IN a stretch of just one week this March, Nigeria’s two labour centres – Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and Trade Union Congress (TUC) – held two independent public symposia that focused on, and discussed, essentially the nature and character of politics in Nigeria and the prospects of increasing the tempo of political participation by organised labour beyond just trade union contestation, civil disobedience and peripheral claims to owning the Labour Party.
The dominant feeling, particularly at the TUC Roundtable on March 10, to which National Record was invited, seemed to be that organised labour has become like the proverbial man in African folklore who after struggling to chase, caught, killed and roasted a chicken, was condemned to only sniff the aroma on his soiled palms as he was forbidden from partaking in the eating of the meat of the chicken when it was cooked. The TUC Roundtable was rich in graphic metaphors depicting denial, exclusion and total relegation of organised labour from the political arena including from a political party it claims to own.
From the documents, including the utterances of the leadership of organised labour and the solidarity messages from participating organisations, it was obvious that the TUC and NLC events were convoked out of frustration arising from the continuous downward spiral of Nigeria’s fortunes and the obvious lack of focus in the entire political economy, with the working class being the worst affected in comparison with the rip-offs by the ruling elite.
While it is not clear if the convocation and timing of the gatherings were deliberate or coincidental; what is puzzling however is why the two centres were not able to in the spirit of solidarity genuine interest of the working class, collaborate to organise an earth-shaking political symposium that would take a better part of a week so as to send a strong message to the ruling elite.
Beyond the seeming nuances of clash of personal egos and organisational animosity that may have vetoed a justified synergy of the two centres from hosting a single and potent assemblage of working people, the two events in successively coming up almost simultaneously, however, helped to put on the table in a resolute manner very concrete existential issues pushing workers’ agitations and unending grievances but even more so perpetual rumbles behind Nigeria’s political economy over time.
Good enough, the raw and unambiguous manner and at the period – pre-2023 – in which the grievance is being articulated should naturally command critical, deeper and immediate reflection just as they also offer the working class an even better opportunity to project fundamental tasks necessary to re-organise and re-strategize in a genuine effort to reinvent the labour movement politically. In other words, the TUC political awakening, coming just days after NLC’s similar gathering, offered a positive opportunity for further insight on the need to convoke a more provocative and engaging enquiry on the fate of Nigerian working class.
Besides the intellectual faculty and the quality of their interrogations, the engagements from the audience and even the altercations, being expected outcomes of the diverse tendencies within the labour movement and the broad left political divide, the most profound takeaway is the realisation for a compelling need for an active working peoples party and politics anchored on mass movement ideology as basic remedy to the seeming Sisyphean jinx of Nigeria. In doing this, Professors Olorode and Jega’s interventions systematically interrogated the socio-economic and political undercurrents in very blunt, pungent and provocative language in ways that should enable the key labour leaders and other actors and forces in the mass movement to succinctly get the message on what is desired and what needs to be done going forward.
Time of “Siddon look” is over – Jega
Prof Jega got the historic opportunity to talk to the core issues twice and he admitted this almost immediately he stood up to speak at the TUC Roundtable. He was, and deservedly so, the chairperson of both the NLC and TUC events. And on both occasions; he successfully and sustainably stressed the reality of the tragedy of the Nigerian ruling class invoking metaphors that impactfully resounded in the deep recesses of participants’ ears.
From his first sentence at the TUC Roundtable, he stressed the emancipatory values of political participation by workers. “Most citizens are workers, in one form or another, even if not all citizens are workers. Therefore, workers participation in the development of their country, especially in bringing about good governance, through which meeting their basic needs and aspirations is enhanced, is necessary and desirable.”
