Read Part Three here
TO PUT our situation in context, we need to ask a few questions about the political events and key public policy, especially economic, issues as they affect the welfare of the generality of the people of Nigeria whom the 1999 Constitution characterised as “sovereign”.
First, what role did individuals and groups who now run Nigeria in the various ruling-class political parties at various tiers of decision-making play in the struggle for democracy and for people-oriented public policies since January 1, 1984? Where were they and on which side of the class divide were they?
Oshiomhole, Lakemfa noted, did not argue for an apolitical trade union movement; Ejiofor advocated direct class politics by saying: “Labour should, as a corporate body, as a solid corporate organisation, be in politics to influence certain actions and policies to make them pro-worker in concept.”
The second key question is; what is the position of the dominant political parties, groups and coalitions today on the important public welfare and policy issues such as deregulation, funding of public education, public sector employment minimum wage, pensions, the 2004 Pension Act, the Trade Union (2005) Amendment Act, privatisation. In which documents have they articulated their positions?
We may also raise a myriad of supplementary questions – who are those who presided over the collapse of public institutions, utilities, etc? Who are those buying the same privatised public assets? Who are the fuel marketers and importers? Who are their friends and political allies? Who own the private schools and universities? Who own the oil blocks? Who are the major contractors and consultants? Who are the prospective buyers of the Unity Schools? Who is buying government buildings on Osborne Road (Lagos), and privatised government houses at Abuja, Ibadan, Enugu, Kaduna Lagos, etc? Why have public bureaucracies become the major protagonists of the liquidation of public business and hand-over of public properties to the so-called private sector?
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If we are able to address these questions clearly, we shall see why this thing they call democracy in Nigeria today is no more than some means of periodic call on the masses to legitimise how the ruling-class negotiate power among its various factions. This is why prominent members of PDP have no fundamental qualms about joining AC and vice-versa and governors elected on the platform of one party decamp into another party, or a failed gubernatorial candidate joining the winning party.
Answering the foregoing questions also enables working people and their allies to see how, as a class, they are marginalised by the politics of democracy that is dominated by the ruling class.
The Nigerian Trade Union Movement and the Question of Political Engagement
The history of the Nigerian trade union movement’s involvement in politics and political power is a long one (Ananaba, 1969; Adewumi, 1997; Lakemfa, 1997). The debate within the labour movement and the trade union movement on the matter has also not abated. Lakemfa (1997) referred to the position of two prominent contemporary professional trade unionists, Adams Oshiomhole and Sylvester Ejiofor, on this question.
Oshiomhole was quoted as saying: “Nothing has ever eroded organisational capability, discipline and unity of purpose of trade unions more than partisan affiliation of labour… Labour participation in the democratic process should rather involve greater supra-partisan responsibility to strive for a humane, just, patriotic and democratic society free from all forms of exploitation and human rights abuse.”
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Oshiomhole, Lakemfa noted, did not argue for an apolitical trade union movement; Ejiofor advocated direct class politics by saying: “Labour should, as a corporate body, as a solid corporate organisation, be in politics to influence certain actions and policies to make them pro-worker in concept.”
Our Comrades (old and young) who have passed on (Michael Imoudu, Dapo Fatogun, Wahab Goodluck, Mokwugo Okoye, Ola Oni, Bala Usman, Lasisi Osunde, Chris Abashi, Chima Ubani, Abdulrahman Black, to mention a few) remained committed to this vision until the very end! Our living and older comrades (Eskor Toyo, Festus Iyayi, Balarabe Musa, Segun Osoba, etc) remain committed to this vision. Eskor Toyo, who was there at the proclamation of the Benin Declaration, like Comrade Imoudu, dreams of Power-to-Nigerian-Workers every day!
At the historic gathering of workers, trade unions and the labour movement of Nigeria on September 22, 2002 to mark the 100th Birthday of Nigeria’s Number One Labour Leader, (now late) Comrade Michael A. O. Imoudu, the historic Benin Declaration was proclaimed under the chairmanship of the then President of the Nigeria Labour Congress, Adams Oshiomhole.
Among other things, the historic Benin Declaration asserted categorically: “In realisation of these two necessities that Nigeria be owned by Nigerians and that Nigeria be governed totally for the common people, we are resolved that the working people of Nigeria should launch immediately a liberation struggle, a struggle for the liberation of Nigeria from imperialist exploitation and domination and for the liberation of the working people from exploitation and domination of all manners of parasites… our struggle has to be political. We further realise that this struggle can certainly not be waged without a political party of the working people sponsored by the Nigerian working class. We, therefore, resolve that there must be a political party of the working people.”
The conditions of the working people in Nigeria and the general economic, social, cultural and political situation of our country has deteriorated almost hopelessly since the Benin Declaration more than ten years ago. The contention of the declaration remains as valid today as it was in 1959, at Calabar in 1989 and at Iganmu (Lagos) in 1989 when the Labour Party was launched under the auspices of the Nigeria Labour Congress.
