Introduction
THIS PRESENTATION is occurring at a point of Nigeria’s history during which the ruling class had more or less completely brought Nigeria’s working people and the masses of Nigeria’s citizens to their knees in spite of the tradition of heroic resistance of our people. Between Euro-American imperialism and their Nigerian agents in control of government and most of public resources, the Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) forced on Nigeria especially since January 1, 1984 had become entrenched.
The siege especially on socially-provisioned services of education, health-care delivery, public-sector employment, like those of public utilities (electricity and power, drinking water, housing, even public safety and security, and mass transportation) have created and maintained economic and social inequality that increased a sense of relative deprivation and, consequently, diminished social cohesion.
The period between 1978 and 1988 was pivotal in the development, connections, and consciousness (collective and individual) of NMA and ASUU, and Nigeria’s working class as a whole. On December 31, 1983, the civilian wing of the Nigerian ruling class (installed by the military under Obasanjo via the controversial elections of 1979) decided to implement the Bretton Woods Structural Adjustment Program (SAP). The military coup on the eve of January 1, 1984 turned out to be a militarised and measured strategy of implementing SAP. Babangida’s subsequent military government of 1985 to 1993 and the Abacha/Shonekan/Abubakar Abdulsalami sequels were all regimes for managing SAP and keeping the accumulative interests of members of Nigeria’s marauding ruling on course
All the elements of this conundrum are consequent upon the conspiracy of the Nigerian ruling class with IMF/World Bank capitalist policies of privatisation (looting of public assets), debt slavery, devaluation of the Naira, cost-recovery on social service provisioning, liberalisation of trade (killing of local industries), reduction of public sector investments generally, and removal of the so-called subsides on energy, agricultural inputs, etc.
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The foregoing is the context of the development and intervention of the victims (and their allies) of the ravages of what A.M. Babu, the Tanzanian socialist activist, called “the two vultures” [A.M. Babu, 1981. Socialist Africa or African Socialism]
NMA and ASUU: Class Characteristics, and the Context of their Radicalisation
Both, the NMA and ASUU, even today after years of radical responses to the unending Nigerian crisis of underdevelopment, are basically middle-class (professional) organisations, sensu Saul D. Alinsky’s categories of the middle class. (Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals: Vintage Books Edition, 1989) as the social base of the ruling class from which the latter recruits its members and from which the allies of the victims like Mokwugo Okoye, Alao Aka-Bashorun, Eskor Toyo, Gani Fawehinmi, Bala Usman, Festus Iyayi, Bamidele Aturu, etc., in our own recent history, rise against the ruling class. At the international level, we wish to emphasise, and dedicate this presentation to, the teacher-doctor conjuncture (where those who care the mind and those who care for the body meet), of the socialist revolutionary interventions among who we must mention medics like Frantz Fanon (who was where Comrade Professor Christopher Piwuna is today!), Seinde Arigbede, Samora Machel (who trained and worked as an Auxiliary Nurse before the founding of FRELIMO) and Che Guevara; and teachers like Claude Ake, Bala Usman, Mahmud Modibo Tukur,, Eskor Toyo, Nwalimu Julius Nyerere! Paulo Freire, Eduardo Mondlane, Ola Oni, Noam Chomsky, etc, etc.
Most of the intellectual input into the anti-colonial agitation and politics which underlay and engineered Nigeria’s Independence Movement came from the labour movement, the youth, the peasants, women, and the highly-educated professionals who intervened largely as individuals rather than as professional groups and organisations. Characteristically, and reflecting the nature of the middle class, they were also the foundations of neocolonial dispensation as conceived in Kwame Nkrumah’s (1965) Neocolonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism; International Publishers, New York.
While the NMA was established in 1951, ASUU in its present form was established in 1979. We may proceed, conveniently, to saying that until about 1984, NMA operated largely as a sedate and unobtrusive organisation of economically and socially comfortable professionals. Similarly we may assert that the academics in Nigerian universities were relatively comfortable professionals with an articulate organisation in the mid-1960s and the 1970s.
As social formations or classes, their organisations and the individual consciousness of their members are, to various degrees, the product of the economic, political, and social ambience in which they develop and operate.