For Jega, since majority of workers “do not understand or even care about the value” of political participation because they are perpetually engaged with bread and butter issues; it becomes a core role of the leadership of organised labour to sharpen their consciousness in order to “promote active workers participation not just in collective bargaining for narrow economic, or economistic, interests, but also in broader matters of development, especially active, focused, resilient and enlightened participation in the electoral process.” Nigeria, more than any country globally, with its present socio-economic and political circumstances, Jega asserts, offers the most fitting conditions for a conscious labour leadership to take up the role of offering sustainably viable political education.
“Nigeria is very badly governed and, unfortunately, it has been so for a very long time. Popular participation of citizens in their country’s affairs and governance processes has never been as great as it should be; and currently, it is even declining, if we take into consideration the massively declining figures of voter turnout in elections.
“All the indices of bad governance are starkly evident: from the fraudulent ways and means by which conceited elite impose themselves as ‘elected’ ‘leaders’ in governance; to the reckless, self-serving, corrupt, exclusionary, visionless, parochial and unpatriotic disposition and manner they have been ‘governing’. Indeed, on virtually all the global indices used to measure, rate and rank countries with regards to socio-economic development, addressing poverty, advancing human security, good governance and democratic development, Nigeria is ranked lowly and poorly, if not despicably given its vast potentials in human and material resources,” Jega pointed out, as he went ahead to outline the basic indicators that Nigeria is actually at a phase crying and begging for liberation but only by a political force that can only be orchestrated by a truly committed and ideologically discerning mass movement.
He said: “As a consequence of all these, is there any wonder that the Nigerian state is appearing increasingly incapable of discharging the roles and responsibilities traditionally expected of a modern nation-state? These primary responsibilities are: (i) protecting lives and property, (ii) defending the country’s territorial integrity, (iii) maintaining law and order and peaceful co-existence among citizens on the basis of the rule of law and independent and credible judiciary; and (iv) providing for the basic needs and human security of all citizens.
“Is the Nigerian state competently and effectively discharging any of these responsibilities, if at all? Indeed, is there any wonder that some analysts are audaciously claiming that “Nigeria has collapsed”, or that some of us who are cautiously optimistic, are saying that “while Nigeria has not totally collapsed, evidence is there that it is collapsing, and efforts need to be made urgently to prevent it from collapsing”?”
While Jega, of course, did not overtly call for a revolution or for the swift overthrow of the existing political order; his language; measured and couched in somewhat purgatorial or dungeon symbolisms, profoundly appealed to not only organised labour but to the broad political Left, to up their game to ‘organise’ democratically and play active role towards taking firm control of power to save Nigeria from ruin.
“In the present circumstances in Nigeria, there is no better way for the organized labour to strategically advance the collective interests of the working people of Nigeria, than to join forces with other patriotic forces and actively engage with politics and governance, and especially the electoral process, to ensure that the governance process and indeed the future of Nigeria is rescued from the reckless elite who are greedily and blindly undermining the socio-economic and democratic development of our country; who are literally getting the country grounded and, as it were, leaving the rest of the citizens high and dry,” Jega stated.
Jega, in realistic terms, is not under any illusion of the possibility of organised labour building a formidable political party capable of genuinely staking for power in the 2023 general elections. However, he is convinced that it has the capacity to “forge unity among the trade unions and labour movements in the country” to set an “agenda of mobilizing, educating, enlightening and conscientising Nigerian workers” on core issues of motivating or encouraging them “to register to vote, then turnout to vote, and finally to vote only for parties and candidates of good character who sincerely commit to promoting, advancing, defending, and implementing a Nigerian Workers Charter of demand when elected.” He did not just say this in his opening remark; he also robustly stressed the operability when he responded during the interactive session.
Jega concluded by calling on actors within the labour movement to, in post 2023, channel efforts and focus on the creation and strengthening of “a working peoples party, which must be well established and structured for future more impactful engagement in Nigerian politics. It needs to be recognized that in the present circumstances, workers ignore participation in electoral politics at their own peril.”
