Smoking in Nigeria: Estimates from the Global Adult Tobacco Survey (GATS) 2012

Aim: Tobacco remains the leading cause of preventable deaths, causing about 6 million deaths globally every year. Despite the widely known health effects of smoking, the prevalence of tobacco use is gradually increasing in developing countries including Nigeria. This study was carried out to provide a clear understanding of the patterns, social distribution and predictors of smoking in Nigeria.

Study Design: Data on tobacco use and the socio-demographic as well as smoking related characteristics of ever smoked, never smoked and current smokers were obtained from the Global Adult Tobacco Survey (GATS). Global Adult Tobacco Survey is a cross-sectional, nationally representative population based survey implemented for Nigeria in 2012. The data comprises of responses from adults of 15 years of age and above. A cross-sectional stratified multi-stage cluster sampling was adopted for the survey with a sample of 11,107 systematically selected households.

Methodology: The analysis included generation of frequencies, proportions and means for relevant independent variables. Bivariate analysis using chi square test was done as well as multivariate logistic regression analysis after considering the clustering effect. Unadjusted odds ratios were also obtained. All statistical test were set at 5% level of significance.

Results: The overall smoking prevalence was 4.4%, in which 78.1% are daily smokers. The mean age of initiation of daily smoking was 20.5±5.9years. There was a significant association between age, gender, education, occupation, religion, region, location and smoking status. (p <0.001). The odds of cigarette smoking was highest within age ranges 25-34(OR 2.68, 95% CI: 1.6-4.3) and 45-54 (2.43, 95%CI: 1.4-4.0) respectively, relative to 15-24 year olds. Gender was found to be an independent predictor of the probability of whether an adult smokes or not as women were about 30 times less likely to smoke than men (OR 0.03; 95% CI: 0.02-0.06).

Conclusion: Public health in Nigeria will benefit from measures that will aim at ensuring that the use of tobacco is kept low. More efforts should be made to prevent tobacco industry’s strategies to expand the market of their products in the country.