Introduction
JUNE 4, 2026 is the 40th Anniversary of a major event in the political history of Nigeria’s working class movement. The Nigeria Labour Congress declared June 4, 1986, as a Day of Solidarity with the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) following the murder by the Nigeria Police Force of a number of students on the Samaru Campus of Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria on May 23rd, 1986. The students were protesting against the expulsion of the leaders of the Students’ Union. The May 23rd, 1986 police violence against the ABU students was totally unprovoked as the protest was entirely peaceful according to students and lecturers.
On that day in 1986, what we started recently to characterize as the triad of our movement rose up like one person to express nationwide solidarity that sprang from ideological unity and clarity in the labour movement—organized labour, the student movement, the more conscious segments of the Nigerian youth generally, and the academia.
The antagonism between the Nigerian ruling class on this re-colonisation agenda, for example, resulted in the nationwide IMF Loan Debate and the Political Debate both sponsored by Babangiga’s dictatorship in 1986 to hoodwink the masses of Nigeria and their allies. Both debates ended in the resounding verdicts of Nigeria’s working people for Socialism and against IMF Loan. Both verdicts were, of course cynically set aside by the Babangida military dictatorship claiming that the dictatorship was opting for homegrown policies on both issues!
The Antecedents to the 1986 Roar of the Triad
The referenced collective response of the triad was a most eloquent testimony of a response that started coalescing at the close of the 1970s. The students’ (NUNS) uprising (Ali Must Go; 1978), which the ruling class (Obasanjo’s military dictatorship repressed forcibly, was one of those initial responses. In that same 1978, the military dictatorship substituted the today 1978 Labour Act (under which Nigeria workers are still “labouring”) for the attempt by the labour movement to independently mobilize and organize on the basis of its Apena Declaration.
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It is important to emphasize that the assassination of General Muritala Mohammed was a turning point in the relationship of the Nigerian government and international finance capital represented by the Bretton Woods institutions (preeminently IMF and the World Bank). These institutions began to demand Nigeria’s compliance with their economic policies: debt and conditional loans, removal of subsidies, cost-recovery in social services provisioning, currency devaluation etc.
Understanding this ambience of the 1978 Labour Act should help us to understand why Obasanjo’s military dictatorship took over organized labour, wrote its constitution, prescribed its bureaucracy and funded it with a take-off grant of one million Naira. Obasanjo’s dictatorship even prescribed the name (Central Labour Organization—CLO) which was subsequently changed to Nigeria Labour Congress. In the Nigerian University System (NUS) which was already expanding rapidly in the late 1970s and early 1980s the academic staff was already a full-fledged trade union in 1978 and became an affiliate of the Nigeria Labour Congress in 1982 as Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU).
Since 1976, the increasingly lowered standard of life among university teachers also started to create working class consciousness among them as the increasing number of universities became accompanied by less and less funding. The deepening crisis of under-funding of the university system by 1979 already became a main cause of discord between ASUU and the ruling military dictatorship.
The conjuncture between the cutback of students’ welfare facilities and the growing proletarianisation of academics became articulated in the solidarity shown by academics with NUNS during the “Alli Must Go”, National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) Uprising of 1978 as we mentioned already. That solidarity between NUNS and the ASUU occasioned both the ban of NUNS and the sacking by Obasanjo of lecturers at Ibadan; Ola Oni, Bade Onimode, Akin Ojo, Wale Adeniran of University of Ibadan; and Laoye Sanda at the Polytechnic; and lecturers and labour activists at University of Lagos (Edwin Maduuagu, Benedicta Madunagu, Ebenezer Babatope).
There is now a body of, at least circumstantial, evidence that the post-Murtala Mohammed period of military rule in Nigeria achieved a definitive re-set of Nigeria’s socio-economic trajectory to comply with USA-led imperialist agenda supervised since then by Nigeria’s ruling class and international finance capital institutions (IMF and the World Bank).