Perhaps in understanding the fractured nature of organised labour, Jega warned of the necessity for unity within the movement as a basic pre-requisite for building a formidable workers party, when he stated: “Ordinarily, as is well known, unity is strength; and unity is necessary and desirable so as to actualize the objectives and aspiration of getting Nigerian workers and other progressive forces’ active participation in electoral politics to rescue Nigeria and widen and deepen the scope for democratic development and good democratic governance in our country. The time of narrowly believing that workers interests can only be advanced through collective bargaining is over. The time of “Siddon look”, while ruffians and crooks occupy and dominate the political and governance spaces, through manipulation of the electoral process in our country, is over!
“That is why I am very pleased that the TUC has found it necessary to organize this Political Round Table discussion to deliberate on how best to get Nigerian workers to seriously and properly participate on matters of development and governance in our country. Certainly active, principled, focused and resilient participation in the political and electoral process is the starting point of bringing about good democratic governance that can more appropriately be the framework for addressing the primary and objective interests of the Nigerian workers in contemporary Nigeria.”
Power by all means necessary
For veteran public intellectual, emeritus Professor Omotoye Olorode, who delivered the keynote address around TUC’s theme of for Roundtable, organised labour has been in the trenches for the transformation of Nigeria “for decades, if not for centuries”. His contention therefore is that the Roundtable by TUC is “another opportunity to contemplate our past to assess the present and vision of the future of our country.”
The overarching perspective pushed by Olorode in an argument he repeatedly reinforced with historical narratives, and as well, the deployment of acute purgatorial symbolism, is the need for conscious grooming which he asserts is indispensable for an assertive working class that is able to take actions to free themselves from oppression and upstaging or frustrating the ruling class from either holding on to power or effectively undermining the interest of the working class.
Noting that the so-called ruling class-led transformation of Nigeria is in the interest of a numerically inferior ruling class and imperialism, Olorode said the Nigerian situation could have been worse if the trend was not apprehended by the Nigerian labour movement in the early to the mid-1980s after which “organised labour surrendered as a result of [persistent] ruling class attack led by its military wing and internal subversion led by some leaders of organised labour. Although the struggle of the labour movement did not abate, the movement had not managed to return to the Glorious mid-1980s!” The only way in which the existing political order that is built on and operated on exploitation can be transformed to give way for a genuinely independent and egalitarian society in which there is no exploitation and where there exist economic security,” Olorode contended, can only be initiated by the victims of that political order.
What matters in working class political party?
But Olorode’s thesis for a genuine political order and transformative governance is not just for the sake of taking over the mantle of power; rather, it must be rooted in good organisation of labour unions manned by leaders who are committed side by side with conscious rank and file members. He said: “A central element of the strategy for transformation is good organisation of the trade unions predicated on committed leadership and vigilant rank-and-file. The production and reproduction of such leaderships and rank-and-file depend of course on commitment to internal democracy in the unions, absolute supremacy of members’ interests and deliberate enhancement of the economic, social class, and cultural consciousness of the rank-and-file through intense, non-tokenist, and well thought-out worker education programmes.”
To say that the above scenario exists in present-day Nigerian trade union movement is obviously utopian but whether it is possible in the next decade or two in a way as to gather the required momentum for a socialist transformation that Olorode insists must be the outcome is entirely a matter of conjecture. This conclusion is based primarily on the preconditions for building a working peoples’ political party that Olorode offers.
In addition to altruistic and committed leadership, organisational solidarity, fidelity of industrial unions to democratic and trade union ethos, intra and inter-union unity, redemptive trade union education, etc.; all of which are arguably not on the agenda of majority of contemporary Nigerian trade unions, Olorode contends that a “working peoples’ party must be built with a definite identity; not one that will canvass leadership from ruling-class parties or one whose leaders decide to contest elections in ruling class parties.”
Olorode admitted that the absence of these core attributes had been the challenge in building a workers’ party over the years. “We must emphasize that by contemplating labour intervention in the 2023 electoral processes in Nigeria, we are not doing something new! As we already noted above, the Nigerian labour movement started substantive action in this direction close to one hundred years ago when a party, Nigeria Labour Organisation, was formed in 1930!
