PRESS RELEASE
SGMIJ/OLF/OPE/03/142019
NON-RELIGIOUS
Our Ref: Your Ref APRIL 23, 2019
Date:
BAN CIGARETTE COMPANIES FROM OPERATING IN NIGERIA NOW!
In the best interest of Nigerians' right to sound health, Tobacco companies should be stopped from doing business in Nigeria. Cigarette as produced from tobacco is a leading cause of cancer and other debilitating diseases. This truth has been extensively proven across the Western world whose governments have duly flushed cigarette manufacturers out of their economies.
Part of the logic that was used by the likes of British American Tobacco (BAT) to get government approval to set-up operations in Nigeria was that employment will be generated by their presence and also that much needed revenue by government will flow to government's coffers from their investments. Both arguments were cleverly tailored to exploit the poverty situation in Nigeria. Better-informed leaders of the Western world from where the BAT and its fellows migrated to Nigeria slammed Philip Morris and his cohorts despite knowing that their businesses provide jobs and generate revenue to government.
Safety of human life is far more important than money-making! Any business that degrades or ruins human life does not deserve a license! By issuing licenses to such companies, government has, in effect, given them the liberty to destroy lives. In other words, it has given them license to kill! This is what tobacco companies have been doing freely in Nigeria for decades. They have been killing Nigerians quietly in the name of providing jobs and making money for government.
Some years ago, a popular Nigerian news-tabloid published a feature story that detailed how British American Tobacco exploits Nigerian farmers who supply them tobacco. The story particularly highlighted gross under-payment perpetrated by the company through payment-structures and protocols designed for the purpose.
Nigerians are living witnesses of the unprecedented rise of such devastating and pocket-draining diseases such as cancer, kidney and liver failure in their country. Government's commitment to prospering the Nigerian economy must take serious interest in the health of Nigerians, being that Nigeria can neither exist nor prosper without healthy Nigerians! There are many companies operating in Nigeria more as killers of Nigerians than as makers of profit! The Government of Nigeria owes Nigerians the critical responsibility of protecting Nigerian lives.
Healthy Nigerian citizens are the most important economic asset to Nigeria. This sort of wisdom is what informs generous investment in the continuous development and improvement of life-enhancing and life-securing policy and institutional environments in places like the United States of America (USA); Britain, France and Germany. Prosperous economies are built on the sound-health and hard-work of their respective citizens. The latter is not possible without the former.
Cigarette is a notorious wrecker of lives. Tobacco companies are makers of the poison! Where lies the possibility and wisdom in growing a sound Nigerian economy by poisoning Nigerians? I call on Mr President and authorities in Nigeria's Federal Ministry of Health to act favorably without delay to avert a health-crisis worse than the one currently causing Nigeria an annual loss of billions of US dollars to medical treatment abroad by infirmed Nigerians.
Let's save Nigerian lives from murderous corporate interests now.
My Divine Love And Blessings To All Nigerians And To Other Members Of The Human Race!