Could this gain traction? Does Pfizer want to find out? At a demonstration yesterday outside Pfizer offices in the northern state of Kano, human rights protesters vowed to stage a massive national and international campaign to boycott Pfizer products and services worldwide. They want the drugmakerr to compensate families of victims who were allegedly harmed or killed by Trovan, an antibiotic used during a notorious epidemic in 1996.

Pfizer faces two government lawsuits totaling $9 billion over charges of illegally conducting an unauthorized trial on about 200 children at a government hospital during a triple epidemic of measles, cholera and meningitis in which 12,000 people died. The episode led to the death of 11 children and various deformities - including deafness, blindness, paralysis and brain damage - in 189 others.

Meanwhile, Kano’s justice commissioner threatened to have Pfizer director and former ceo Bill Steere and nine other Pfizer employees arrested if they don’t appear in court next month to face criminal charges. Settlement talks are under way, although Pfizer denies doing anything illegal and insists government permission to administer Trovan was granted.

“It is our belief that it is on the basis of compensation to the victims that there will ever be peace and justice….We are giving Pfizer an ultimatum of Feb. 1, 2008; that on the account of Pfizer refusing to pay compensation to the victims of the Trovan clinical test we will embark on a massive national and international campaign call for the boycott of Pfizer products and services,” according to AllAfrica.com.

“We will move from house to house, shop to shop, and market to market. We will insist and appeal to our people that Pfizer products should be done away with. Pfizer is an evil and it is a company that perpetrated evil in Nigeria, and we do not believe that our people in the North, Nigeria and even other parts of Africa should be used as guinea-apigs for clinical test of harmful drugs that have not been used in any part of the world.”