The Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria, ERA/FoEN, has described the indictment of British American Tobacco, BAT, in a bribery scam involving policy makers in East Africa as a shameful confirmation of public health experts’ long belief that BAT consistently undermines life-saving tobacco control laws in Africa. Philip Jakpor, head, Media & Communication, ERA/FoEN, said the expose aired on British Broadcasting Corporation, BBC, Panorama on 30 November 2015 and titled: Secret Bribes of Big Tobacco http://www.bbc.com/news/business-34964603, makes it imperative for the Nigerian government to be wary of BATs romance with agencies of the state tasked with implementing the Tobacco Control Act signed into law by Goodluck Jonathan, former President.
In the investigation revealing BAT’s conspiracy, Paul Hopkins, a whistleblower, described how BAT funded illegal corporate espionage and how its contractors bribed politicians and policymakers in countries like Rwanda, Kenya, and Uganda. Hopkins, a former BAT personnel shared hundreds of secret documents which revealed he started paying bribes after being told it was the cost of doing business in Africa. His job was to facilitate the payments.
Emails he shared revealed the corporation made illegal payments to two members and one former member of the World Health Organisation Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, WHO-FCTC, a United Nations campaign supported by 180 countries, aimed at reducing deaths from tobacco-related illness.
Godefroid Kamwenubusa, an FCTC representative from Burundi, and Chaibou Bedja Abdou, a representative from the Comoros Islands, were alleged to have also received $3,000 while Bonaventure Nzeyimana, former representative from Rwanda, was paid $20,000. In return for the illegal payment to Kamwenubusa, a Burundian senior civil servant, BAT also wanted a draft copy of the country’s Tobacco Control Bill with an e-mail to the government official asking to “accommodate any amendments before the president signs.”
During the airing of the investigation on BBC Panorama, experts from the University of Bath’s leading Tobacco Control Research Group, TCRG, were available for media comment and interviews. The report drew global condemnation on BAT with Dr. Vera Da Costa e Silva, from the WHO, saying BAT was irresponsible for using bribery to profit at the cost of people’s lives. She recommended that the corporation be investigated by the government and punished accordingly.
In a statement issued in Lagos, ERA/FoEN said the report is, indeed, an eye-opener and must be seriously noted by governments around the world and particularly in Nigeria where BAT controls 80 per cent of the cigarette market, as it showed the length the corporation will go in thwarting anti-tobacco legislations in countries it is allowed to interact freely with public officials.
Akinbode Oluwafemi, ERA/FoEN deputy director, said: “We are not at all surprised. We had long suspected this. The BBC findings are happening not only in Uganda, Kenya and Rwanda; They are happening in virtually all the nations in Africa where BAT is operating, capitalising on weak institutions of government that it readily throws cash into to compromise its officials. The aim of this, has been, and will always be to weaken or out rightly stop legislations that save lives. We believe BAT works openly and behind the scenes to thwart the FCTC. These findings challenge the Nigerian government to wake up because all through the torturous processes of getting the National Tobacco Control Bill (now Tobacco Control Act) into law, hurriedly-formed BAT front groups were deployed to fight taxation, ban on Tobacco Advertising Promotion and Sponsorships (TAPS) and other life-saving provisions from getting into the final document.”
“While we support the global call for BAT to be probed for the East African bribery scandal, we urge that the investigating agencies also beam the searchlight on BAT operations in West Africa and particularly Nigeria where it is involved in so-called anti-smuggling campaign and lobby to thwart increase in taxes.”