number of internet sites, including TOBACCO.ORG.
Indeed, Op-Ed News which still maintains a link to
the piece describes it as "Talking about Tobacco like we
Never See in the US" (The piece is still available on the
net at: http://www.usafricaonline.com/tobaccongr.ugoejinke.html).
What amazed me
after the publications was the panic reaction of this cigarette
company. They immediately mounted an unprecedented
image-packaging blitz through countless full-page glossy adverts
in several newspaper and magazines. Their glossy billboards also
adorned several strategic points in the nation’s cities.
Today, I am
reopening this battle, not just with BAT, but with all other
cigarette manufacturers in Nigeria and the whole of Africa, and
I invite all concerned Africans and friends of the continent,
and health and environmental rights activists, to join us to
prosecute this clearly winnable struggle. These unrepentant
merchants of death have targeted Africa now because, harsh laws
and countless litigations in several Western countries are
making it difficult for them to remain in business. We as a
people, with the help of our friends, can insist that they are
unwanted in our midst, despite the friendly disposition the
various African governments, especially Nigeria, are showing
towards them, for totally self-serving reasons.
The question
I have always asked cigarette producers is: can they boldly come
out in the open and assure me that the commodity they
manufacture and distribute to hapless individuals cannot be
rightly classified as poison? Again, they should tell me just
one single benefit the human body derives from cigarettes. Has
it not been convincingly proved everywhere, and publicly
admitted by tobacco producers, that tobacco is a merciless
killer, an unrelenting cannibal that devours a man when his life
is sweetest to him? If then tobacco is a proven killer, can’t
those who manufacture and circulate it in society be rightly
classified as murderers? Hasn’t even Nigeria’s Federal
Ministry of Health unambiguously endorsed this position by its
insistence and persistent warning that TOBACCO SMOKERS ARE
LIABLE TO DIE YOUNG?
The implication of
the Health Ministry’s statement is simple: If tobacco smokers
are liable to die young, then anyone offering you a cigarette is
only informing you that the best wish he could possibly make to
you is that your life be cut short! He is just telling you in
very clear terms: May you die young! And that is exactly what
BAT, other tobacco companies, and the governments that licensed
them to operate in Nigeria and other parts of Africa are wishing
all their people! How wicked and heartless could they be!
I know that after
this piece now, BAT and their co-poison manufacturers will start
again to erect new and more beautiful billboards, and fill
several pages of newspapers with glossy adverts. Because of the
ban placed on out-door advertising of tobacco products in
Nigeria, they have devised a more subtle way to entice their
victims. They are now pretending to use their billboards to
promote Nigerian music, films, fashion, etc, but we all know
that their main interest is to keep themselves in the
consciousness of the people. If they are so much proud of
Nigeria, why are they finding it difficult to put “Made
in Nigeria” on the packets of the cigarettes they are
even producing in Nigeria?
I see this as
nothing but the huge, shameless strategies of a smiling, gentle,
but ruthless murderer to persuade his victims to allow him to
live among them so he could strike when they least expected.
Well, this time around, I am waiting for them to boldly tell us
that tobacco, the product they manufacture and circulate in
Africa and several other countries outside the continent, is no
more the resilient, implacable, silent killer, the lethal
poison, and the heartless cannibal that seeks accommodation in
the midst of hapless humanity with the sole intention of
effecting their eventual decimation. I want to hear that
cigarettes are no longer generous distributors of devouring
cancer, tuberculosis, sundry terminal lung and heart diseases,
etc.
Unfortunately,
cigarette adverts are among the most alluring in society. The
pleasant pictures of vivacious achievers smiling home with
glittering laurels just because they are hooked to particular
brands of cigarette which we see on glossy billboards are
proving irresistible baits to several people, especially youths.
The danger is so evident in the unparalleled glee with which
youths adopt these cigarette advert stars as their most
cherished heroes and models.
I was a victim too.
As a youth, the elegant, gallant, athletic rodeo man whose image
marketed the 555 brand of cigarette was my best idea of a
handsome, hard-working winner. My friends and I admired him,
carried his photographs about, and yearned to smoke 555 in order
to grow up and become energetic and vivacious like him.