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The antagonism between the Nigerian ruling class on this re-colonisation agenda, for example, resulted in the nationwide IMF Loan Debate and the Political Debate both sponsored by Babangiga’s dictatorship in 1986 to hoodwink the masses of Nigeria and their allies. Both debates ended in the resounding verdicts of Nigeria’s working people for Socialism and against IMF Loan. Both verdicts were, of course cynically set aside by the Babangida military dictatorship claiming that the dictatorship was opting for homegrown policies on both issues!
To put all these in perspective, the increasing burden of deepened neo-colonial economic policies on all segments of society, and especially the continuity of withdrawal of subsides especially from higher education, began to build a synergy among academics, the working class generally and university students. The Buhari regime, by April 1984, already withdrew subsides from student’s feeding and sacked thousands of catering workers in the universities across the country.
The foregoing condition of generalized dissatisfaction with the living conditions of Nigerian people, especially the organized and conscious segments represented in organized labour, the students’ movement and the academics (the triad), began to be expressed as clearly-defined, popular and well-publicized demands in the three groups and among the general public. Early in the 1980s, the NLC issued Worker’s Charter of Demands and NANS issued NANS Charter of Demands almost simultaneously and along with a NANS-NLC MOU asserting solidarity between organized labour and the Nigerian students and youth with a comprehensive vision of better life for the masses of the Nigerian people.
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Having regard to the evolution of the triad, it is important to point out that although ASUU did not become a full-fledged member of NLC until 1982, it started asserting its status as a clear-sighted trade union and working class organization insisting on, and engaging in regular collective bargaining procedures with the Federal Government from 1982 when the first FGN-ASUU Negotiations took place with representatives of the FGN under Alhaji Shehu Musa’s Chairmanship.
The 1979-1983 “civilian” interregnum and the process of IMF/World Bank take over of Nigeria via the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP).
When General Obasanjo’s military dictatorship handed over power a civilian government in 1979, it was to the more preferred “civilian” wing of Nigeria’s ruling class and with the World Bank/IMF template of the programme for the 1979-1983 interregnum. The 1979-1983 civilian regime was thus the test ground for IMF/World Bank recolonization project subsequently unveiled as the Structural Adjustment Program (SAP). It already entails retrenchment of workers in the private and the public sectors, withdrawal of subsides, reduction on social service spending, wage freeze, privatization of public properties and general “austerity measures”.
The NANS Charter of Demands and NLC’s Workers’ Charter of Demands, referred to earlier were released along with NLC’s anti-privatization document—NIGERIA IS NOT FOR SALE. These various skirmishes, including ASUU’s growing and organic link and collaboration with the NLC and the Students’ movement started challenging the 1979-1983 civilian interregnum.
The interregnum was, of course, not only fractious, it was constantly challenged by the excluded members of the ruling class in the opposition parties. Without doubt the preoccupation of the entire Nigerian ruling class with accumulation, as Claude Ake correctly opined, kept generating intra-class acrimony in the ruling class and unending deprivation among the masses of the Nigerian people.
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Perhaps nothing proved the general commitment of the Shagari interregnum to the World Bank than the formal declaration of the adoption of the Bank’s SAP in the 1984 Budget Speech of December 31, 1983. What the Buhari military dictatorship then assumed state power to do on January 1,1984 was to implement IMF/World Bank SAP. There had been no break in that project till today: either in the elements of the program or the governing personnel and the bureaucracy that run the program.
Early in 1986, a few months after General Ibrahim Babaginda and others toppled Buhari’s regime the renovated dictatorship attempted to refurbish the IMF/World Bank program which Buhari set in motion two years before. The regime decided to sustain the ideological base of its capitalist economic and social policies by launching, as noted earlier, two nationwide debates—The Political Debate, and the IMF Loan Debate. The NLC, ASUU, and the Student’s movement mobilized fully to participate in both debates nationwide. Comrade Dr. Edwin Madunagu and Comrade Pascal Bafyau were members of the “Political Bureau” set up by the IBB government to coordinate the “Political Debate”. The popular verdict on the Political Debate was unequivocal that Nigerians nationwide endorsed a socialist system for national transformation. On the IMF Loan Debate, the popular verdict was also an unequivocal rejection of the “proposed IMF Loan and its conditionalities”
To put all these in perspective, the increasing burden of deepened neo-colonial economic policies on all segments of society, and especially the continuity of withdrawal of subsides especially from higher education, began to build a synergy among academics, the working class generally and university students. The Buhari regime, by April 1984, already withdrew subsides from student’s feeding and sacked thousands of catering workers in the universities across the country.
