Corporate Accountability and Public Participation Africa has raised the alarm over what it described as a calculated campaign by tobacco companies to addict Nigeria’s next generation of consumers through flavored nicotine products, attractive packaging, and social media marketing aimed specifically at young people, calling on regulators to move beyond taxation and impose comprehensive restrictions on the promotion and sale of the products.

Speaking at a press conference in Lagos to mark World No Tobacco Day 2026, CAPPA Executive Director Akinbode Oluwafemi said the tobacco industry had merely evolved its tactics while maintaining the same core objective of profiting from addiction, replacing traditional cigarette marketing with labels such as “tobacco-free,” “clean nicotine,” “smoke-free,” and “harm reduction” to rehabilitate products that remained dangerous.

He said CAPPA documented 781 nicotine and tobacco-related products across Lagos, Enugu, and the Federal Capital Territory, with 573 classified as new and emerging nicotine products. Many were sold in mango, strawberry, bubble gum, mint, vanilla, and candy flavors and packaged in bright, attractive designs specifically engineered to appeal to children and adolescents. Products were also designed to resemble flash drives, pens, toys, cosmetics, and small electronic gadgets, enabling them to pass unnoticed in schools and homes.

He criticized the tobacco industry’s promotion of a “World Vape Day” observance, which he described as a fraudulent marketing exercise with no recognition from the World Health Organization, the United Nations, or any reputable health body, designed to portray nicotine addiction as harmless.

CAPPA also raised concern about the growing normalization of smoking at cultural events including the Ojude Oba Festival, warning that public display of tobacco products at such gatherings risked associating smoking with prestige, masculinity, and success in the minds of young Nigerians. Tobacco-related diseases claim nearly 30,000 lives annually in Nigeria, the organization said.

It called on the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control, the National Broadcasting Commission, and other regulators to intensify enforcement of tobacco control laws, ban flavored nicotine products, restrict youth-oriented packaging and marketing, extend public-use restrictions to emerging nicotine products, and prevent tobacco advertising across traditional and digital media.