One wonders how
many youths that have been terminally impaired because they went
beyond mere fantasies and obsession with their cigarette advert
heroes and became chain-smokers and irredeemable addicts.
Managers of tobacco adverts are so adept in this grand art of
deception that their victims never suspect any harm until they
have willingly placed their heads on the slaughter slab. Indeed,
only very few are able to look beyond the deceptive pictures and
the pernicious pomp of cigarette promotional stunts and see the
blood-curdling pictures of piecemeally ruined lungs and other
sensitive organs, murky, chimney-like breath tracts and heart
region, the looming merciless and spine-chilling fangs of an all
devouring cancer, tuberculosis, sundry lung and heart diseases,
and their associate unyielding killers. The warm reception given
to British America Tobacco and other tobacco companies in
Africa, especially in Nigeria, by the various governments is
nothing but criminal, ungodly and anti-people.
There were reports
that BAT paid 2billoin naira tax to the Nigerian government in
2001. I have even heard that it sponsors scholarships and
community projects in some rural areas. But how many people have
their lethal product sent to their early graves? How many
widows, widowers and orphans are they producing with alarming
rapidity? How many among their 1,000 employees are gradually
ruined daily because of the insidious fumes they inhale during
production of cigarettes? How many cancer, TB, lung disease
patients do they produce in a year?
It is unfortunate
that while in several countries of the world, tobacco companies
and their owners are being isolated and choked with harsh laws,
they have been allowed to invade Nigeria and other African
countries with their filthy billions because we have
incompetent and insensitive governments that have no qualms
welcoming urbane, but ruthless killers in the name of “foreign
investors.”
The development in
the United States on June 7, 2001 where a Los Angeles Superior
Court in California slapped an unprecedented $3 Billion in
damages on Phillip Morris, another giant tobacco company in
response to a suit by a tobacco casualty, Richard Boeken, who
had developed incurable cancer of the brain and lungs after
smoking two packs of Marlboro cigarettes every day for 40 years
should serve as eye opener to Africans that with several class
suits from victims of tobacco, these evil merchants can be
forced out of the continent. According to the New York
Post editorial of June 9, 2001, 56-year-old Boeken who
began smoking as a teenager in 1957 claimed that "he
continued smoking not because it was addictive, but he believed
claims by Tobacco Companies that smoking was safe." He told
reporters in a post-trial interview: " I didn’t believe
they would lie about the facts that they were putting out on
television and radio."
That is exactly the
point. Tobacco companies are deploying well-concocted lies to
lure people into taking their fatally poisoned wraps called
cigarettes. Their billboards present vivacious winners and
achievers puffing away, instead of cancer patients treading the
cold, dark, lonely path to a most painful, slow death. Every
society has a responsibility to defend its unwary and the
ignorant, and Nigeria and the rest of Africa cannot be an
exception.
The argument that
smokers ought to be dissuaded from smoking by the hardly visible
warnings they put out on their packets, and that people are
merely being allowed to exercise their right and freedom to make
choices, is akin to endorsing suicide as a lawful expression of
freedom? Why allow a killer-poison to circulate in the first
place? Do we all have the same capacity to discern and resist
the allurement of this clear and present danger?
In court and in
several enquiries, tobacco producers have admitted that their
product contains very harmful substances. It is widely believed
that many tobacco producers are non-smokers because they know
too well how deadly their product is!
Tobacco is a
killer. So are its manufacturers. Nigerians, all Africans and
the world should rise with one voice and unified strength and
resist this cannibal in our midst. Certainly in several
families, there have been tobacco victims. There are relevant
laws under which these people can be sued.
You have a choice
in this matter, to not only refuse to patronize their lethal
product but to help your hapless, less-discerning neighbour do
likewise. Remember, it is not tobacco control, but total
abolition of the killer poison! This fight is winnable.
P/S: For more
information about the destructive mission of tobacco, log on to
http://www.tobaccofree.org/children.htm
Scruples2006@yahoo.com |
