By Mashe Umaru Gwamna
The Corporate Accountability and Public Participation African ( CAPPA) has launched report on how tobacco industry in Nigeria craftily uses social networking sites to burnish their images .
Speaking at the launch yesterday in Abuja, the CAPPA Executive Director , Akinbode Oluwafemi,said the tobacco industry foster partnership with the state actors and institutions in contravention of provisions of the National Tobacco Act 2015 and its regulations.
Oluwafemi said the report examined Facebook, Twitter,Instagram, LinkedIn and a host of other social networking platforms used by over 100 million Nigerians for the period between 2016 and 2021.
He said the finding came out, that British American Tobacco Nigeria (BATN), through its charity arm, British American Tobacco Nigeria foundation( BATNF), Philip Morris international (PMINL) and others operate unchecked in the virtual space and uses it to gain favorable public rating while mentioning nothing about the harms of their products.
“ CAPPA found out that tobacco vendors and distributors such as Smokehubng and Dasmokehub use their social media platforms to aggressively promote sales of tobacco products and a smoke culture which relies largely on promoting content showing Nigerian music icons smoking profusely”, Oluwafemi stated.
He explained some of the key findings in the document, saying that tobacco industry most
Preferred and exploited digital and internet channels Facebook which recorded 40%, Twitter 36%, and YouTube 14% in the period under view.
Others are instagram 5%,Blog/Website 3% and LinkedIn 2%.
While pointed out that visibility activities of the tobacco industry are mostly in agricultural, education and entertainment sectors of the Nigeria economy which subtly targeted at fostering engagement and collaboration with stakeholders in the sectors.
Meanwhile, He said to address the gaps in the law, CAPPA recommends enforcement penalties for TAPS and tobacco control violations in compliance and accordance with tobacco control and policy .
“ There is a need to revokes all ministries departments and Agencies ( MDA’s) collaboration with the tobacco industry and their front groups.
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