The period between 1978 and 1988 was pivotal in the development, connections, and consciousness (collective and individual) of NMA and ASUU, and Nigeria’s working class as a whole. On December 31, 1983, the civilian wing of the Nigerian ruling class (installed by the military under Obasanjo via the controversial elections of 1979) decided to implement the Bretton Woods Structural Adjustment Program (SAP). The military coup on the eve of January 1, 1984 turned out to be a militarised and measured strategy of implementing SAP. Babangida’s subsequent military government of 1985 to 1993 and the Abacha/Shonekan/Abubakar Abdulsalami sequels were all regimes for managing SAP and keeping the accumulative interests of members of Nigeria’s marauding ruling on course
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The implementation of SAP imposed untold burdens on the masses of Nigeria’s working people including the middle class workers and professionals whose standards of life deteriorated significantly. Having been radicalised by the ravages of SAP, the more radical and more socially conscious segments of the middle class (among the academics, medical doctors, lawyers and “organised” labour) assumed the historical responsibility, usually attributed to that segment of the class, by providing the ideological and intellectual vanguard that led the anti-SAP resistance especially until about 1988 when only ASUU and the students’ movement became the only visible forces remaining consistently at the barricades.
The debut of SAP in 1984, fully militarised, thus created a conjuncture that united the academics (ASUU), labour (the NLC), the students’ movement (NANS), the medical doctors (NMA), the lawyers (NBA), and the journalists (Nigerian Union of Journalists—NUJ). Members of these organised groups were also active in NGOs and various “civil society” organisations where they played active roles as co-ordinators and mobilisers.
ASUU is a registered trade union and an affiliate of the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) with about 60,000 members or so. NMA is a registered professional association with about 35,000 members in 35 states and in diaspora: i.e not registered as such with the Registrar of Trade Unions. While membership of ASUU is not differentiated, that of NMA is; with numerically superior, and relatively younger, members being members of the National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD). As virtually all members of NARD are wage workers they are more subjected to the general deprivations of members of the Nigerian Labour Movement which explains the more militant and more combative responses of their members. We may also mention that many members of NMA being University teachers, are also members of ASUU.
As Lagos and its South West environs were the centers of political and economic activities in1984 as they more or less remain today, the first encounters of a significant segment of ASUU with NMA took place in the 1980s around Lagos, Ibadan and Benin City with the University of Ibadan, University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University), Lagos State University and University of Benin as the epicenters of mobilisation by ASUU in support of the very militant advocacy by NMA for efficient and effective health care delivery system across Nigeria.
Various categories of NARD members in NMA actually had direct contacts with the University of Ife Branch of ASUU which also gave logistic and public information (leaflets, etc.) support. Many trips were undertaken from Ile-Ife to Lagos to attend meetings and engage in consultations with NMA, NARD, NUJ, and NBA. This was when some of us first met NMA activists like Dr. P. I. Okolo (NMA President–1983-1984), Drs Falomo, Isaac Adewole Atoyebi, and Beko Ransome-Kuti, etc. In Ife the more visible people in NMA were Drs Balogun, Fashakin and Professor Gani Ladipo. We also, subsequently met and worked with T.A Abiola-Oshodi (NMA President, 1988-1990) both of who were detained at some point by the Babangida junta.
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We may just add here that these struggles of NARD, NMA and ASUU benefited from massive synergy and solidarity among those organisations, and support from the Nigeria Labour Congress, the Students’ movement, the NUJ and the NBA. The said synergy and solidarity, we must also emphasise, were not spontaneous they were built consciously and sustained vigilantly.
How ‘Being’ Determines Goals and Practice
We already tried to imply that the economic and social deprivation, consequent upon SAP, radicalised Nigeria’s middle class generally. However, ASUU and NMA share two main peculiarities and a third which they share partially. One of these is their role in building human resources and its capacity (carried out by ASUU), and maintenance of humans themselves (carried out by members of NMA). The second peculiarity of ASUU and NMA is that they are both professions of intellectuals especially because they are exposed to a fair degree of liberal education.
The September 2025 Dangote Refinery double-down on PENGASSAN and NUPENG must be read correctly as the unveiling of the more advanced stages of the SALE of NIGERIA where Nigeria is now an asset of private organisations like Dangote Refinery, the truth of the direct opposite proposed by Vice-President Shettima that Dangote Refinery is “national asset”! Dangote resisted workers’ unionisation so effectively (including sacking their leaders) that government “intervention” simply endorsed Dangote Refineries intimidation of PENGASSAN and NUPENG. The entire mainstream media, owned by ruling class enablers of Dangote, and alleged labour leaders like Oshiomole, simply and massively enabled the Dangote propaganda and intimidation against PENGASSAN and NUPENG!
