Read Part Four Here
THERE are, at least, two views on what the labour movement should do about the Labour Party today. First, there are those who believe that whatever problems we have with the party, we can transform it into what we want it to be. There are, secondly, those who believe that Labour Party, given its conception and birth is, at best, a weakling and, at worst, a congenitally disabled baby and a baby that cannot be claimed seriously as belonging to the labour movement.
For some of us, our view on the foregoing is that the Nigerian labour movement, with its critical core as the NLC, deserves a party with very sharp and unequivocal political programme conceived and launched by the labour movement, definitively mass-based and anchored on workers the youth and their allies. The birth and proclamation of the party cannot be a secrete affair! The party must not suffer from any disability, at birth, of any controversy pertaining to its ownership or its genealogy. Our inclination is to then propose that the current effort to build the Socialist Party of Nigeria needs to be supported and deepened.
Beyond everything else, then, we must make effort to reinstate the NLC as the heart of the trade-union movement. In doing so, the trade union movement must re-instate itself as the heart of the labour movement and the later must re-instate itself as the heart of the mass movement of the toiling people and patriots of Nigeria. The heart cannot, of course, be separated from the body in which it functions and the body cannot abandon the heart!
The very sharp boundaries prescribed above are necessary to obviate opportunistic political adventures and eclectic political tendencies that distract our movement from the task of building a party that is sufficiently principled, cohesive, and focused in order to make it immune from the various degeneracies that are characteristic of ruling class parties. This task is URGENT.
The position characterised above will enable us to place the labour movement on a consistent, independent, and principled platform that we can defend at all times. The situation we are in today in which our actions are eclectic and tied to the perpetual state of crisis generated by the ruling circles and which distract us from the task of building our own working peoples’ platform must be abandoned. This is because most of the Civil Society activities simply lines up working people behind factions of the ruling class.
For example, one of the major achievements of the Civil Society Committee on Electoral Reform was the removal of the former INEC Chairman, Professor M. Iwu. During the campaign, one of the leaflets issued by that Committee read: “When the President appoints, he corrupts – Say No! To the sole power of the President to appoint INEC Commissioners. ON UWAIS RECOMMENDATIONS WE STAND.”
Now that Yar’Adua’s successor appointed a new INEC Chairman insisting on the existing Electoral law, the relevance of the slogan “On UWAIS COMMISSION WE STAND”, was consigned to an indefinite future! In any case, the ruling class successfully reduced the entire crisis of Nigeria to the non-issue inside PDP – zoning or not zoning of the Presidency!
What is to be done?
We all seem to know what to do! But the task of building the organisation that will carry out this task is the problem. And of course, there is the task of how to carry out the task.
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The key problems of the past are many. First there is the lack of faith, even on our frontline, in the need for painstaking and meticulous organisational and educational work among the oppressed; our mentors like Imoudu and even our younger comrades like late Chima Ubani were models of faith in our struggle. They were not given to bourgeois individualism, opportunism, sectarianism and apostasy. They never sought short-cuts in bourgeois political horse-trading.
The other problem is that the NLC was almost fatally wounded since 1988 and especially since 1999. In 1997 (Lakemfa, 1997) observed that: “Labour’s main problem today is that it has attempted to break away from its source labour will (sic) continue to experience dry patches along its course unless it returns to its spring… In days gone by and I am looking back at the decade, the interests of the labour movement, mass organisations and students’ movements coincided. Hence the civil society was stronger. In years gone by, an injury to one was an injury to all… the past (was not) an idyllic one. It was not even the era of the Goodlucks. It is the period of the Sunmonus that lasted well into the 1980s.”
Beyond everything else, then, we must make effort to reinstate the NLC as the heart of the trade-union movement. In doing so, the trade union movement must re-instate itself as the heart of the labour movement and the later must re-instate itself as the heart of the mass movement of the toiling people and patriots of Nigeria. The heart cannot, of course, be separated from the body in which it functions and the body cannot abandon the heart!
