THE FIRST nationally recognised May Day (worker’s Day) in Nigeria was May Day of (May 1) of 1980. It was the two governments of the Peoples Redemption Party (PRP) in Kano State and Kaduna State, led by Governor Abubakar Rimi and Governor Balarabe Musa, respectively, that first declared May 1 public holiday in Nigeria. That was two years after Obasanjo’s military dictatorship promulgated the 1978 law that established the current Nigeria Labour Congress.
It will suffice to insist that in remembering and celebrating our heroes and highlighting their commitments, we need to avoid tendentious fabrications, selective amnesia, and messiah-making, which masquerade as tributes. It is significant, for example, that Joe Ihonde’s unparalleled efforts, over the years and along with other comrades, on socialist left unity, were hardly referenced.
Both Abubakar Rimi and Balarabe Musa had robust radical left and socialist credentials. Although Balarabe Musa (ABM) was not as visible to some of us as Abubakar Rimi in 1979, the former’s impact on the Talakawa movement and the radical socialist movement across Nigeria was, arguably, the most intense and most unapologetic ever known of an elected government in post-independence Nigeria.
Since he was released from absolutely punitive and unjustifiable imprisonment imposed by the Muhamadu Buhari military junta in 1985 or so, ABM remained active, audible, and interactive on the radical socialist left until his transition at 84 on 11th November, 2020.
Shortly before he died, ABM was physically present at the re-launching of the Olusegun Osoba/Yusuf Bala Usman Minority Report & Draft Constitution for the Federal Republic of Nigeria of 1976 at the University of Lagos in September, 2019. In 2018, an ABM representative delivered a powerful Keynote Address at the National Delegates Conference of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) at the Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University (ATBU) Bauchi in 2018.
Thirty months after the very first May Day Celebration took place in Nigeria, the military wing of Nigeria’s ruling class seized power in a military coup d’état basically to implement the World Bank Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) — the programme of hardship that had remained in force till today, forty years after.
The generation which resisted the invention and orchestration of that hardship especially between 1980 and 1998 included leaders of organised labour (the Nigeria Labour Congress — NLC), leaders of the student’s Movement (NANS), leaders of ASUU, leaders of professional associations (NBA, NMA) and women. That generation was one of organic leaders: women, men and youths of both genders, and various chronological ages, from Michael Imuodu, Gambo Sawaba, Ola Oni, Bala Usman, Joe Ihonde, Ali Chiroma, to Bamidele Aturu, Emanuel Ezeazu, Chris Abashi, Bagauda Kalto, Abdulraman Black and Chima Ubani; just to mention some of those that passed on.
Having regard to the generation that resisted the debut of the Neoliberal siege against Nigeria, anchored especially by the post-Shagari military regimes (the “offshoots” of Obasanjo’s military dictatorship), Comrade Joe Ihonde typified the organic, and organisation socialist worker: trustworthy, selfless, non-sectarian, self-effacing, democratic, and “ubiquitous” (as Owei Lakemfa characterised Joe Ihonde posthumously), and, above all, collectivist!
It was Comrade Ali Chiroma of Medical and Health Workers’ Union of Nigeria (MHWUN) that led the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) in its most assertive period as the movement of “those who create wealth”; the period when the Nigerian ruling class and their foreign collaborators seize, steal and squander Nigeria’s wealth! Ali Chiroma led the three most important and most pivotal struggles which were comparable only with the struggles for Nigeria’s independence!
It will suffice to insist that in remembering and celebrating our heroes and highlighting their commitments, we need to avoid tendentious fabrications, selective amnesia, and messiah-making, which masquerade as tributes. It is significant, for example, that Joe Ihonde’s unparalleled efforts, over the years and along with other comrades, on socialist left unity, were hardly referenced.
Before Ihonde’s last-ditch un-ostentatious effort to ‘unite the Nigerian Socialists’ in the last ten years or so, he had been central to at least two Socialist Unity Meetings that I know — in the same Benin City. As is usual, quite a number of the celebratory tributes at Ihonde’s transition were made by comrades who walked away from Jonathan Ihonde’s unity fora; and, most of them without any explanation as to why!
In the last few weeks, the Nigerian Labour Movement has lost two giants of our resistance of the 1980s! Comrade Joe Ihonde exited this side of eternity on March 13, 2024; so did Comrade Ali Chiroma on April 2, 2024; late Comrade Ihonde and late Comrade Chiroma — Vice-President and President of NLC respectively in the first, and perhaps the most turbulent decade, of systematic resistance of organised labour against military-led re-colonisation of Nigeria.
