Tobacco imagery in music videos can glamorise smoking, influencing youth attitudes and behaviours, yet its prevalence in Nigerian music, a global cultural force driven mainly by the Afrobeats genre, remains underexplored.
This content analysis examined tobacco imagery in 880 Nigerian music videos from 1999 to 2023, sourced from YouTube based on top song charts. Videos were coded for user demographics, tobacco product types and paraphernalia across 15 s episodes. Trends were analysed, and future prevalence was forecasted to 2050 using the Holt-Winters method.
Tobacco imagery was observed in 153 of 880 videos (17.4%), having combined 3.1 billion YouTube views. Cigarettes (51%) and cigars (34%) dominated, followed by shisha (7%), tobacco pipe (5%) and e-cigarettes (3%). Tobacco imagery appeared in the first 15 s of 23% of videos. Five artists accounted for 28% of videos with tobacco imagery and 33% of the tobacco events. The proportion of videos with tobacco imagery increased by 1.58 percentage points annually and is projected to exceed 55% by 2050 without intervention.
Tobacco imagery is prevalent in Nigerian music videos, amplified by Afrobeats’ global reach and youth viewership. The upward trend and shift towards newer products like shisha and e-cigarettes signal evolving public health risks and underscores the need for robust enforcement of existing regulations, alongside artist and corporate engagement to mitigate tobacco normalisation.