Those feisty Nigerians! First they sue Pfizer, for the ticky-tacky oversight of testing drugs on Nigerian children without their parents' consent. Now the government is suing three major tobacco companies for, among other things, aggressively targeting Nigerian kids in their advertising.
Heavens to Betsy! Could this mean that Africans are tired of being the go-to continent for everything banned or restricted in the western world?
The lawsuit, which targets Phillip Morris, International Tobacco, and British American Tobacco, asks for 40 billion dollars to fight smoking-related illnesses - an amount signifiantly greater than the entire national budget. But the government is hoping the case will unfold similarly to ones in the United States in the 1990s, in which tobacco companies settled for billions of dollars.
Critics of Big Tobacco, who have long accused the companies of aggressively marketing to Africans as American and European governments tied their hands at home, applauded the lawsuit.