“Since, then there had been various impactful efforts by the labour movement. We already mentioned the formation of the NCNC in 1944. What we have not been emphasizing in recent times is the centrality of class struggle and class ideology in building the party that will emancipate Nigeria’s working people. The questions of class struggle and working class ideology need to be posed more clearly and more consistently in order to create organisational unity that will establish a political party built and sustained by the exploited masses of Nigeria and their allies.
“Once these questions are posed sharply, it will become obvious that the ideology which emerges from the foundation, practice and theory of class struggle is Socialism…
“It is important that we emphasize the constancy of socialism as the ideology of the labour movement, our movement, in Nigeria. Article 9B of the NCNC Manifesto for the 1954 General Election in Nigeria stipulated socialism as the party’s ideology. Thirty years or so later in 1986, our movement under the auspices of organised labour mass-circulated an essentially socialist document, among others, titled Towards a Viable and Genuinely Democratic Future. The mass endorsement of Socialist Ideology for Nigeria, during the 1986 Political Debate organised by the military junta itself, was the outcome of the mass mobilisation carried out by our movement!” [His emphasis]
In the absence of a solid political platform in the run-up to the 2023 general elections, Olorode proffers three options for which he counselled organised labour to adopt one on which to push its interest. The first option, he said, is to have “an independent, registered or unregistered but substantive in all material particulars, working-class party that mobilises on the basis of working class ideology.” He quickly dismissed this option, however, stating that organised labour does not appear to have “built a foundation or even capacity and unity for this option in spite of the constant admonition, over time, that labour should do so.” [His emphasis]
Option two, Olorode said, is for “organised labour to form an electoral alliance with political formations that call themselves “progressives” but not “socialists” or “working class” parties.” Olorode also does not see organised labour effectively utilising this option “given the state of its preparedness, the current level of unity at ideological and organisational levels is not likely to survive in such an alliance or be able to persuade their so-called “progressive” allies in the direction of socialist transformation.”
The third option, which Olorode recommends for adoption, is one he described as “consistent with the centrality of class struggle, socialist ideology and thorough-going socialist transformation.” According to him, this option “will fully integrate and unite “Organised labour” with the entire labour movement and all its allies” just as it also “will immediately enable Nigeria’s working people to defend themselves, day-to-day, against all anti-people policies, develop leadership consistently among the people, build movement power for political engagement (including building an independent political party) that can credibly challenge ruling-class parties and power by itself or via viable alliances with a party or parties that is (are) committed to socialism.” [His emphasis]
Olorode argued that the viability of the third option is what led to the recent formation of The Peoples Alternative Political Movement (TPAP-M) to take up the “task ahead of the labour movement and from which organised labour, even for maintaining its own faithfulness to labour-movement tradition and effectiveness, must not, and cannot, distance itself.”
He concluded that the history of Nigeria is replete with working peoples’ struggles and demands for welfare, development and generally humane and standardised living conditions, and that these demands are never given by the ruling class. For him, this history of oppression and exploitation makes it a task for Nigeria’s working class to organise and change the existing political status quo “by all means necessary!”
He said: “Nigeria’s working people have been making demands from the ruling class for centuries. We ought to KNOW NOW, after decades of colonial rule and six decades of neo-colonial capitalist exploitation, that the ruling class will not deliver and they cannot deliver because delivering is against their class interest! That is why they have done everything to retain political power – as a class! The task of Nigeria’s working people, clearly, is to organise and take that political power from the ruling class: by all means necessary!” [His emphasis]
Panellists: It’s politics or nothing; and, who owns Labour Party?
