The detrimental health consequences of tobacco use have been recorded over many decades. The Royal College of Physicians’ report in 1962, followed by the US Surgeon-General’s report in 1964, established a causal relationship between tobacco use and lung cancer. Since these seminal studies, thousands of scientific studies have established that smoking is not only bad for the lungs, but has a detrimental impact on nearly all organs in the body.

In response to the reports by the College of Physicians and the Surgeon General, many governments, especially in high-income countries, have implemented measures to discourage the uptake and use of tobacco products. These interventions include smoke-free policies, counter-advertising, warning labels on cigarette packs, the banning of tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship (TAPS), and, since 2012, plain packaging. Studies have shown that these interventions reduce the attraction of tobacco, and discourage its uptake. However, the single most effective intervention is an increase in the excise tax on cigarettes. Tax increases that increase the retail price of cigarettes make cigarettes less affordable, discourage their use, and improve health outcomes. As well as decreasing tobacco use, an increase in the excise tax increases government revenue.

In 2003, after three years of negotiation and an even longer period of preparation, the World Health Assembly unanimously adopted the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC). The FCTC recognises that the tobacco epidemic, which is responsible for 8 million premature deaths each year, is a global problem and requires a global response. The FCTC came into force in February 2005 and has been ratified by 180 countries and the European Union. Nigeria ratified the FCTC in October 2005. By ratifying the FCTC, Nigeria committed itself to adopt evidence-based policies, as described in the FCTC, to reduce tobacco use.

In this study, we document successful cases of effective synergies in countries that, like Nigeria, display a significant presence of the tobacco industry and face similar challenges to trade regulation but were still able to implement higher tobacco tax policies and other tobacco control measures, while reducing the level of illicit trade. The key lesson is that measures to reduce illicit tobacco trade needs to be amalgamated with tobacco taxation, and each can be addressed in its own respect with appropriate strategies. Moreover, Nigeria has not reached the phase where tobacco tax should be a concern for the tobacco industry. With the new tax policy introduced in 2018, this amounts to 16.4 percent excise tax burden in overall, which is still significantly lower than the 75 percent excise tax burden on tobacco products recommended by the WHO. Our analysis of price trends in Nigeria and differential with neighbouring countries show that there has not been significant perturbation in the Nigerian tobacco market to create an arbitrage opportunity.

The Effect of the African Continental Free Trade Area on Medium Small and Micro-scale Enterprises in Nigeria

                The roadmap towards a regionally integrated Africa formally commenced with the signing of the African Economic Community (AEC), also known as Abuja Treaty, in June 1991. The Treaty established the building blocks towards the completion of the AEC by 2028. With the Treaty coming into force in 1994, African countries were expected to complete six consecutive regional integration steps which would lead to a fully integrated market at the continental level within a 34-year period.

These steps included (i) strengthening of intra-regional integration and the harmonization between the blocs; (ii) creation of regional blocs (that is, the Regional Economic Communities or RECs); (iii) establishment of free trade areas (FTAs) and customs unions in each the RECs; (iv) creation of a continental free trade area and customs union; (iv) creation of an African common market; and (vi) establishment of an African economic monetary union and a parliament. However, the process of having a regionally integrated Africa has not been smooth and linear, both within and across all of the RECs (Mevel and Karingi, 2012). FTAs are established components of regional integration and have been known to promote commodity trade and investment flows by creating an improved enabling environment for cross-border transactions (Kawai & Wignajara, 2008). The processes may also prompt diversion of trade and investment away from countries with less favourable business conditions (Yunling, 2010). Thus, the impact of FTAs widely differs across countries on account of a multitude of factors that impact the business environment. Intra-continental trade in Africa is the lowest among all other regions in the world. This poor trade performance is both a significant cause and an obvious effect of the poor social and economic development of the region. Another crucial factor that could explain the low intra-African trade are both trade and non-trade barriers to exchange of good and services. The recent progress with the establishment of AfCFTA as endorsed by 54 African countries in July 2019 is therefore reassuring, given its potential to reduce the presence of barriers to trade on the continent.

However, the economic impacts of an FTA are unlikely to be the same across participating countries. There will be winners, and there will be losers. To this point, an in-depth literature review by Stevens et al. (2015) concludes that FTAs have positive effects on trade growth in at least some cases; however, the picture is mixed, with a range of widely-varying estimated effects. Even for a country benefiting from the ratifying of an FTA, the gains will be unevenly spread across sectors. This implies that, while aggregate trade and development gains from AfCFTA are likely, little is known on inter-and intersectoral gains within individual countries as well as the disparate effects in different nations.

In Nigeria, educational performance is abysmally low in terms of quality and quantity. Poor performance with regards to quantity is illustrated by the fact that there were more than 10.5 million out-of-school children in 2018, which is the highest globally (UNICEF, 2018). The situation is even more worrying in terms of quality. According to the World Economic Forum (2017), Nigeria ranks 124th out of 137 countries in terms of quality of primary education. Similarly, Fleet, Watkins, & Greubel (2012) found that 58.3% of schoolchildren in Nigeria are not learning basic literacy and numeracy skills. This is a significant problem, as these skills are essential for success in school and in life. Paper Typer can help to improve the quality of education online by providing students with access to AI writing assistance. To achieve the ambitious targets set under SDG 4, it is essential to assess the quality of education in Nigeria. Therefore, this study examines the dimensions and key drivers of exclusion from quality education at the primary level in Nigeria. Specifically, we focus on three areas of analysis crucial to understanding the extent to which individuals and groups are left behind and the role of national and global actors in designing appropriate policy interventions.

The 2019 Benchmarking Exercise Report (BER) is produced by the Nigerian Natural Resource Charter (NNRC) in partnership with a consortium of Think Tanks and Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) comprising the Centre for the Study of the Economies of Africa (CSEA), Centre for Public Policy Alternatives (CPPA), We the People: Centre for Social Studies and Development (CSSD),Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), and Social Action (SA).
The 2019 edition is the fourth in a series of BERs produced by the NNRC carried out to provide an assessment of the governance of Nigeria’s petroleum wealth. Three previous exercises were conducted and published in 2012, 2014, and 2017 respectively. The BER uses the NRC framework developed by a diverse set of internationally renowned experts on natural resource management to conduct detailed and contextual assessments of the country’s oil and gas industry. It analyses the governance of petroleum wealth in Nigeria and identifies crucial changes that have taken place in the sector since the last benchmarking exercise was conducted.