Tinubu’s ‘church rat’ metaphor on climate change offensive, says Bwala

Daniel Bwala, a spokesperson for the Atiku Abubakar presidential campaign, has described a metaphor used by Bola Tinubu to illustrate climate change as “offensive to a demographic”.

While addressing the Arewa interactive committee on Monday in Kaduna, Tinubu said developed countries must be ready to provide financial support if Nigeria is to comply with climate change guidelines.

Tinubu had compared Nigeria’s compliance with global climate change directives to preventing “a church rat from eating poisoned holy communion”.

“It’s a question of how do you prevent a church rat from eating poisoned holy communion. That’s the way,” the APC presidential candidate had said.

“We are a poor nation. They ban coal, and we follow. They say firewood is not for fetching. They say we need to plant more trees and they are not giving us money.

“We need to tell the West; if you don’t guarantee our finances and work with us to stop this, we are not going to comply with your climate change.”

Reacting to the comment in a chat with Arise News TV on Tuesday, Bwala said the utterance is “misplaced and out of order”.

He added that since Tinubu was speaking at the Arewa interactive committee, a predominantly Muslim audience, he should have used “a metaphor that resonates with the people”.

“The comment of Tinubu is misplaced and out of order. First, the metaphor of the ‘church rat’ is about who comes to church and pretends to be holier and thou,” Bwala said.

“That has no correlation with Africa. The continent is not acting like it knows more about climate change than the rest of the world. So it’s completely out of order.

“Secondly, the church rat eating a holy communion has been held to be offensive to a demographic because the place where he made the comment was not a church community but an Arewa event. It would have been better for him to use a metaphor that resonates with the people. What he was was completely out of order.”