Although the core take-home messages came from Jega and Olorode’s interrogations of the subject matter, there was also a mix of profound commentaries from the panellists and a suffuse of observations, questions and contestations from the audience. The panel session, moderated by Comrade Owei Lakemfa, and composed of Comrades Abiodun Aremu (Aremson), Jaye Gaskia, Hauwa Mustapha, Salisu Mohammed, Issa Aremu and Femi Falana (SAN), who participated virtually, at some point, almost ended up in a bust-up with an angry response from Comrade Dan Iwuanyanwu of Zenith Labour Party and the National Chairman of Labour, Comrade Julius Abure on the issue of ownership of Labour Party of Nigeria and the founding of existing Zenith Labour Party, if the Master of Ceremony had not masterfully steered the conversation out of the tension generated by Falana’s intervention.
Falana had tended to have touched the tiger by the tail when in his intervention he contended that a major urgent task before radical forces in the movement is the ‘recovery’ of the Labour Party. According to Falana, the Labour Party must be recovered and aligned with genuine radical forces. He told the leadership of NLC and TUC to collaborate with radical elements in the movement to convene a ‘unity convention’ in which all the labour parties and other radical and true progressive political parties could be united to form a formidable political platform. He argued that this was necessary in order to weed out what he called ‘reactionary elements’ who he said have hijacked the party in addition to the formation of Zenith Labour Party which he seemed to have alleged was funded by Olusegun Mimiko, former Ondo State governor on the platform of the Labour Party.
This claim brought out Dan Iwuanyanwu, a former National Chairman of the Labour Party, and now a chieftain of the Zenith Labour Party, fuming with a quick counterpoint. “It is not true; there is no iota of truth,” Iwuanyanwu asserts, “that Governor Olusegun Mimiko registered the Zenith Labour Party. He was not there at all at any point…If we don’t want to say the truth, let us keep quiet, don’t go and lie…there is nobody that can speak of the Zenith Labour Party better than myself. Governor Olusegun Mimiko was not part and parcel of our discussion for the registration of Zenith Labour Party. Governor Olusegun Mimiko did not put one kobo in the process of the registration of Zenith Labour Party. Please, my learned silk should apologise, what he had said is not true; it is a lie!”
Iwuanyanwu had in his solidarity massage to the Roundtable bluntly told the gathering that workers will achieve nothing if they are not committed to forming a workers’ party that they are committed to. According to him, organised labour “will achieve nothing if they have one leg in PDP and another in APC.”
Comrade Abure, the National Chairman of the Labour Party, while responding somewhat late to Falana’s pleas for the ‘recovery’ of the Labour Party ‘from reactionary elements’ or ‘impostors,’ said it is not true that they are impostors as he and others in the leadership of the party have been members from the beginning of the party. According to him, the people calling them names are actually not the members as they are not card-carrying members of the Labour Party.
“Coming to say that you want to recover the party; you can’t recover the party because it is not a personal property of NLC. The truth of the matter is that once a political party is registered, it has a life of its own. For you to have rights and obligations, then you must go and obtain membership and then participate in the ward congress, local government congress and then state and then national convention, and if you win election, you control the party. You can’t be outside; you are not even a card-carrying member of the party and then you are claiming ownership; is it done that way?” Abure asked.
Before the altercation between Falana and Inwuanyanwu, the message from the interventions by the other panellists reflected the mood and theme of the Roundtable. For Comrade Issa Aremu, contemporary labour leaders needed to learn from the history of the life and struggles of Pa Imoudu.
According to Aremu, Pa Imoudu realised very early that from the best of efforts, trade unionism has its limitations and as a result, he basically combined unionism with politics and similarly urged trade unionists to be political so as to be able to create the world they preached and imagined. “Imoudu came to realise that from the best of efforts, trade unionism has limitations; that you need to be political, and as a result, Imoudu was not just a unionist, he was also highly political,” Aremu said.