The third character that members of ASUU and NMA share, at least up to a point, is that the members are wage workers—those who sell their labour. While a significant segment of NMA are, or can be, self-employed, ASUU members are wage-workers. In this regard, we must add that members of NMA, their capacity to be self-employed notwithstanding, are more and more entering the “labour market” as wage workers and being confronted with the fate of the Nigerian working class under full-spectrum deprivation by, and dominance of, neo-liberal forces.
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ASUU is a registered trade union and an affiliate of the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) with about 60,000 members or so. NMA is a registered professional association with about 35,000 members in 35 states and in diaspora: i.e not registered as such with the Registrar of Trade Unions. While membership of ASUU is not differentiated, that of NMA is; with numerically superior, and relatively younger, members being members of the National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD). As virtually all members of NARD are wage workers they are more subjected to the general deprivations of members of the Nigerian Labour Movement which explains the more militant and more combative responses of their members. We may also mention that many members of NMA being University teachers, are also members of ASUU.
Articulation and Pursuit of Goals; Limitations to Pursuit of Working Class Objectives
We start by observing that trade unions and organisations of working people generally are limited by the balance of class forces in society. This explains why many trade union activities such as collective bargaining are, or become, legal (i.e allowed in law albeit with a whole lot of procedural and related encumbrances) and why many legitimate activities (such as engagement in contest for political power or organising around some third-party issues and issues of general national interest) are allowed only at the pleasure of the ruling class. Needless to say, these are issues that developed as part of the dynamics of class struggle and the resistance against capitalist, or general ruling class exploitation.
Trade unions and workers’ organisations define their organisational goals and visions of society mostly along lines permitted by ruling class laws. These are the foundations of the constitutions and codes of practice of trade unions and workers’ associations into which workers may also manage to embed less obvious goals beyond the regular ambit of industrial relations.
The NMA defines its main responsibilities as defence of the professional and welfare needs of its members, promotion of quality healthcare delivery in Nigeria including regulation of training activities and conduct of its members!
According to NMA, its Five Functions [Myschool.ng (https://myschool.ng); June 10, 2023] include “… influencing health policy formulation……promoting health enlightenment through television, radio.….providing free health intervention programs through outreaches to rural communities and the physically challenged”.
At the August 30 (2025) NEC Meeting of the NMA, its NEC issued a powerful communique arising from the theme of the meeting: “Healthcare in Transition: The Role of Advocacy in Security the Welfare and Retaining Talent in Nigeria’s Economy”. The NMA August 30, 2023 NEC Communique captured, succinctly, the concerns of various segments of Nigeria’s trade unions and working class generally, and ASUU’s long-standing demands and worries: unpaid salaries, unpaid arrears of allowances and salaries; Resolution No.6—casualisation of doctors’ employment, brain drain and consequent shortage of doctors and continued refusal to reinstate doctors—sacked because they were defending their legitimate organisational demands and demands around the welfare of Nigerians.
We note yet another significant convergence between the vision of ASUU and the NMA: convergence of vision on concern for the welfare of citizens outside their own organisational “jurisdiction”—humanist responses which we must distinguish from what exploiters have come to popularise of corporate social responsibility and which their victims call “concern of the horse rider for the horse”! NMA NEC thus decided on “Unveiling of a N37 million Welfare Fund by the NMA to mark a National Charity Day scheduled for October 20, 2025 across 36 states and the FCT”.
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The September 2025 Dangote Refinery double-down on PENGASSAN and NUPENG must be read correctly as the unveiling of the more advanced stages of the SALE of NIGERIA where Nigeria is now an asset of private organisations like Dangote Refinery, the truth of the direct opposite proposed by Vice-President Shettima that Dangote Refinery is “national asset”! Dangote resisted workers’ unionisation so effectively (including sacking their leaders) that government “intervention” simply endorsed Dangote Refineries intimidation of PENGASSAN and NUPENG. The entire mainstream media, owned by ruling class enablers of Dangote, and alleged labour leaders like Oshiomole, simply and massively enabled the Dangote propaganda and intimidation against PENGASSAN and NUPENG!
Like the NMA, ASUU’s Constitution and Code of Practice encapsulates the trade union’s internal operations and obligations to members and collective commitments to discipline in relation to the teaching profession and overall commitment to humanistic and social principles. Article 2, Rule 8 of ASUU Constitution commits its members to a very broad conception of ASUU’s responsibility to the advancement of Nigeria and all Nigerian people. For some of us in ASUU, this commitment is a demand on us that far, far, transcends our private and economic interests as workers. As a collectivity, this demand on ASUU also flows from the “Commitment of the Intellectual” (sensu Paul Baran, Monthly Review, 1961).
