British American Tobacco in Nigeria
I'm sure like many others here, it really pisses me off that British American Tobacco are allowed to get away with their "Proudly Nigerian" corporate social responsibility advertising. Although fag companies have been banned from advertising in Nigeria, BAT advertise all kinds of bullshit-cultural stuff under the Proudly Nigerian banner, complete with a large BAT logo. As George Monbiot said of BAT recently:
"Let us begin by examining BAT’s contribution to public health. Smoking, according to the World Health Organisation, “is currently responsible for the death of one in ten adults worldwide … half the people that smoke today – that is about 650 million people – will eventually be killed by tobacco.” BAT sells one sixth of the world’s cigarettes.(3) Were responsibility to be divided according to market share, we could accuse it of causing the deaths of 100 million people."
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3 comments:
Jeremy, I agree with you totally.
Poor Countries in Africa and Asia continue to keep themselves open to exploitation from multinational companies.
When a company operating on your country does something it would never be allowed to do in its own environment, then your country needs to sort itself out. Your country is as much to blame as the Company perpetrating the wrong acts.
British American Tobacco built a $150 Million factory in Ibadan, Oyo State of Nigeria in 2003 or thereabouts, and the Nigerian government was proudly represented at the event, with the President even happily calling the "investment" evidence of the success of his mission to “attract direct foreign investment” into the country. Great isn't it?
it is extremely annoying, and the proudly nigerian thing makes it worse...i dont suppose we could get them to leave but if we make enough noise, we wont have more 'nice' foreign investors...
how is dear old abuja by the way, i went to school there for six years and i never really saw the place until this summer, way too much red dust
I thought no one else noticed.
I went home for Christmas and that is the FIRST thing I noticed - A huge billboard with Nigerian traditional attire and BAT claiming Nigeria!
Breaks my heart.
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