The May 23 1986 Massacre at ABU, Zaria, the June 4, 1986 NLC Solidarity with Nigerian Students and the Intervention of ASUU: The Roar of the Triad.
The World Bank inspired attack on students’ welfare in the early 1980s was resisted by student’s, academics, and other workers in the universities across the country. Both the students and their allies, of course, faced massive reprisals (including detention) from the military dictatorship and some of the university administrations. In the particular case of the resistance at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, student leaders were rusticated or otherwise sanctioned by the University authority.
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On May 23, 1986, the students at ABU embarked on a peaceful protest demanding the reinstatement of their rusticated leaders. The Vice-Chancellor of ABU at that time, who had been previously alleged to be fond of authoritarian responses to students’ grievances, invited armed police who killed varying number of students according to different accounts. The shock of police violence at ABU incensed the entire student movement in Nigeria and mobilized organized labour in solidarity with NANS.
The Nigeria Labour Congress under the Presidency of late Comrade Alli Chiroma declared June 4, 1986, Day of Solidarity with NANS and the Nigerian youth. The Day was to be marked with rallies and public lectures inside and outside all university campuses across the country. The entire university system was fully mobilized for the June 4 Solidarity Day declared by the NLC, the entire country was indeed mobilized for the show of solidarity with NANS and beyond NANS. The ruling military junta activated full threats against the NLC declaration and against any group or individuals who were likely to support the declaration. The junta claimed that the army, the air force and the navy were all on alert to deal with what they constructed a threat to their security but which the masses considered resistance to emerging economic, social and cultural threat to the liberation of Nigeria beyond the murderous action of law enforcement agencies against peaceful action of the youth at Ahmadu Bello University.
Our understanding of the task of the socialist tendencies of the triad today is to reinvent and re-invigorate the socialist movement. That reinvention and re-invigoration will have the goal of identifying and internalizing the lessons of the history of our triumphs and our failures. It is obvious that the current social and economic disaster in our country is the continuation of the existing disaster that imperialist and neo-liberal capitalist forces imposed on Nigeria especially since the late 1970s. This is why we are always surprised when many otherwise attentive compatriots appear surprised about Nigeria’s unending crisis including the current and deepening phase of the crisis. The crisis is the logical product of the shared capitalist ideology of all the ruling class political “parties” which are actually factions of a single party.
Overnight on June 4-June 5, the Babangida dictatorship further intensified its intimidation against the triad by arresting labour activists (including the President of the NLC, Comrade Alli Chiroma) labour leaders, members of ASUU, students’ leaders, and others across Nigeria. These were all detained until June 14 (1986) when they were released from detention. These acts of intimidation were followed by the setting up of the General Emmanuel Abisoye Panel, before which the students and the NLC refused to appear, to specifically inquire into the May 23 events at ABU, and the Justice Mustapha Akanbi Judicial Panel which was to inquire into the activities of various groups (students. lecturers, trade unions, police, etc.) across Nigeria and especially during the solidarity actions in support of the ABU students.
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It was clear from the beginning that the Emmanuel Abisoye Panel was a veritable witch-hunt. The refusal of both the NLC and NANS to appear before the Abisoye Panel turned out to be auspicious as the reports of the panel was fabricated to entirely indict the victims of state violence, police brutality and the complicity of ABU authorities in both. The Justice Mustapha Akanbi Judicial Panel went round virtually all Nigerian universities, Polytechnics and Colleges of Education during its inquires. Nigeria Police Force was represented by a counsel (Mr. Asemota), while ASUU and NANS were represented by Mr. Alao Aka-Bashorun and Mr. Femi Falana both of the Peoples’ Chambers, Lagos. Needless to say the table at the Akanbi Panel was so completely turned against the military dictatorship and the Nigerian ruling class, and their IMF/World Bank sponsors that its reports could not be formally published.
