Africa at the climate summit

It gladdens the heart to note that African rulers are taking part in the Global Climate Summit, COP26 currently holden in Glasgow, Scotland. Our own president, Muhammadu Buhari has landed in Glasgow ahead of the global hosts. Buhari is not taking chances. The reason is obvious. It is inferiority an complex mixed with a desire to be seen to belong. There is also an element of survival instinct there too as Buhari always seizes every opportunity of a global junket to see his doctors – in London.

Filled with a complex, Buhari is bound to note that in Nigeria at least, top officials do not arrive early at events. They send their protocol officers to recce the arena. Sometimes, they close entire and sometimes the only motorable roads hours before they are billed to leave their palatial mansions. Protocol officers’ radio back to the base station to hold the chief executive until the venue is full. The executive saunters into a full arena, siren blaring as overzealous security agents beat their way into the venue.

The people are made to stand until the big gun is seated, then all entrances to the venue are sealed until they leave. In the global scheme of things African leaders, as spectators, know their place. They make sure that they are seated before the leaders that matter take the podium.

Western leaders have all the microphones trained on them because they have been coached to make the attention-grabbing sound bites. On this one, Britain’s Boris Johnson has already given the world something to chew on – if Glasgow fails, the whole thing fails!

COP26’s official website features a dash of colour on a white dashboard. In real terms, COP 26 ought to be an African and third world betterment summit. The so-called industrialised world makes the most significant damage to the global climate –  from the causes of the depletion of the ozone layer through El Nino/El Nina to where we are with global warming. Their rat race to outshine each other technologically and to sustain the octopus hold on global resources of the developing world has turned the taciturn African nations into dumping grounds of the effluents of development. Africa has nothing to show for the repercussion of global greed on the environment. Africa has nothing to show for all the extractive resources taken from its shores. It has only desertification, famine and flash floods to show for the abundance of its resources and brain drain for its best expertise.

Africans are at the losing end of the global greed of developed nations. The global West could bemoan forest fires decimating its pristine reserves, Africans are dying in droves and species exclusive to the continent are now only found in captive environments in the global West. Yet, experts attribute the prevailing droughts and other environmental disasters to the activities of western corporations.

Indiscriminate tree felling and annihilative hunting practices have totally obliterated the continent’s flora and fauna. If this phenomenon continues, the future of our continent is doomed. Younger Africans have to go to Europe or elsewhere to watch animals that once roamed the forests of Africa. Entire species have been wiped out as people chased from their lands are forced to resort to extreme and sometimes primitive survival instincts. Our continent is losing its intelligentsia to brain drain. Those who have left have no hope of ever returning as the menace they ran away from has turned into full-fledged opposition- eating monsters.

Beyond these, one wonders what the leaders of the developing or stagnated economies expect from COP26. Using Nigeria as an example, what does the leader of Africa’s most populous nation have to share with the world on how to halt climate change?

Six years ago, Muhammadu Buhari inherited a degraded and incredibly polluted Niger Delta with a promise to clean it up. Millions of dollars were envisaged to be spent on the project except that nothing significant has been achieved so far. The pollution of the oil-producing Niger Delta, the area that gives Nigeria its global ranking among oil-producing nations is a crying shame for any conscientious leader.

For an oil-producing nation, Nigeria is an energy-starved nation where an estimated 90 million citizens have no access to electricity. This has led to a burgeoning business of highly polluting generating sets blasting noxious fumes 24/7. We are still a dumping ground for highly polluting vehicles, rejects of Europe and the developed world.

Global leaders won’t be shocked to learn that rural dwellers have no access to energy-saving materials for cooking or heating. The pump prices of petroleum products have alienated the average Nigerian from energy efficiency options.

Kerosene, a by-product of petrol that ought to propel Nigeria from the coal and charcoal age into pre-modernity is beyond the reach of 70 per cent of those that need it. No Nigerian earning the minimum wage can afford to cook with a gas burner. Without electricity, access to kerosene or gas, one of the most lucrative energy businesses is trade in charcoal.

You cannot pretend to care about global warming if the majority of your citizens are burning down forests to cook. Nigeria’s hospitals that trained those sustaining and maintaining global health services in Britain and America is a caricature of what it used to be even before Buhari became president. Nothing illustrates this better than Buhari who goes to London to treat his headaches. Nigeria’s hospitals are in shambles and its doctors are constantly on strike. They are moving out in droves in search of greener pastures along with some of our best trained health care delivery personnel.

Sadly, this is hardly peculiar to Nigeria as the resurgence of coups would attest. Africans have their own problems but a chunk of the crises bedevelling the continent were instituted and sustained by the global West.

What value would African leaders add to a global summit on climate change except wait for the crumbs to fall from the table of their oppressors? If they get any grants, a chunk will go to western-appointed consultants and a substantial chunk of what remains would be squandered and laundered into the expensive lifestyles of its greedy leaders and their clapping lackeys.

These summits are interesting in many ways. The Glasgow landscape would be polluted by the emissions of planes taking off and landing.

This could have been avoided if this was made a summit leveraged on technology. Fortunately for many African leaders locked in by COVID-19 for the past two years, here is an opportunity to snooze while serious decisions are made and to upgrade their wardrobes.

This summit would not impact Africa and the rest of the developing world any better than Paris or Rio. It would be nothing but a mere talking shop.

If the world intends to help Africa preserve, it must ensure that African leaders treat their citizens better than Europeans and Americans treat their pets – with respect for basic human rights and governmental responsibility. The West must insist that its companies and citizens doing business in Africa follow the same environmental and other standards as they do at home. Where these protocols are not in place, it owes it to its conscience to make sure they are institutionalised.

Nothing meaningful would be achieved until the colonial encumbrances placed on Africans are removed. If Africa achieves its goals as a stable continent, the rest of the world would bask in its impact. If it fails as it has, the instability would keep leading to useless talkshops.