In her view, Hauwa Mustapha argued for the harnessing of the popular anger and frustration from hunger, poverty, violence and other underdevelopment irritations in the Nigerian society to propel a political organisation that takes into context the needs and yearnings of the masses. She noted that any political formation that should come out of this background must be one with a vision of inclusiveness, one that is egalitarian in all its ramifications. She enjoined the TUC and NLC to, in collaboration with the broad components in the left movement, set up a joint committee to take common positions on socio-economic and political issues.
For Jaye Gaskia, the fundamental problematic propelling the working class to seek political relevance is in providing answer to some questions such as: What does the labour movement need at this moment? What are the characteristics of the moment? What can the movement do to ensure that these requirements are met? He believes that it is important that working people become first and foremost politically conscious as to be able to ask what the requirements of this moment in history are and how to fulfil those requirements.
It is obvious, Gaskia stated, that working people today face the worst crisis that they have ever faced in the history of Nigeria. “It is a multi-faceted crisis – it is economic, it is social, it is environmental and it is political. We are facing deep crisis,” he said as he asked working people to channel their grievances into political participation and contestation. According to him, the working class cannot afford to stand aloof and not participate in politics. “We cannot achieve our political aim by abstaining from it [politics]; we have to be on the streets to build our grievances into political capital.”
Comrade Salisu Mohammed believes that workers and other components of the working class should join hands together to take a front row seat in the politics of the country since Nigeria’s democracy is participatory. He asked the leadership of NLC and TUC to come up with a political roadmap to serve as an ‘immediate programme’ to guide the working class in the run-up to 2023 electioneering.
There were a number of comments, observations and questions bothering on the nature and character of the workers’ party that is to emerge in relation to, for instance, its broad acceptance and guarantees on the basis of practical ideological fidelity by inputting and sustaining the features described by various speakers. There were also concerns by speakers around the management of gender, youth and other issues of diversity and inclusiveness as well as the character of the electoral umpire in terms of temptation and pressures to manipulate the process rather than being fair and objective.
Prof Jega’s response, if the applause at the end of his delivery is a measure of endorsement of his views, to a large extent invariably answered the core concerns raised. For him, there are three key options, which incidentally tallies almost exactly with Olorode’s, that ought to be on the agenda of organised labour if it is to, along with the entire working class movement, contemplate in successfully venturing into party politics.
The first option, Jega said, must be the focus or desire for socialist transformation of Nigeria through a working class party that is guided by the core working class ideology to take over power by any means necessary.
The second option, he said, is the formation of a workers’ party that may not necessarily be ideologically socialist but simply as a platform to protect and defend working class interests through policies that are welfarist and on a framework that is democratic and driven on well-known features of good governance.
The third option, which Jega emphasised may be adopted in 2023, is the development of a working people’s charter of demands with which organised labour, trade unions and the rest of the movement, can engage other political parties and candidates to get them elected upon their commitment to execute policies and programmes beneficial to working people of Nigeria.
Jega stressed that though distinct are the options, they can be adopted and pursued simultaneously depending on the national political dynamics that may be of strategic relevance to the broad working class interests.
For Jega, what really ought to drive the quest by organised labour and other components of the labour movement for political participation is the degree of recklessness of the current ruling elite whose politics and governance methodology, he said “are wrecking the country’s political economy and threatening to destroy it.” The only alternative to checkmating the ruling elite from totally destroying Nigeria, Jega believes, is in the emergence of a mass political platform led by organised labour and working class movements and other progressive forces.
While Jega thinks that achieving this will be a difficult task, he also strongly believes that it is not impossible, “provided there is working class unity, unity of purpose and partnership among organised labour, and principled engagement in the political terrain.”
According to him, “principled engagement means knowing or understanding the strategic objective, and remaining focused on the objective; ensuring not to fall into the traps and machination of the ruling elite; or learning lessons from our past experiences and endeavouring not to repeat the same mistakes.”
Whether there will be any positive lessons learnt to be put to empirical practice in the weeks and months as we head to 2023 now remains essentially in the hands of leaders of organised labour.