Our Comrades (old and young) who have passed on (Michael Imoudu, Dapo Fatogun, Wahab Goodluck, Mokwugo Okoye, Ola Oni, Bala Usman, Lasisi Osunde, Chris Abashi, Chima Ubani, Abdulrahman Black, to mention a few) remained committed to this vision until the very end! Our living and older comrades (Eskor Toyo, Festus Iyayi, Balarabe Musa, Segun Osoba, etc) remain committed to this vision. Eskor Toyo, who was there at the proclamation of the Benin Declaration, like Comrade Imoudu, dreams of Power-to-Nigerian-Workers every day!
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More importantly, nobody who was present at that proclamation has disowned the Benin Declaration or the urgency of its proposal! But what do we have now?
I have already made an allusion to how the Labour Party which many of us worked to try to establish in 1988/89 appeared and disappeared because some of our “comrades” in the Labour Party took it over and squandered it in a ruling class party. Some of us have been working towards that party since the late 1970s; we were at Calabar in April 1989 and at the National Theatre where our “comrades” launched Nigeria Labour Party. Some of these “comrades” are now in ruling-class parties (PDP, AC, etc)!
But because we in the Nigerian labour movement have not carried out our historical mission seriously, working people are being actively recruited into confessional and ethno-nationalist fundamentalist ideologies behind their class enemies!
In relation to fundamentalist ideologies (religious, ethno-geographical ethnic/tribalist, north-south in the case of Nigeria) Samir Amin (2004) had the following to say about religious fundamentalism in the United States of America: “The combination of a dominant religiousness exploited by a fundamentalist discourse and the absence of political consciousness among the dominant classes has given to the system of power in the United States an unparalleled margin of manoeuvre. Hence the political significance of democratic practices is eliminated and they are reduced to the status of harmless rituals (political spectacle, the inauguration of electoral campaign by marching majorities, etc).
“But let there be no mistake here. It is not the supposedly religious fundamentalist ideology that is in command and imposes its logic on the true holders of power – capital and its servants in the State. It is capital alone that makes all the appropriate decisions and then afterwards mobilises the American ideology in question to serve it. The means utilized – unparalleled systematic disinformation – are thus effective, isolating critical thinkers, subjecting them to constant, hateful blackmail. Power then succeeds, with no difficulty, in manipulating an “opinion” held together by its foolishness.”
Building a party of working people is a painstaking task. The task has no short-cuts. Building the party is a teaching-and-learning process – a process in which the struggle for economic and political liberation daily clarifies for working people and all their allies, their role and power in the transformation of their society and in the process of which they assume the definition and the leadership of the transformation.
I have already made an allusion to how the Labour Party which many of us worked to try to establish in 1988/89 appeared and disappeared because some of our “comrades” in the Labour Party took it over and squandered it in a ruling class party. Some of us have been working towards that party since the late 1970s; we were at Calabar in April 1989 and at the National Theatre where our “comrades” launched Nigeria Labour Party. Some of these “comrades” are now in ruling-class parties (PDP, AC, etc)!
The foregoing sad history started to repeat itself since about 2001! For, in 2001 or so, many organisations and the affiliates of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), led by the NLC, at Ibadan, formed a political party platform called Working Peoples’ Party (WPP); a Steering Committee of the party was also approved. Claiming that they were carrying out the directive of the Central Working Committee (CWC) of the NLC, some of these same comrades who killed the Nigerian Labour Party in 1989, went to register the Working Peoples’ Party under the name of Party for Social Democracy (PSD)!
The Party for Social Democracy had since been re-christened as Labour Party. Again, the attempt to build a political platform for our movement had become stifled. Many people, young and old, who have spent their entire lives working, and carrying out “labour of love”, for the labour movement are completely excluded from what became the Labour Party from the start. This again, as in 1989, had made it possible for those who control the party to use the platform to negotiate relationships with ruling-class politicians who are defeated in the horse-trading in the ruling-class trading organisations they call parties!
Building a party of working people is a painstaking task. The task has no short-cuts. Building the party is a teaching-and-learning process – a process in which the struggle for economic and political liberation daily clarifies for working people and all their allies, their role and power in the transformation of their society and in the process of which they assume the definition and the leadership of the transformation.
Clearly, electoral politics, even if its potentials have not been so deeply subverted by the hegemony of neo-liberalism, is not necessarily an immediate and overriding purpose of building that party. Building that party therefore needs to be disaggregated from the ruling class election conmanship.
To be concluded…
Comrade Prof. Olorode first presented this paper at the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) Rain School held at the Workers’ Solidarity Centre, Atan Ofot, Uyo, Akwa Ibom State on 19th July, 2010. He later updated and presented it at the Conference in honour of Dr Dipo Fashina at Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife on May 7, 2013.
