Read part 1 here
THE AMBIVALENCE and lack of commitment we referred to get especially palpable when the NLC Headquarters decides on mass action such as national protests or strikes. Almost invariably, organised labour (NLC and TUC) manage to recruit the so-called Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), Socialist and pro-labour organisations. Also, almost invariably organised labour usually takes unilateral decisions as to what to demand, when to commence and when to terminate mass actions.
As we pay fulsome tribute to Nigeria’s working class people and the glorious Ali Chiroma/Joe Ihonde generation and its younger generation of organised labour at the 45th May Day Celebration, 2024, we call on leaders of organised labour to return to the definitive working class ideology — unity of working people, socialism, and anti-imperialism. That ideology, endorsed by Nigeria’s working people almost forty years ago, underpins what our late Comrade Mokwugo Okoye called The Politics of Liberation at the May 1986 ASUU National Delegates Conference, University of Ife, Ile-Ife.
When collaborating organisations and individuals raise objections to such unilateralism, some leaders and bureaucrats begin to call them names using the very same criminalising imagery and language that government spokespersons had been using since the days of military dictatorship to blackmail labour activists! Records that we have kept meticulously since the 1980s and especially since 2012 attest to this tendency for both NLC and TUC bureaucrats; including factions within the NLC in the last six years or so!
Another general character of trade union movement, isolationism, that had weakened the labour movement, is general absence of solidarity among industrial unions beyond the formal structures at the NLC headquarters. Trade unions work in virtual isolation at state council and local government levels depriving the working class the synergy and support in action at those levels. Although these are built-in disabilities rigged into labour laws since 1978, history of the labour movement in the early 1980s demonstrates that a more committed leadership can overcome, and actually overcame, the disabilities.
What cannot be denied seriously is that a debilitating aristocracy had developed in the Nigerian trade union movement; one that ignores transformative trade union education and independent working class consciousness amongst rank-and-file and at all levels.
Who owns organised labour?
A formal answer to this question is that the rank-and-file members of the industrial unions own the unions; and that the ownership is exercised through representatives of the rank-and-file as stipulated by the constitution of the union. Of course, the extent to which this answer is true depends on the actual ways in which the representatives actually defend the interests of the rank-and-file. We can also reach this general conclusion in relation to the organisation, operations and activities of the NLC and the TUC.
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With regard to the federating industrial unions. The answer above breaks down when the leadership, its bureaucracy, or both, develop interests and visions that are at variance with those of the constituents. The debate as to whether the proffered answer to the question had broken down, or is breaking down, needs not delay us here. What cannot be denied seriously is that a debilitating aristocracy had developed in the Nigerian trade union movement; one that ignores transformative trade union education and independent working class consciousness amongst rank-and-file and at all levels.
In spite of active work by some of us in the said segment of the socialist movement including active conferencing around March 2, 2022 (at NLC) and March 9, 2022 (at TUC), ‘organised labour’ kept insisting it owns LP while the LP bureaucracy kept its own card close to its chest, and, finally ended up recruiting a PDP aspirant Presidential candidate as LP Presidential flagbearer.
The general lack of political education and mobilisation at various levels have disabled the movement in regard to appropriate class responses to policies such as political rights of trade unions, privatisation and deregulation, the rights of workers at all levels to unionise, sympathy strikes, the right to go on strike without disabling reprisals from employers.
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The Nigerian Labour movement and the leadership of organised labour, especially, must organise to use all means necessary to stop the ruling class and their international conspirators from systematically robbing Nigeria through foreign debts, currency devaluation and other means of unequal exchange, the so-called trade liberalisation, wage freezes, removal of the so-called subsidies, higher taxes (VAT, electricity tariffs) higher school fees and general privatisation of social services (education, healthcare delivery, etc.)
Organised labour and the political disaster of 2023
As Buhari’s regime, as (APC) President of Federal Republic of Nigeria, drew to a completely chaotic end, all the factions (PDP, APC) of the political establishment became completely discredited. Internal leadership wars also developed in all the factions.