Both of them, like Hassan Sunmonu and Peterside, were rank and file workers, not professional trade unionists! Needless to say, a caveat is necessary about professional trade unionists. My characterisation will mention glorious exemptions who struggled to grow far above aristocracy and bureaucracy. Of course, that category was always subject of intimidation and vilification; exemplification, here, may definitely be invidious, and therefore unnecessary.
In recent times we have been doing a lot of celebration of the iconic comrades of our movement especially when they are no more. It is correct and important to do so. But if these celebrations will be productive, if we are going to be more than competitors about what we know, we need to do much more. We must focus not only on how those heroes and heroines enabled working class struggle but also how our generation had, largely, squandered the gains of the movement.
The Ali Chiroma Legacy of Collectivism, Organicity and Courage
It was Comrade Ali Chiroma of Medical and Health Workers’ Union of Nigeria (MHWUN) that led the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) in its most assertive period as the movement of “those who create wealth”; the period when the Nigerian ruling class and their foreign collaborators seize, steal and squander Nigeria’s wealth! Ali Chiroma led the three most important and most pivotal struggles which were comparable only with the struggles for Nigeria’s independence!
Undaunted, Ali Chiroma endured constant harassment by the Babangida secret police including extended periods of detention such as after the June 4, 1986 rallies in support of the National Association of Nigerian Students (over killing of Nigerian students at the Ahmadu Bello University on May 23, 1986) which also occasioned the massive intimidation of lecturers and other workers, and (especially university students) across Nigeria.
In recent times we have been doing a lot of celebration of the iconic comrades of our movement especially when they are no more. It is correct and important to do so. But if these celebrations will be productive, if we are going to be more than competitors about what we know, we need to do much more. We must focus not only on how those heroes and heroines enabled working class struggle but also how our generation had, largely, squandered the gains of the movement.
Y. Z. Ya’u’s background paper for a 2002 workshop on ‘the Nigeria Students’ Movement…’ (Beckman, B. & Y. Z. Ya’u. (Eds.), 2005: Great Nigerian Students: Movement Politics and Radical Nationalism. CRD, Kano & PODSU, Stockholm) was perceptive:
“It (also) probes the alternative interpretations… It points to the tension both in the literature and in own approaches between, on one hand, a highly celebratory account of the radicalism and courage of the movement and, on the other hand, a focus on decay, betrayal, and irrelevance.”
The movement, without being a political party or affiliate of a political party, had political objectives that defended the then extant and future interests of the masses of working people and general future of Nigeria. The organic relationship of organised labour with the Nigerian Labour movement was what enabled the success of three major engagements between 1985 and 1986.
Ya’u argues that one way of reducing the gap between the two trajectories is to take in search for a more complex, perhaps less heroic, but possibly more interesting and ‘more realistic’ picture.
In this general regard, a prefatory reference to Joe Ihonde’s conjuncture is absolutely necessary. Joe Ihonde was ubiquitous, silent, courageous and deep, but virtually invisible! The point is that he made all of these qualities available for the resistance of working people and their movement against the neoliberal siege that continues to rage in our country till today. With virtually no private ambition, and consistent on the side of the working class, Joe Ihonde inherited and deployed the tradition of those before us (Michael Imuodu, Wahab Goodluck, Raji Abduallah, Gogo Chu Nzeribe, Mokwugo Okoye, Eskor Toyo, Ola Oni, Tony Engurube, etc., etc.) and the tradition of his generation of actual workers who became labour leaders (Hassan Sunmonu, Peterside, Asamba, Ali Chiroma, etc.) and who handed over the same glorious tradition to a younger generation of people like Bagauda Kalto, Bamidele Aturu, Emmanuel Ezeazu, Chima Ubani, etc.)
Concretely, Joe Ihonde was an indefatigable bridge builder, across generations and across trade unions, and across various formations of the working class.
Four months into military dictatorship in 1984, the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) produced various mobilisational documents clearly articulating working class position on the economy, democracy and politics generally. Joe Ihonde, as a member of RATAWU, was one of the working-class intellectuals who signed the prophetic ASUU document, ‘How to Save Nigeria‘ (Communique of ASUU Conference on the State of the Nigerian Economy), held at the University of Benin, Benin City, April, 9th-13th, 1984) along with Dr Mike Obadan, Dr Festus Iyayi, and Dr G. G. Darah. The working class collaboration at the ASUU conference exemplified the organic link of all the segments of the Nigerian Labour Movement forged by Comrade Ihonde’s generation of NLC leaders.