In the last forty years, especially since IMF/World Bank SAP became state ideology, the Nigerian ruling class has become reactionary. It has become an effective enemy of the Nigerian people in every way—an impediment to development and progress. To quote Baran directly: “Under such conditions, it becomes a matter of supreme importance and urgency to insist on the function and to stress the commitment of the intellectual. For it is under such conditions that it falls to his lot, both as responsibility and as a privilege, to save from extinction the tradition of humanism, reason, and progress that constitutes our most valuable inheritance from the entire history of mankind” (Paul Baran In: The Longer View: Essays Towards a Critique of Political Economy) – also quoted more extensively in: ASUU and the 1986 Education Crisis in Nigeria: ASUU National Secretariat, Mellamby Hall, University of Ibadan, Ibadan.
Understanding the Current Renewed Siege Against Nigeria’s Labour Movement
September 2025, including around it, witnessed a rather ominous milestone on the road to the recolonization of Nigeria. After over a full year of the military wing of Nigeria’s ruling class trying to hand over Nigeria to IMF/World Bank, they settled down to business with their civilian collaborators in September 1985 under General Ibrahim Babangida. The rest, as they say, including the return of Obasanjo and Buhari, as Civilian Presidents, is now history.
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The September 2025 Dangote Refinery double-down on PENGASSAN and NUPENG must be read correctly as the unveiling of the more advanced stages of the SALE of NIGERIA where Nigeria is now an asset of private organisations like Dangote Refinery, the truth of the direct opposite proposed by Vice-President Shettima that Dangote Refinery is “national asset”! Dangote resisted workers’ unionisation so effectively (including sacking their leaders) that government “intervention” simply endorsed Dangote Refineries intimidation of PENGASSAN and NUPENG. The entire mainstream media, owned by ruling class enablers of Dangote, and alleged labour leaders like Oshiomole, simply and massively enabled the Dangote propaganda and intimidation against PENGASSAN and NUPENG!
The period of 1984 and 1994 was arguably the height of militarised neo-liberal siege against Nigeria’s working people. This was also a period of high-calibre organising among different categories of the Nigerian Labour Movement (including NLC, NMA, ASUU, NBA, etc.) and the youth and students’ movement. These various elements of the movement were clear, focused and united in resistance. The records of this clarity of vision and consciousness of purpose exist in leaflets, books, pamphlets etc. At the level of the NLC, leaflets like “NIGERIA IS NOT FOR SALE”, and those rejecting WAGE FREEZE and SUBSIDY REMOVAL were exemplary.
This same September 2025, as we noted above, the FGN already provoked ASUU, with impunity, over grievances that had subsisted for over a decade (since 2009) and negotiations that had been going on for eight years (i.e. from February 2017), completely ignoring ASUU for more than a year! Once ASUU then declared a two-week warning strike following a full-month ultimatum, the FGN promptly instructs NUC to supervise its usual no-work-no-pay strategy—force them back to work by starving them and their families.
We already alluded above to the September (this same August-September) 2025 Communique of the NEC of NMA raising the same issues as ASUU had been raising. And regarding the grievances of NARD, the preponderant segment of doctors in the public sector, we paraphrase the report, “NARD Calls on FG to Reinstate Sacked Doctors” (National Record: October 15, 2025)
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“Five doctors sacked (October 2024; May and August 2025) by the management of Federal Teaching Hospital, Lokoja.. [who] have been out of work for over a year”.
NARD demands include “… reinstatement of five doctors [sacked at FTH, Lokoja],… payment of unpaid promotion and salary arrears dating back to five years, unpaid 25 percent to 35% increment and entitlements”.
“President of NARD, Dr Muhammed Suleiman said, “Nigeria is facing a crisis in the health sector, with a ratio of one doctor servicing over 9,000 Nigerians, compared to the standard ratio of one doctor to 600 people”. NARD emphasised the need for the arrest of brain drain in the health sector; the need for time-honoured strategy of social dialogue entrenched in labour relations traditions of collective bargaining and urgent responses by employers to the demands of workers’ organisations. NARD’s press statement quoted herein was made eighteen days after FG ignored NARD’s thirty-day ultimatum that FG address the grievances of the association.”
