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BOLA TINUBU, the President of Nigeria, on assumption of office immediately announced further anti-poor neoliberal policies in order to have the support of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank multilateral institutions. Within a month of the stupendous hike in the price of fuel (misnamed removal of oil subsidy) and devaluation of the local currency, that made nonsense of the latter while the former heightened the cost of living beyond measure.
The most annoying thing is that the history of neoliberalism in Nigeria since 1986 has been one of failure, yet the ruling class in government continue to follow this ruinous path of development. The reason for this path is not unknown as this is because the policy is only a bad omen for the poor and working people, while the rich class (both local and foreign) are benefitting immensely from the system.
The inflation that was earlier put at over 22.4 percent jumped to 31.7 percent. The situation became worse in respect of food inflation that rose to 70 percent. Workers were highly hit by this as the value of their wage dropped stupendously and transportation system thereby collapsed. This wage was expected to have been reviewed long before then as inflation has reduced the purchasing power of the workers far below expectation.
Not less than 100 million out of 211million Nigerians have been captured in the category of people living below poverty line. Also, in 2023, for instance, not less than 25 million Nigerians were estimated to have been affected by hunger while about 133 million (62.9 percent) fall within the multidimensional poor with poverty.
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The working people have been no less mobilised by way of the objective conditions in aid of fighting back the emergent right-wing politicians that have contempt for the people and arrogant with power; but they are sabotaged by the labour bureaucracy and other factions of the ruling class that are still factors in the polity that the working people still have illusion in them and have not been able to separate from them thereby a source of drawing back the tide of the struggle. This is the very reason that not a few actions initiated by the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) but this had to be called off even before the commencement of the action or a day after.
In understanding the true character of the new president, he promised to enforce neoliberal policies in the course of campaign but refused to state how he was going to implement it. According to him, this is in order that other candidates would not steal from him what he had in stock to offer. So, he was only putting in place what he had planned to do.
The most annoying thing is that the history of neoliberalism in Nigeria since 1986 has been one of failure, yet the ruling class in government continue to follow this ruinous path of development. The reason for this path is not unknown as this is because the policy is only a bad omen for the poor and working people, while the rich class (both local and foreign) are benefitting immensely from the system.
The balance sheet of the economy in the circumstances has been the accumulation of debts now put at $91.46 billion and huge resources go for servicing these debts in form of interest annually. Not less than 90 percent of the country’s revenues now go for paying interests on the debts to the creditors. It would be noted that debt is now a business that foreign capitalist made profits resulting in capital outflow from the country.
This manifests by way of social inequality whereby, for instance, in the year 2000 to 2014, there was steady economic growth of 7 percent but this did not impact on the lives of the working people; whose life to them was a burden. Contrarily, life of the rich was an exception as they lived an ostentatious kind of life noted for wastages. The members of the ruling class maintain these ways of life at all times either in the period of economic growth or downturn; only to preach austerity measures to the working people.
So, while the working people are groaning as their wages could hardly take them home, a greater number of them, put at 22 percent, are underemployed. Also, not less than 33 percent of the population out of 211 million of Nigerian population, are unemployed. This is worse in the case of the youths that passed through the universities and polytechnics without job. Youth unemployment now stands at 53.40 percent representing over 13.1 million and 11.3 million underemployed.
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With the way the economy is being run for the benefit of the ruling class, the working people are being suffocated as they are made to suffer the consequences of bad governance. The economic philosophy of the government has been to have nothing to do with business. For this reason, all their interests in the banks, insurance, shipping, hotels, industries (auto), etc. have been privatised while commercialising others like the Nigeria National Petroleum Company Limited that served as the major source of the country’s foreign exchange earnings and highest source of government’s revenue. But the huge revenue generated from sales of public assets ended up in corruption and infrastructures that the successive governments claimed to be their priority, there is nothing to show for this apart from tokenism.
The balance sheet of the economy in the circumstances has been the accumulation of debts now put at $91.46 billion and huge resources go for servicing these debts in form of interest annually. Not less than 90 percent of the country’s revenues now go for paying interests on the debts to the creditors. It would be noted that debt is now a business that foreign capitalist made profits resulting in capital outflow from the country.
In a situation whereby most Nigerians are made poor and hungry only six banks – Wema, Access, UBA, Guarantee Trust, Sterling, and Stanbic banks were able to record N3.11 trillion profits in a year and these banks do not fall amongst the best and first generation of the banks in the country. It would also be recalled recently that out of the total revenue of $700 billion realised by the country, $400 billion of it were consumed under the transaction of corruption.
