Stomach Vs Climatè Justice

 

I was thinking this morning..... Recently, I was in Stockholm, Sweden, just a few days to their Parliamentary elections to fill the 349 seats in the Riksdag, Sweden's highest decision-making assembly. As I looked around the city, I ran into a massive protest by students and civil society groups at the City centre. 'What could they be protesting for or against?' I wondered. As I got closer, I struggled initially because most of the placards were written in Swedish, but then I saw one in English, looked again and was stunned. They were protesting for Climate Justice. Like seriously? Of all things to hold the government accountable for, Climate Justice? Na wa o!

I was still pondering on this days later when I saw the headline 'US Plans $12bn for Climate Action in Nigeria.' The US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, John Kerry, had led a delegation from his country to different ministries in Abuja and stated that Nigeria was one of the nations in Africa that would suffer the most by climate crisis if nothing serious was done to avert the consequences of climate change.

If what Kerry said is correct, why is Climate Justice not top of the agenda as we inch towards 2023? I interrogated the major highlights in our political space and it was obvious that the main issue for us is econonic. Na person wey im belle full go talk about climate justice. With Nigeria being the poverty capital of the world at some point, you cannot blame the people when they fight for Stomach Justice rather than Climate Justice.

With the death of Mama Charlie (Queen Elizabeth), the evil and injustice of colonialism reared its head again. While many complained, I thought about the many layers of ethnic, religious and political injustices in Nigeria and concluded that we have to settle our local injustices before we can fight for Climate Justice.

The sad thing is that while the rest of the world moves on dealing with issues of global impact (strong meat), Nigeria and Africa are looking for who to blame. Hebrews 5:12 says 'For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat.' I hope that post 2023, we will no longer be fighting for Stomach Justice but for Climate Justice.

Stay hopeful. God's got our back.

Happy Sunday.

......Just the thoughts of a certain Wey Mey