Nigeria’s Tobacco control fight enters new phase in NASS

How a proposed amendment to the 2015 Tobacco Control Act could quietly unravel a decade of public health gains writes Editor

For over a decade, Nigeria’s National Tobacco Control Act NTCA 2015 has stood as one of the continent’s more robust legal shields against the tobacco industry, banning advertising, restricting sales, and treating nicotine addiction as a public health emergency rather than a commercial opportunity. That shield is now facing what a coalition of health advocacy groups is calling its gravest threat yet: a proposed amendment bill that critics say doesn’t strengthen the law, but hollows it out from within.

In a strongly worded joint statement issued Thursday, thirteen organisations under Nigeria’s tobacco-control community — including the Nigeria Tobacco Control Alliance NTCA, Corporate Accountability and Public Participation in Africa CAPPA, and the Nigerian Cancer Society, demanded the immediate withdrawal of the National Tobacco Control Act (Amendment) Bill, 2025, regardless of how far it has advanced through the legislative process. Should it reach President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s desk, the coalition wants him to refuse his signature entirely.

At the heart of the coalition’s objection is what they describe as a legal contradiction embedded in the bill’s own text. The proposed law defines “non-combustible products” to include heated tobacco products, then separately defines “tobacco products” in a way that excludes all non-combustible products. The practical effect, campaigners argue, is that a product containing actual tobacco could be legally reclassified as something other than tobacco simply because it is heated rather than burned — a workaround that contradicts the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which explicitly treats heated tobacco products as tobacco products requiring full regulatory control.

For a country that has positioned itself as a public health leader on the continent, campaigners argue, codifying such a loophole into national law would be an embarrassing regression rather than an advance.

Perhaps the most striking flashpoint in the bill is its redefinition of “adult publications.” Under the proposed text, a publication qualifies as adult-oriented if just 50 per cent of its readership is over 18 — meaning up to half the audience could legally be minors, yet the publication could still carry advertising for vapes, heated tobacco products and nicotine pouches.

Given Nigeria’s demographic reality — where, per UNICEF data cited by the coalition, over 60 per cent of the population is under 30 and 43 per cent are 15 or younger — critics argue that this threshold isn’t a technicality but a functional loophole. Compounding the concern, the coalition pointed to Nigerian Communications Commission research showing that the overwhelming majority of surveyed children aged 11 to 16 already access the internet via their own phones, raising the prospect that “adult” digital advertising would reach children by design rather than accident.

The bill’s provisions extend well beyond advertising. Where the 2015 Act bans tobacco sales via mail, internet and other online channels outright, the amendment would permit online purchases, courier deliveries, in-store product displays behind counters, and in-store sampling of vaping products. Taken together, campaigners say, the bill doesn’t just loosen restrictions — it constructs a complete commercial pathway from advertisement to doorstep delivery.

The bill’s proposed safeguard — mandatory age verification — is dismissed by the coalition as largely symbolic, given how easily such digital checks are circumvented through borrowed identification, third-party ordering, or simple pop-up dismissal. They also note Nigeria currently lacks the regulatory infrastructure to monitor the sheer volume of online transactions, social media advertising and courier deliveries such a system would generate.

The bill also touches packaging standards. While the 2015 Act mandates that smoked tobacco products be sold only in packs of at least 20 sticks, the amendment retains that threshold for cigarettes but permits cigars to be sold in packs of just five — a change campaigners warn would make cigars cheaper and more accessible. Nicotine pouches, meanwhile, would only require a text-only warning covering a small fraction of packaging, and vaping and heating devices themselves would be exempted from carrying health warnings altogether. The coalition also flagged the removal of penalty language from the original Act, which they say creates ambiguity around enforcement consequences.

Two structural changes drew particularly sharp criticism. First, the bill would allow tobacco and nicotine companies to designate product information as “trade secrets,” legally binding the Minister of Health to withhold such disclosures from independent researchers and civil society — a reversal, the coalition says, of the existing transparency obligations under the 2015 law and a possible conflict with Freedom of Information provisions.

Second, the bill grants the Minister of Health broad authority to exempt non-combustible products from statutory rules under an undefined “public interest” standard — discretionary power the coalition warns could become a vehicle for industry lobbying and regulatory capture.

Beyond the substance of the bill, the coalition is raising pointed procedural questions: who drafted these provisions, and which institutions signed off on them. They note that the version of the bill discussed at a November 2024 public hearing contained none of the contested clauses now present in the consolidated text — suggesting, they argue, that the current bill has undergone significant, unscrutinised expansion since its last public airing. The groups are demanding full disclosure of every draft, committee report, hearing record and vote tally connected to the legislation.

The coalition has directed formal appeals to the National Assembly’s legislative committees, the Federal Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, the Attorney-General of the Federation, and the National Tobacco Control Committee, seeking clarity on whether the ministry was consulted — and if so, how it justifies provisions the coalition says run counter to Nigeria’s treaty obligations under the WHO framework.

For now, the bill’s fate hinges on two pressure points: whether legislative committees will heed calls to withdraw it, and — should it survive that stage — whether President Tinubu will exercise his authority to withhold assent. The coalition’s messaging on that front was unambiguous, framing the stakes as a test of whether commercial interests or public health will define the next chapter of Nigeria’s tobacco policy.