Although the three foregoing victories of Nigeria’s working people were resounding triumphs of working class perspectives and ideology on the future, the victories were annulled by Nigeria’s ruling class! Today’s socio-economic crisis of our country is the direct consequence of the said annulments of the wishes of the Nigerian people!
The foregoing returns us to the state, and the attendant promises, of Nigeria’s labour movement in 1984 — forty years ago. It was a state in which, in spite of the legal, political and other organisational encumbrances imposed by the 1978 Labour Act that established the NLC, the labour leaders encouraged a development of the movement that went beyond the limits of the so-called organised labour as such limits shackled the movement with the bureaucracies of organised labour. It is these bureaucracies that, especially post-1988, ‘privatised’ organised labour, started seeing its goals as distinct from those of the labour movement.
The movement, without being a political party or affiliate of a political party, had political objectives that defended the then extant and future interests of the masses of working people and general future of Nigeria. The organic relationship of organised labour with the Nigerian Labour movement was what enabled the success of three major engagements between 1985 and 1986.
First, the June 4, 1986 nationwide solidarity rallies in support of the beleaguered students of Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), mandated by the NLC, reiterated the solidarity of the labour movement and the working masses of Nigeria.
Secondly, during the IMF Loan Debate in 1986, the labour movement, comprising the student’s movement, the NLC and ASUU, mobilised the masses of Nigeria to reject the killer loans which imperialism uses across the world to keep countries and peoples down. Thirdly, it was the committed intervention of our movement, the labour movement, that enabled Nigeria’s working people to clearly declare for a Socialist Transformation of Nigeria during the so-called Political Debate organised by governments Political Bureau chaired by J. S. Cookey.
Although the three foregoing victories of Nigeria’s working people were resounding triumphs of working class perspectives and ideology on the future, the victories were annulled by Nigeria’s ruling class! Today’s socio-economic crisis of our country is the direct consequence of the said annulments of the wishes of the Nigerian people!
The referenced and general lack of commitment are manifested at all levels where organised labour is confronted with the deteriorating condition of Nigeria’s working people — national, state council and local government levels. At least two presidents of the NLC joined ruling class political parties (PDP, APC), one President of TUC joined APC; the same situation happened in many states where state councils of the NLC endorsed candidates of ruling class parties; or NLC State Council Exco members were appointed Special Assistants, etc., to state governors.
As we said, this reflection is a May Day (Worker’s Day) tribute to Nigeria’s working people across our country. It is an appreciation of their staying together in spite of ruling class deployment of ethnic and religious divisions that constantly undermine their solidarity. It is a tribute to the enduring faith of all working people and their allies (workers, peasants, self-employed, unemployed, professionals, the students and the youth) who fought and won independence for Nigeria; and who have continued to struggle in solidarity.
Above everything else, this tribute goes to Nigeria’s working people who have become hostages to ruling class ‘labour laws’ and to labour bureaucracies and ‘leaderships’ at all levels. Both economic and political strategies have been deployed to maintain this hostage status of working people both by the ruling class and those who superintend the bureaucracies of organised labour.
Through the so-called labour laws and the ideological superstructure that maintains its exploiter policies, the ruling class outlaws political action by organised labour. This ruling class strategy had worked fairly smoothly since 1988 when segments of the bureaucracies of organised labour pandered, and surrendered, to the blackmail that the ruling class government — military or civilian — are the sole determinants of what is in the interest of the Nigerian people.
There are two consequences of this egregious blackmail. The first is that overlapping regimes of the ruling class had been able to intimidate the so-called organised labour by dubbing every significant class and patriotic action of labour as seeking ‘regime change’ notwithstanding that virtually all the regimes, military and even civilian (especially the former) are, or had been, illegitimate! The second consequence of government blackmail is that the general ambivalence and lack of commitment of the post-988 labour leadership to Nigeria’s labour movement had invariably ensured that they surrendered to this blackmail.
The referenced and general lack of commitment are manifested at all levels where organised labour is confronted with the deteriorating condition of Nigeria’s working people — national, state council and local government levels. At least two presidents of the NLC joined ruling class political parties (PDP, APC), one President of TUC joined APC; the same situation happened in many states where state councils of the NLC endorsed candidates of ruling class parties; or NLC State Council Exco members were appointed Special Assistants, etc., to state governors.
To be 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