FG’s habitual nonchalance is of course a generalised response to working people’s demands regarding workers’ welfare and overall and critical national issues. In this regard, we observe the same completely nonchalant attitude on the demands of Federal Workers Forum (FWF) which was on the same issues as that of NARD (“Unpaid Wages, Failed Promises: FWF Accuses Tinubu of “Economic Sabotage”, “Crime against Humanity” – [National Record: October 15, 2025].
Ruling Class anti-Worker Hubris and the Ominous Retreat of the Labour Movement: What is to be Done to Renew the Vigour of Resistance?
The period of 1984 and 1994 was arguably the height of militarised neo-liberal siege against Nigeria’s working people. This was also a period of high-calibre organising among different categories of the Nigerian Labour Movement (including NLC, NMA, ASUU, NBA, etc.) and the youth and students’ movement. These various elements of the movement were clear, focused and united in resistance. The records of this clarity of vision and consciousness of purpose exist in leaflets, books, pamphlets etc. At the level of the NLC, leaflets like “NIGERIA IS NOT FOR SALE”, and those rejecting WAGE FREEZE and SUBSIDY REMOVAL were exemplary.
In 1986, the Alli Chiroma leadership of the NLC in solidarity with the Nigerian students shut down the entire country on June 4 to protest police killings at, and around, Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria. At the level of ASUU publications How to Save Nigeria (1984) and ASUU and the 1986 Education Crisis (1986) were prophetic antidotes to the then enforced policies which have continued to cripple Nigeria today at all levels.
Our movement must be rebuilt to take all the advantages of the similarities and identities of working people’s interests, and of the disabilities imposed on them by rampaging ruling class policies. We should be embarrassed that after close to half a century of successful experiments of building Local Government Chapters of NLC, ASUU, NULGE, NUT, NANMN, NMA etc., which have presence in all Local Government Areas across our country, are completely isolated from one another! ASUU and NMA, with their endowments for playing vanguard role and the role of intellectuals in the liberation of our people, need to respond appropriately and vigorously in our current circumstances.
Clearly many factors have contributed to the apparent retreat and weakening of the Nigerian labour movement in which ASUU and the NMA segment of the working class and NLC constituted major pillars of strength especially between 1984 and 1990 when the military established and enforced the foundations of todays’ economic and social policies.
Comrades, for all practical purposes, strikes are banned in Nigeria as privatization of healthcare and education are outlawing trade unions in private educational and healthcare institutions. The said retreat and weakening of our movement, we must admit, occurred as a result of external siege and internal subversion that produced a collaborationist response of a significant segment of our movement in NLC, ASUU, NMA, NBA, etc., and even in the students’ movement! But instead of analysing the weaknesses of our movement and redressing the consequences of these weaknesses we keep blaming or joining the ruling class which we know has its own class interest to protect and advance economically and politically.
The task of our movement is to review and re-calibrate the movement structurally, politically and ideologically. Organised labour at national, state, and LG levels needs to organise more coherently, beyond the current voluntarism, vertically and horizontally. Trade unions and workers associations including working people in the informal sector need to organise horizontally among themselves at every level by building solidarity through educational and social programs, and mutual support programs.
Our movement must be rebuilt to take all the advantages of the similarities and identities of working people’s interests, and of the disabilities imposed on them by rampaging ruling class policies. We should be embarrassed that after close to half a century of successful experiments of building Local Government Chapters of NLC, ASUU, NULGE, NUT, NANMN, NMA etc., which have presence in all Local Government Areas across our country, are completely isolated from one another! ASUU and NMA, with their endowments for playing vanguard role and the role of intellectuals in the liberation of our people, need to respond appropriately and vigorously in our current circumstances.
We have suggested on many previous occasions, and we are on record in these regards and in our consistent and constant interaction with organised labour at different levels, that it is only the victims of today’s escalating capitalist barbarism and especially its varieties in peripheries like Nigeria, that have abiding interest in a society that is free from exploitation and poverty.
This is where we are. This is from where we must renew and reinvent the promise of Nigeria’s independence which was the baby of Nigeria’s working class! Solidarity for Ever!
Emeritus Prof Olorode made the above presentation at the Nigerian Medical Association Colloquium in honour of ASUU President, Prof…Piwuna in Jos on October 31, 2025. Prof Olorde is a member, Secretariat Collective, Movement for Socialist Transformation (MOST), Odoje Biodiversity Center, Otamokun Road, Ogbomoso and can be reached via: Email: omotoopo@gmail.com; Phone: 0803 226 5244
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Greetings comrade for the good work you are doing in this outlet. Solidarity for ever!