The last 15 months in the life of this government led by Bola Tinubu, Nigerians have gone through unprecedented pains of hunger and lack, while the government has no answer to change the tide of the situation, it rather embarks on propaganda to assuage the people for better tomorrow and pushing the cause of the problem on the past regimes. It would be fool hardy to be bought over by such not well thought out propaganda that is not good enough to even convince toddlers. There is no way this government and its leaders could be dissociated from the past governments at both the national and sub-national levels as they were part of it and also subscribed to the neoliberal policy being the driving force of the past and present governments.
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Most importantly, in the face of the challenges that the working people are passing through the people in government are wasteful in the way they allocated and spent government resources. A few examples suffice here. While the government resorted to remove oil subsidy, it chose to provide N90billion as subsidy for Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca for Muslims, N15billion provided for renovation of the Vice President residence, N40billion for the renovation of the senate, N6billion for national assembly car park, N5billion for buying yacht for the president, N4billion for the national assembly recreational facilities, N1.5billion for cars for the office of the first lady – wife of the president (an office not recognised by the constitution and therefore illegal).
For whoever has been following events in Nigeria would come to terms that it is only a matter of time to experience upsurge of the rising of the people as the country is at the edge of gun powder. So the event of August 1-10 #BadGovernanceProtest/#HungerProtest whereby Nigerian youths across the country poured on the streets in their millions to express their anger was not a surprise as it was the case with October 2020 #EndSARS and February 2012 protest against hike in the price of fuel in the country.
The protest and the reaction of the government have opened a new chapter in the history of class struggle in Nigeria. The government was able to expose its character in the way of authoritarianism. While denying the protesters the rights to protest, the government at the same time organised its own supporters backed by the security forces to counter the protest by the masses.
When this was not enough to stop the protest, the government went on its way in turning the protest to be violent in order to give the protest a bad name just like giving a dog a bad name in order to hang it. The government gave the impression that it was not bothered by the action of the protesters as it refused to meet any of their demands that included reversal of the hike in the price of fuel, immediate implementation of the minimum wage of N70,000, reversal of the students increase in school fees, adequate funding of education, no to increase in electricity tariff, no to increase in Value Added Tax, instead the rich should be the ones to be taxed.
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But by the panic reaction of the government, it was clear that it was jittery and strongly disturbed. So instead of addressing the issues raised by the protesters it resorted to criminalising the protesters and try to divert the attention of the people that the protesters were being sponsored from outside and for foreign interest.
As it is being said by some Nigerians that blood hardly leave the nails in as much as lice could still be found in the hairs. So, it would be puerile to wish away the continuation of the struggle in the coming period as the cause of what gave rise to it, the government, does not border to address it.
Over 2000 protesters were arrested and put in detention, 23 of the protesters were killed by the police and not a few of the detained protesters are still in detention and some of them include Eleojo Opaluwa, Michael Lenin, Angel Innocent, Mosiu Sodiq, Adeyemi Abayomi, Daniel Akande. In particular the detained protesters charged to court in Abuja are being accused of terrorism (financing), treason, cybercrime.
One wonders how protest against bad governance or hunger could be translated to mean terrorism or treason, charges that carry death by hanging if found guilty. Whereas in the status book that deals with the issue of terrorism, such activities as strike, protest, etc. are expressly excluded from constituting terrorism.
It is surprising that the President of the NLC, Joe Ajaero, who was not part of the protest was being roped into it as he was being invited and arrested for questioning by the police and the state security service respectively over a foreigner selling books in the Labour House complex, who is perceived as a security risk to the country. This activity of the foreigner could be compared to past government perception of radical university lecturers in the past that were relieved of their jobs for teaching “Marxism” described as “what they were not paid to teach.”
The police in being the prosecutor and at the same time the judge in the case against the foreign bookseller, they carted away all the books in the bookshop into their office. One of the books in the custody of the police entitled: Revolution Is The Choice Of The People, is now being used as an exhibit in court to prosecute some of the protesters to show that they were out to carry out a revolution in Nigeria.
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It is believed that the attack on the NLC leadership was not fortuitous as it was meant to intimidate the apex labour centre in the country in order not to be involved in the protest and the one to come later as the government is not yet done with its anti-poor policy despite the protest of the people. So, the action was meant to pre-empt the NLC not to participate in the ongoing struggle as foremost trade union centre having the history of fighting past governments on their anti-labour and neoliberal policies as in the cases of demanding for increase in minimum wage and stopping hike in the price of petrol.
As it is being said by some Nigerians that blood hardly leave the nails in as much as lice could still be found in the hairs. So, it would be puerile to wish away the continuation of the struggle in the coming period as the cause of what gave rise to it, the government, does not border to address it.
It is also significant to state that the struggle in the coming period on the part of the protesters would be better organised than the previous ones as the organisers would have learnt bountiful lessons from that of the past that will be of help in moving forward.
Comrade Olamosu is National Secretary, Socialist Labour
