Luka’s shop, close to Sheraton Hotels Abuja.
Officials say fake cigarettes are huge public problems to Nigeria, heightening the existing public health concern posed by growing but uncontrolled tobacco market in Nigeria.
Since 2008, Luka (he declined to provide his surname) has run a lucrative business a few hundred meters from Sheraton Hotel, one of Abuja’s most prominent hotels. At the moment, he is operating from a jalopy white Toyota Corolla Wagon – the car’s back seat is the store, while the trunk serves as the shop. Before that, until he was dislodged by officials of the Abuja Environmental Protection Board, AEPB, he operated from a small yellow metal kiosk where he retailed a variety of items, making thousands of naira in profit daily.
Luka looks as if he in his early 40s, and declines to fully identify himself. But for the five years he has been on the business, Luka’s most priced merchandise are not the simple consumer goods he sells to Abuja’s low and mighty. They are smuggled cigarettes he tucks alongside other goods in a small blue plastic bucket.
Not only are the cigarettes illegal, but many are fake, he admitted recently.
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