Claude Ake (1978) made the crucial point that in the peripheries of world capitalism, the pre-occupation of the ruling circles is private primitive accumulation (concretely enhanced through deregulation, privatisation, looting, corruption, arbitrary changes of laws). The logic of that situation is murderous wars inside the ruling circles and violence against the victims of that accumulation (the working people, the youth, women etc) and against their organisations.
The crisis of poverty, decay of public infrastructures and institutions, deliberate demolition of public purpose policies and institutions, escalation of unemployment, crimes and insecurity, the increasing gap between the rich and the poor are not accidents of Nigeria’s history or geographical location. These phenomena do not arise from lack of resources or technological backwardness. They are the products of the way the resources of society are generated and allocated and the social and economic relations that derive there from.
Samir Amin (2004) further elaborated on the consequences of the situation for the political and the economic well-being of the masses of the people in the age of the “liberal virus” in which liberal economic (market forces) regimes tout liberal democracy which, itself, is subversive of genuine democratic rights of the toiling people, even of members of the ruling circles that lose out in the struggle for intra-class hegemony. In such circumstances it is a pipe dream for us to believe that changes in favour of the victims will come peacefully entirely through electoral and related “democratic” processes.
Minimum Programme for the Politics of Liberation
The traditions of Michael Imuodu, Mokwugo Okoye, Wahab Goodluck Gambo Sawaba, Alao Aka-Bashorun, Mahmud Tukur, Ola Oni, Bala Usman, Ntiem Kungwai, Chima Ubani and Lasisi Osunde (to mention a few of our comrades who had passed on) need to be re-enacted. A formidable working peoples’ organisation rooted in the toilers, the patriots and their allies need to be forged now! This is what makes a nationalist and anti-imperialist people’s organisation – a Liberation Movement – imperative today.
In broad outline, and flowing from the heritage of Nigeria’s nationalist movement and the 2002 Benin Declaration, the vision of the proposed Liberation Movement must be guided by three central commitments. The first is commitment to a united Nigeria with a united people who are genuinely sovereign and reinstates the agenda of independence and anti-imperialism.
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The second is commitment to an economic order in which the welfare of the people is the primary goal, in which the resources of our land and their exploitation and allocation are under the full control of the toiling people thus immediately enabling the minimum of a welfare state and incremental socialisation of the major means of production, distribution and exchange.
The third commitment of the movement will be the pursuit of a social and cultural policy that promotes cultural freedom and solidarity among our people, and frees their minds from superstitions and from ethnic and confessional prejudices.
Evidence abound all over the place that the ruling class unleashes as much violence in ethnically homogenous political space as they do across ethnic boundaries. Similarly, activists in our movement can show that the worship of God is more of a uniting force than dividing force among the oppressed i.e. we can build genuine and sustained religious ecumenism only under conditions of social cultural, economic and political justice.
Carrying out the foregoing tasks scientifically, conscientiously, and combining revolutionary speed and patience, is the condition for ensuring that our movement does not hand over the fruits of the current re-awakening of the movement, all over again, to the ever-present conspiracy of political opportunists in our ranks and the class enemies of the toilers.
Building a Mass Organisation for the Politics of Liberation
The crisis of poverty, decay of public infrastructures and institutions, deliberate demolition of public purpose policies and institutions, escalation of unemployment, crimes and insecurity, the increasing gap between the rich and the poor are not accidents of Nigeria’s history or geographical location. These phenomena do not arise from lack of resources or technological backwardness. They are the products of the way the resources of society are generated and allocated and the social and economic relations that derive there from. Consequently, a class of Nigerians have profited and continued to profit from the increasing marginalisation of the masses of Nigerians.
It is only in an organised form that the aforementioned masses of the Nigerian can confront and defeat that class that profit from the escalating crisis generated and entrenched by neo-liberalism. The objective situation thus created by the current social and economic crisis also creates the potentials for building the mass movement that will terminate the programme and processes of marginalization.
