NIGERIA could be likened to a huge oppressive tunnel in which the over 80 million Nigerians who live below the poverty line, and the pushed-down-to-the-abyss millions of what used to be the middle class, are packed on top of one another, each struggling and wailing to be pushed out. The tunnel that is Nigeria is boiling with rage, and indignation of the victims of neoliberal policies, which reinforce multiple exploitation of the lower classes.
The obliteration of the middle class has left two broad opposed classes: poor Nigerians and a confraternity of military, industrial, bureaucratic and political strongmen who drive the Nigerian state along any trajectory of their choice; who are ensconced in an island vastly different from the tunnel into which the working, and poorer classes have been imprisoned.
Life is nourished by hope, such that even condemned criminals don’t lose hope, which makes the poor hopeful of one day exiting poverty. How to do that is the big question. Despite the illusive nature of the hope, it is reinforced by the Marxian postulation that at an opportune moment, the exploited classes would reengineer themselves to displace the exploiting classes, and become the dominant classes.
These hopeful prospects could be valid for other societies; but circumstantially difficult in Nigeria, where the dynamics of inter class relations douse the potency of the class struggle as a driving force of historical development.
Fertile contexts for the probable displacement of class exploitation include nations with a strong leftist political tradition, an agitated national liberation trajectory, and intensely exploitative societies such as Cuba under Batista.
Nigeria’s political tradition has been largely rightist, spiced with a little progressive trajectory, which has been substantially lost since the second republic. Unlike the French and Portuguese African settler colonies, Nigeria’s independence struggles couldn’t have been fertile to facilitate the enthronement of exploited Nigerians as dominant classes.
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The robust agitational trajectory of the labour movements was also lost, which has left the movements with leaderships only adept at striking deals with the government, when workers troop out to protest unfriendly economic policies.
Exploitation is a relation between two parties, in which one unfairly benefits, whilst the other loses. The exploited parties could be individuals, a group of individuals with common attributes, or group of nations, which gives rise to exploited individuals, classes and nations.
Opportunistic agents, who seek personal gain in every encounter drive individual exploitation, which complements the exploitation of the working class by the captains of industry.
The Nigerian economy is disoriented and ridden with artificial scarcities, distortions, shrunk wages which enlarge surplus values and escalated price regimes, which enhance multiple exploitation of Nigerians.
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Individual exploitation thrives better in economies with endemic supply gaps, which induce widespread shortages, which engender the exploitation of consumers by unscrupulous agents, which makes individual exploitation almost perennial in Nigeria.
No one would want to be exploited by anybody, because sustained exploitation dehumanises the objects of exploitation. As despised as it is, exploitation has a liberatory import: it radicalises the objects of exploitation to interrogate the system, and galvanises them to actively seek political power, the only way to realise their illusive hope of getting out of the tunnel.
Since the take-off of the neoliberal project, Nigerian classes have been transformed in such a way that the middle class, which used to be the layer between the big oppressors, and the exploited majority has been wiped away. Its members have been substantially proletarianised, whose aspiration is not to fall to the abyss of the poorer class.
The obliteration of the middle class has left two broad opposed classes: poor Nigerians and a confraternity of military, industrial, bureaucratic and political strongmen who drive the Nigerian state along any trajectory of their choice; who are ensconced in an island vastly different from the tunnel into which the working, and poorer classes have been imprisoned.
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In no way responsible for the collapse of education, health services; as they are in no way culpable for the collapse of the refineries and opaque disbursements of fuel subsidies, and massive thefts of public funds, they have been sanctioned for the faults of the nation’s strongmen, who are largely responsible for the collapse of the economy, who have been freed from the required sacrifices to put the economy in shape, whilst their poor exploited brethren are forced to pay higher fees for the education of their children, for gasoline, and belt tighten their stomachs to eat less.
No one would want to be exploited by anybody, because sustained exploitation dehumanises the objects of exploitation. As despised as it is, exploitation has a liberatory import: it radicalises the objects of exploitation to interrogate the system, and galvanises them to actively seek political power, the only way to realise their illusive hope of getting out of the tunnel.
Jahun, a commentator on public affairs, is based in Dutse, Jigawa State. He can be reached via email @: aminuhabibu58@gmai.com