The unending confusion currently snowballing in the LP is not only predictable, it dated as far back as 1988 when military dictatorship delivered organised labour to the labour aristocrats which then took workers hostage. The aristocrats were the ones that re-christened Labour Party ‘Party for Social Democracy‘ and then ‘Labour Party’! They are the ones that turned organised labour and Labour Party into transactional object, and the labour movement into a trader’s outfit with all sorts of neoliberal forces promising to reconcile Atiku, Kwankwaso and Obi!
Notwithstanding the underdevelopment of the leadership in the organised labour and the benefit of historical introspection, not to mention the intrusion of the ubiquitous ‘Mega Party’ people, a significant segment of the socialist tendency contemplated taking a shot at rebuilding a ‘Party of Labour’ — the Labour Party.
In spite of active work by some of us in the said segment of the socialist movement including active conferencing around March 2, 2022 (at NLC) and March 9, 2022 (at TUC), ‘organised labour’ kept insisting it owns LP while the LP bureaucracy kept its own card close to its chest, and, finally ended up recruiting a PDP aspirant Presidential candidate as LP Presidential flagbearer.
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Ahead of this incredible irony, some of us in the People’s Alternative Political Movement (TPAP-M) were very clear that the entire organised labour-Labour Party affair was a stupendous charade — a grand diversion from the critical mass mobilising and organising on the side of Nigeria’s labouring masses.
All these are just for the records. We are not asking for acknowledgement. We were told by our comrades who passed on — old and young (Imoudu, Okoye, Onoge, Toyo, Goodluck, Chiroma, Iyayi, Aturu, Ubani, Ihonde, etc.) that what we are confronted with is a ‘duty’; and that carrying out a [the] duty is not necessarily about winning — certainly not necessarily winning immediately.
In spite of the grand standing of the bureaucracy of LP concerning its ‘socialist’ or ‘social democracy’ ‘ideology’, Peter Obi and others who seized LP, left no one in any doubt about their neoliberal capitalist credentials on privatisation, removal of ‘subsidies’, etc. Candidate Peter Obi, also, actually canvassed a ‘manifesto’ that is totally different from the official LP manifesto while his running mate (Datti) dismissed socialism, publicly, as an anachronistic idea!
All these underscore the ideological identity of all the presidential aspirants of all the leading political parties (APC, PDP and LP) in the 2023 elections. No working people’s alternative Socialist Transformation of Nigeria, as Nigerians decided in the NLC-led decision of the 1986 Political Debate, was effectively on the ballot in the 2023 Elections.
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The unending confusion currently snowballing in the LP is not only predictable, it dated as far back as 1988 when military dictatorship delivered organised labour to the labour aristocrats which then took workers hostage. The aristocrats were the ones that re-christened Labour Party ‘Party for Social Democracy‘ and then ‘Labour Party’! They are the ones that turned organised labour and Labour Party into transactional object, and the labour movement into a trader’s outfit with all sorts of neoliberal forces promising to reconcile Atiku, Kwankwaso and Obi!
In this circumstance, the task of the labour movement and the duty of the remnants of the Ihonde/Chiroma legacy in organised labour is to return to the barricade which that generation and their allies mounted in defence of Nigeria’s independence and freedom of our people since the early 1980s. Organised labour had moved away steadily from that barricade since 1988, generally endorsing neoliberalism and specifically fighting shy over subsidy removal, tax increases (VAT, etc.), school fees increases, low and essentially frozen wages, ruling class stealing, privatisation, and overall subservience of Nigeria to unending imperialist control.
We are not just speaking ‘grammar’: and the labour ‘leaders’ and bureaucrats know it!
We have been carrying out these sorts of reflections for as long as we became aware of our responsibilities as ‘actual workers’ as distinct from the roles that labour bureaucrats and leaders have come to assign to themselves. We have been involved as members of trade and industrial unions, as students and teachers in the labour and trade union movements; as workers who have struggled to understand the nexus between regular trade union industrial relations activities and the ultimate political goals of the struggles of the labour movement — the ultimate goals of class struggle!
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And this is why we are always amazed when, like regular marauding politicians, some of our ‘comrades’ dismiss our alternative views on the work of our movement as ‘just speaking grammar’! We say we are not just doing ‘grammar’!
