Former Senator representing Kogi West Senatorial district, Dino Melaye have tackled the Presidential candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Tinubu over ‘the church rat and poisoned holy communion’ comment.
Melaye, the spokesperson of the People’s Democratic Party Presidential Campaign Management Committee, said Tinubu, is neither fit nor prepared for the Nigerian presidency.
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It was earlier reported that Tinubu while fielding questions about climate change at the Arewa Interactive Committee on Monday in Kaduna, described climate change as “a question of how do you prevent a church rat from eating poisoned Holy Communion.”
Tinubu noted;
We are a poor nation. 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 development, Melaye, in a statement made available to newsmen, described the Tinubu’s comments as “unguarded” and accused him of insulting Christians.
Read the statement in part;
The APC presidential candidate, Ahmed Bola Tinubu, plunged into new depths of desecration when, by an unguarded and unrelated flow of thought, he despised the body of Christ by profaning the sacrament of communion and besmirching the church.
In the same breath, he trivialised the existential threat that climate change poses to humanity. Furthermore, he fell out of tune with world leaders in ways that betrayed a lack of understanding of what the Reverend Dr Martin Luther King Jr called the ‘Fierce Urgency of Now, referring to the famous speech the late American civil rights leader delivered at a March in Washington in the late 1960s where he reminded a divided United States that we need one another, and that we are stronger when we march forward, together.
Having overlooked Christians in his choice of a running mate, he further rubbed insult on injury by calling in the Holy Communion into an unrelated conversation.
It would have been honourable for Tinubu to simply admit that he didn’t know what climate change is.
Again, that exposed his limited understanding and poor preparation for governance. Any leader of any great nation who does not understand the basics of climate change, especially with the ongoing flooding in Nigeria and the economic conflict arising from farmers and herders, has no business aspiring to lead our dear country at this moment.
Besides, Nigerians who have been in doubt about the presence of mind and the physiological capacity of Tinubu to preside over the affairs of Nigeria should now be convinced that he is not fit. For a moment, his thought processes tripped and he launched into another issue entirely.
Nigerians could imagine if what happened in Kaduna had happened on the world stage. As I said earlier, Nigerians cannot afford to gamble with the next election.
Melaye then went ahead to explain why his principal, Atiku Abubakar, would be a better choice for president than Tinubu or any other candidate in the race to take over from President Muhammadu Buhari.
He said;
An Atiku presidency will not only be at home with global issues anywhere and anytime, but he would also build bridges and partnerships to address contemporary and emerging issues with pace, purpose and patience.
He added that Atiku:
Will collaborate with others to contain the causes and effects of climate change and, more importantly, he will work for structures that will help Nigeria to build the resilience and adaptation to climate change, particularly in climate-smart agriculture and other strategic initiatives.
