When former President, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan signed the National Tobacco Control (NTC) Act 2015 into law four days to the end of his administration most Nigerians heaved a sigh relief.
The exhilarating feeling among Nigerians was not unanticipated as the law had gone through a tortuous road, almost declared missing at a point before resurrecting to become a reality. The process proper started more than a decade before when Nigeria joined the committee of nations that signed and ratified the first global health treaty known as the World Health Organisation – Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO-FCTC).
The coming into force of the FCTC on 27 February 2005 marked the first time that the WHO went as far as enacting international legal powers to address tobacco addiction and its deadly fallouts. Dr. Jonathan’s signing of the law was therefore a watershed for Nigeria as it joined the ranks of nations that have domesticated the treaty.
While the law still has loopholes such as a bureaucratic provision that the National Assembly must give its nod for implementing Regulattions to be fashioned by the Ministry of Health for implementation to begin, in the overall, the NTC Act 2015 is seen as a torchlight pointing in the right direction.