We are, over time, servants of our movement at the level of the labour movement generally. We have been servants at the level of the labour centres (NLC and TUC); many times at their ‘beck and call’. We have served industrial unions learning and teaching, building inter-union solidarity at all levels — national, state, and local government. We have been on the streets at the call of the movement; we have participated in, and led, organising at national, state and local government levels, including building Local Government Chapters of the NLC.
All these are just for the records. We are not asking for acknowledgement. We were told by our comrades who passed on — old and young (Imoudu, Okoye, Onoge, Toyo, Goodluck, Chiroma, Iyayi, Aturu, Ubani, Ihonde, etc.) that what we are confronted with is a ‘duty’; and that carrying out a [the] duty is not necessarily about winning — certainly not necessarily winning immediately.
In building a political movement owned by the masses of Nigeria’s working people, we have always been galvanised by the conviction that ‘leaders’ are not substitutes for the masses of working people — the only social force that can win against the ruling class without any danger of compromising their own triumph.
We have also always known that ‘organised labour’ fully embedded in working class ideology — socialism — will play a critical role in reinstating the promise of the 1960 independence — fought for and won by Nigeria’s working people.
Overlapping regimes of Nigeria’s ruling class are always hoodwinking labour leaders with the same make-believe palliatives (World Banks’ “Social Safety Nets”) — direct cash transfer, mass transit buses, release from grain reserves, student’s loan scheme, etc. Perhaps the most fraudulent of the ‘palliatives’ are alleged increase in minimum wage following fiscal and monetary policy strategies that actually make nonsense of the alleged wage increases.
The Joe Ihonde and Ali Chiroma tradition of struggle for Socialist Transformation of Nigeria was endorsed by Nigerians across the board, according to the report of the Political Bureau set up by the Babangida junta in 1986.
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The rejection of IMF Loan and the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) by Nigeria’s working people about the same time are all fundamental acts of resistance led by the labour movement with pivotal intervention of the Ali Chiroma regime of the NLC. It is the imposition of the new economic enslavement of Nigeria that the military and the alleged democratic governments of Nigeria had been renovating from 1984 to 2024!
In this circumstance, the task of the labour movement and the duty of the remnants of the Ihonde/Chiroma legacy in organised labour is to return to the barricade which that generation and their allies mounted in defence of Nigeria’s independence and freedom of our people since the early 1980s. Organised labour had moved away steadily from that barricade since 1988, generally endorsing neoliberalism and specifically fighting shy over subsidy removal, tax increases (VAT, etc.), school fees increases, low and essentially frozen wages, ruling class stealing, privatisation, and overall subservience of Nigeria to unending imperialist control.
To substantiate this fact of the definitive move away from the barricades of mid-1980s, we only need to compare the general thrust of NLC’s 2007 Congress Policy document (5th February 2007) with NLC’s Agenda for Economic Revival of 2015!
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Overlapping regimes of Nigeria’s ruling class are always hoodwinking labour leaders with the same make-believe palliatives (World Banks’ “Social Safety Nets”) — direct cash transfer, mass transit buses, release from grain reserves, student’s loan scheme, etc. Perhaps the most fraudulent of the ‘palliatives’ are alleged increase in minimum wage following fiscal and monetary policy strategies that actually make nonsense of the alleged wage increases.
As we pay fulsome tribute to Nigeria’s working class people and the glorious Ali Chiroma/Joe Ihonde generation and its younger generation of organised labour at the 45th May Day Celebration, 2024, we call on leaders of organised labour to return to the definitive working class ideology — unity of working people, socialism, and anti-imperialism. That ideology, endorsed by Nigeria’s working people almost forty years ago, underpins what our late Comrade Mokwugo Okoye called The Politics of Liberation at the May 1986 ASUU National Delegates Conference, University of Ife, Ile-Ife. The details of that politics are all in the records and archives of organised labour and the wider labour movement of Nigeria and its allies.
Concluded.
Emeritus Prof Olorode, Member, Secretariat Collective, Movement for Socialist Transformation of Nigeria (MOST), writes from Odoje Biodiversity Center, Orile-Oje, Ogbomoso and can be contacted via email: omotoopo@gmail.com; tpaps@gmail.com
