By Adeolu Oyekan
The point Tinubu was trying to make is valid to an extent, not wholly. However, his analogy is wrong for many reasons. In environmental philosophy, some of us believe in the existence of environmental racism.
It is not an esoteric idea. It is simply a situation in which wealthy white nations or neighborhoods pursue their capitalist interests in ways that affect peoples of colour, whether within a multicultural state, or outside it. In the US, you see it in black neighborhoods. In Africa, you see it in the Niger-Delta, and DR Congo. The devastation of the environment is proportional to the expropriation of resources by multinational corporations that deepen the widening inequalities between the global South and the North. Any climate change initiative that ignores this is hypocritical. This is even more so when you add the fact that countries like China and the US are the biggest polluters.
But that analogy of the church rat being prevented from eating poisoned holy communion is wrong. Someone said Tinubu could have used sallah meat instead, but was conscious of his audience. That could have set things on fire in a region where irreverent references to religious symbols, human and nonhuman, is highly frowned upon. In an environment like ours, metaphors that could be misunderstood or deliberately misinterpreted, with dangerous consequences, ought to be avoided.
Second, I would have understood better if Tinubu had said the poor church rat was refusing to eat the poisoned communion, instead of saying it’s a case of the rat being prevented from doing so. Who does the prevention here? The same people who poisoned the communion to kill the rat?
Again, African nations may fit the description of the poor church rat as argued by Professor Farooq Kperogi, but they’re not comparable to a rat trying hard to eat a communion it doesn’t know has been poisoned. Whereas the rat is struggling desperately to eat the communion bread, unaware it has been poisoned, African nations have actually been arguing that they are not materially equipped and resourced enough to swallow climate change interventions designed in western capitals. That’s one of the issues at the centre of Biden’s climate change envoy, John Kerry’s shuttle between Washington and DR Congo recently. The country wants to mine resources in its forests to finance the economy, but destroying that forest for commercial gains will endanger us all by hastening global warming. It’s a vast place that helps us mitigate the impact of harmful carbons.
This takes me to the point about us asking to get paid, or we’ll refuse to to key into climate change initiatives, as suggested by Tinubu. It is not a well considered option. Anybody who disputes my position can simply play videos of how the US government responded to the recent hurricane in Florida,, alongside those we’re seeing from Bayelsa, Anambra and Kogi. While we are all going to suffer inevitably, from the irresponsible way we’ve treated nature, and continue to, the West has enough institutional and material resources to cope and outlast us. African compliance alone with climate change measures will not save our planet, but we’re not doing others any special favours by playing our part. The consequences are more dire for us, precisely because we don’t have structures and mechanisms for coping with nature’s vengeful assault. That’s why I’ve argued at some fora that the argument about saving the planet for future generations is a luxurious one for Africa. The present is gravely endangered already.
As a frontrunner in the presidential race, what Tinubu thinks about climate change responses in the world’s most populous black nation matters. Those who have his ears should tell him he needs a more robust policy that balances issues of environmental inequalities with the existential threats we are faced with. This applies to Atiku, Peter Obi and Kwakwanso as well. Africa needs to be at the forefront of an aggressive global climate change initiative that addresses issues of environmental racism as part of a broader objective of saving our planet for the benefit of all. An agbero mindset of extorting the West for money before compliance, which is a correct interpretation of Tinubu’s solution, isn’t a responsible, lifesaving approach. It is a betrayal of our penchant for irrationally throwing money at problems in the hope they will disappear. If we must survive, then we must do better.
Post a Comment