The June 4, 1986 Roar of The Triad was a “Red Line”
From the foregoing, it should be obvious that the events around June 4, 1986 declaration and execution of the agenda of solidarity among NLC, NANS, and ASUU were not only a watershed, they defined the lines of economic, social and political interests and commitments between Nigeria’s working people and their allies on one hand, and Nigeria’s ruling class (in cahoots with imperialism) on the other. Pursuant to the project of reprisals against the triad, the dictatorship took a number of punitive steps that vitiated the capacity of the elements of the triad separately and collectively. The reprisals also engendered internal divisions within, and among the segments of the triad.
First, the dictatorship removed ASUU from the NLC. That action was aimed at the destruction of a powerful, patriotic and nationalist alliance that grew steadily since the mid-1970s, and defended Nigeria’s working people and struggled for Nigeria’s liberation. Secondly, constant intimidation of, and violent attacks on the students’ movement by government, police infiltration and corruption of the students movement began actively to weaken and factionalize the movement. Thirdly, and more importantly, the dictatorship engaged in a massive program, once again, to decimate the Nigeria Labour Congress, first by banning the Nigeria Labour Congress, then by supporting the more malleable and more bureaucratic segments of Congress. Indeed, when ASUU was removed from the NLC by government, there was not even a whimper from those who were to take over The Nigeria Labour Congress in 1988.
For all practical purposes, the triad already collapsed at the close of the 1980s as ASUU was also banned in 1988. However, both segments of the rump of ASUU and NANS remained sufficiently organized and coherent especially as influential forces in what became known as Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) and NGOs. To the extent that the so-called CSOs and NGOs were largely inventions of neo-liberalism, they were simply not in a position to carry out the ideological and liberation tasks that the triad set for itself in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s. More importantly, post 1986, organized labour with the glorious of exception of a few trade unions distanced itself meticulously from the rump of the triad in the so-called “pro-democracy movement”!
The task of returning to what held the triad together.
The Triad, as we have narrated, did not drop from nowhere. It evolved from active engagement by ideological forces that developed as patriotic socialist and nationalist groups and organizations among workers and their allies: the students and the youth, women and the intelligentsia in, and outside, Nigeria’s higher educational institutions, and professional association (NBA, NMA, and NUJ, etc.)
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The said engagements converged, and were pivoted, on a conception of a people-oriented transformation of Nigeria: the vision that animated the struggle for Nigeria’s anti-colonial struggle and birthed independence in 1960. The socialist forces and tendencies that dominated the said convergence were present, active, coherent and influential (in the late 1970s and the 1980s) in the three pillars of the triad—organized labour, the students’ movement and the intelligentsia. But as the pillars and the tendencies grew, especially as the triad faced ruling class siege, they differentiated, splintered and suffered incoherence. We must add, too, that the debility of the triad also arose significantly from opportunism, apostasy, sectarianism and bourgeois individualism inside various segments of the triad..
Our understanding of the task of the socialist tendencies of the triad today is to reinvent and re-invigorate the socialist movement. That reinvention and re-invigoration will have the goal of identifying and internalizing the lessons of the history of our triumphs and our failures. It is obvious that the current social and economic disaster in our country is the continuation of the existing disaster that imperialist and neo-liberal capitalist forces imposed on Nigeria especially since the late 1970s. This is why we are always surprised when many otherwise attentive compatriots appear surprised about Nigeria’s unending crisis including the current and deepening phase of the crisis. The crisis is the logical product of the shared capitalist ideology of all the ruling class political “parties” which are actually factions of a single party.
But Nigeria’s ruling class remains in power not because they are competent or strong. The ruling class remains in power because the movement for Nigeria’s liberation is debilitated in many ways. An urgent and inclusive, but not eclectic, “Dialogue” of the movement, or whatever remains of it, has become imperative and extremely urgent.
Emeritus Professor Olorode writes from Odoje Biodiversity Centre, Ogbómọṣọ.
