For cigarettes lovers, the story of the late Darlington Opara, a 31-year-old cigarette addict, perhaps, could serve as a lesson for anyone who wants to live a life relatively free from health challenges. Speaking to Lady B, owner of a shop located in the Jibowu area of Lagos, where Opara bought cigarettes most times, she revealed the ’precautions’ taken by her late customer, who died of heart problems. Narrating what happens any time he had entered her shop, she said: “He takes on the average, three to five sticks of cigarette at a go and before night falls, he was sure to take up to 20 sticks. Several occasions, he requests for a bottle of bitter soft drink.
Immediately he opens it and puts it in his mouth, he doesn’t bring the bottle down until the content is exhausted. That is also followed by vigorous shaking of his chest while two of his hands are placed on the desk.” However, further investigation by Saturday Mirror, revealed that the exercise of ’washing’ his chest could not stop him from taking ill. “His wife, parents and siblings tried everything humanly possible to save his life but doctor’s report proved that excessive smoking had damaged his entire cardiovascular system. After some months in the hospital, he gave up the ghost,” Lady B said.
From research, statistics from the World Health Organisation, WHO, estimates that about 1.3 billion people in the world are currently smoking and most of them are in developing countries including Nigeria. Globally, tobacco causes about 5.4 million deaths yearly compared to three million, two million and one million deaths caused by AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria respectively. By 2020, WHO estimates that global death toll from smoking will hit 10 million.
According to an Independent Tobacco Control Activist, Dr. Olusegun Owotomo, statistics available show that about 93 million sticks of cigarette are produced yearly in Nigeria and every one of those cigarettes is consumed and that between 150,000 and 300,000 children under the age of 18 months get respiratory infections, such as pneumonia and bronchitis from second-hand smoke. More than 40 per cent of children who visit the emergency room for severe asthma attacks live with smokers. With all the warnings on the dangers of smoking cigarettes smokers seem not to be giving up even with the number of people dying from smoking-related illness. Among smokers who spoke to Saturday Mirror is Mr. Felix Uzondu, a 38-year-old engineer.
He disclosed that he started smoking cigarette in 2000 due to peer group influence. “Honestly, then, I just wanted to belong to the big boys’ group and to be seen as one of the movers and shakers in the university environment and before I knew it, I got hooked onto this deadly act. I don’t know how to remove myself from it,” he regrets. Narrating some of those conditions that pushed him into smoking he said: “If I am alone and feel bored or tensed up or under pressure I usually develop the urge to smoke. It is only God that could stop me from smoking because once I am taking beer, the next thing that comes to my mind is to smoke and I must satisfy that urge. Honestly, I saw smoking as part of growing up; those I emulated never told me that it was a dangerous habit and I did not realise what I was doing to myself.” He however justified his action saying that something must kill somebody someday.
“Some people develop cancer of the lungs without even touching a stick of cigarette; I no longer bother myself about the dangers inherent in smoking as long as my urge is satisfied each time the feeling to smoke envelopes me,” he said. Ask Daniel Uffot, a journalist, why he smokes and he will tell you that cigarette is a form of self-medication, which enables him fight stress when he is tensed up. “Any moment I start experiencing much stress especially in the peak of production, I take one or two sticks and it helps me to manage the tension and nerves associated with the situation,” he said.
On how he started smoking, he said as a journalist, “If you don’t smoke, womanise or drink, what then makes you a good big boy? Perhaps, Mr. Denis Chukwu, an architect, will also need God’s intervention to come out of smoking even though he has been deprived of some good things of life because of the habit.
“I regret the social stigma it hangs on me as some of my girlfriends refused to kiss me because my mouth always smells of cigarettes. At a point, a particular girlfriend of mine asked me to choose between her and cigarette and when I chose my stick over her, she left me. If you smoke, you can hardly get responsible girlfriends because any girl that accepted to befriend you as a smoker may have one bad habit that she might also