Nigeria has elected Bola Tinubu as its new president following an election during which local weather change performed solely a minor function.
Chopping emissions and the affect of rising world temperatures didn’t appear to be a precedence for Nigerian voters in February, regardless of final yr’s killer floods.
However the difficulty was not wholly absent. On the marketing campaign path, Tinubu took a troublesome line on rich nations’ accountability for the local weather disaster and the necessity for them to finance emissions reductions in creating international locations.
Assembly with voters in northern Nigeria in October, Tinubu stated that, until developed international locations ship local weather finance to Nigeria, “we are not going to comply with your climate change”.
He described local weather change as “a question of how do you prevent a church rat from eating a poisoned holy communion”.
On this metaphor, Nigeria is the rat and the developed international locations are these which can be poisoning it.
Developed international locations, that are disproportionately answerable for local weather change, have failed to ship the extent of local weather finance they promised. However creating international locations like Nigeria face the worst of its impacts.
Nigerian local weather skilled professor Chukwumerije Okereke advised Local weather Dwelling that Tinubu failed to know that “if the West fails to pay up, Nigeria and other African countries will still be the ones that suffer the worst impacts of climate change”.
Manifesto pledges
In widespread with different presidential candidates, Tinubu gave out blended messages about his strategy to the power transition.
He has promised to revive an deserted coal mining challenge in Enugu state, enhance oil manufacturing by tackling vandalism and theft of oil infrastructure, and enhance fuel manufacturing by ending fuel pipelines.
However, he stated Nigeria ought to “diversify [its] economy away from oil and gas dependence” for financial causes, notably as “Western nations are gradually turning away from fossil fuel use”.
“Our history shows that the oil and gas sector is not the answer to our nation’s economic problems,” he wrote in his election manifesto. “However, it remains an important industry, vital to both our short-term economic survival and longer-term prosperity and buoyancy”.
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He pledged to crack down on the observe of buring fuel as a by-product of oil manufacturing, which is often known as flaring.
“Nigeria still flares too much gas causing continued environmental and public health harm,” he wrote.
Tinubu stated Nigeria ought to prioritise utilizing its fuel for electrical energy manufacturing domestically whereas, on the similar time, export extra fuel to the European Union because it seeks various patrons to Russia as a result of conflict in Ukraine.
Nigeria’s solar energy also needs to be developed, he stated, and electrical energy ought to be rolled out to rural areas. Almost half of Nigerians don’t at present have electrical energy.
Tinubu’s manifesto emphasises the significance of adapting to the “key challenge” of local weather change, promising to develop irrigation to deal with the consequences of drought.
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