But to activate the potentials, certain problems need to be overcome. First, all the organisations that are capable of building solidarity among Nigerian people need to be rebuilt or re-invented (these include organizations like the Nigeria Labour Congress, National Association of Nigerian Students, Women in Nigeria, and the human rights movement). In this re-invention, a robust program clearly articulating unity among the oppressed, sovereignty of Nigeria, a minimum of a welfare state, social security for the masses and education for liberation and general repudiation of neo-liberalism is imperative.
Consequently, the most important resource required for building a virile mass movement is high quality activists, reliable and resilient cadres.
Effort should be made by labour activists to launch massive class-biased educational activities on political economy and related matters at state and local government levels. Our experience is that trade unions, students and other groups can anchor these activities by means of what we call Labour Support Groups at various levels. Because the student movement is generally under siege and formal students’ unions structures have become largely corrupted politically and culturally, the student movement must consider total rebuilding at a cultural level – a formal students’ union structure may not be requisite for this.
Secondly, certain organisations that have become potent in manipulating and dividing the masses of the people need to be transformed into instruments of solidarity among the people. These include faith-based organisations and ethno-nationalist organisations. Both ethic-nationalist and religious organisations can be engaged with creativity to make them active foci for social transformation. It is possible to persuade ethnic-nationalist and the so-called self-determination movements that united Nigeria where injustice and ethnic oppression is absent can be built through class-based mass movement.
Evidence abound all over the place that the ruling class unleashes as much violence in ethnically homogenous political space as they do across ethnic boundaries. Similarly, activists in our movement can show that the worship of God is more of a uniting force than dividing force among the oppressed i.e. we can build genuine and sustained religious ecumenism only under conditions of social cultural, economic and political justice.
We also need to clarify the core-periphery metaphor. The layers we referred to are usually characterised by shifting boundaries such that the quality of development of the movement itself will be measured by the degree of the blurring of the boundaries and progressive homogenisation of the movement. The import of the core is that it brings about the long-term vision of the mass movement – a vision that has the capture of state power by the movement as the goal.
The third problem is that social activism and general advocacy have become a big business! There, indeed, are times when one feels that if the raison detre of advocacy organisations cease to exist, new social crises will be needed to reinstate the advocacies. For it is the paradigm which created neglected and deprivation among the masses (“less-government—neo-liberalism) that spawned the multiplicity of NGOs! Indeed, NGOs have been characterised as “civil-society privatised”! This is also why ‘civil society” organisations, in spite of their tremendous proliferation and huge trunks of money, have not been able to even marginally disturb the advance of neo-liberalism.
The question of the amount of resources necessary to fund a virile mass movement has been important. I will say, off the cuff, that the question is often exaggerated. Resources, especially money, are necessary; but it is not central or pivotal. Indeed, it is often central in the decay and collapse of organisations. Only organisations that have developed high quality cadres can manage and use money and other resources effectively and in ways that advance the organisation. Also, only such an organisation can have the creativity, as well as the contacts, goodwill and integrity to generate the resources that it needs. That was our experience during the days of the Campaign for Democracy (CD) and the difficult periods of building the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU). Consequently, the most important resource required for building a virile mass movement is high quality activists, reliable and resilient cadres.
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At all times and in all locations where social movements have produced spectacular or any significant results such as the attainment of majority rule in South Africa, the return of social democracy in Latin America or even in Nigeria in the 1980s and 1990s, the movement had been a layered movement with “cores” of different depths and visibilities. In regard to the three problems confronting the activation of the mass movement in Nigeria, the imperative of building or rebuilding core organisations, the dynamos, that will power of the movement, is a fundamental task of building the movement. In this regard we need to be categorical that the dawn of the age of NGOs also coincided with the period of the degeneracy of the “dynamos”!
The task of re-launching the transformational process for our country is the task of gathering the pieces of that engine (the core), transforming it, and enlarging it. To speak of the pieces implies that there was, indeed, a whole – the core. That whole actually existed. It powered the virility of the labour movement in the 1970s, 1980s and the 1990s. It powered the Students’ movement in the 1980s and 1990s’. It powered CD, JACON and National Consultative Forum (NCF) led by Alao Aka-Bashorun before the latter two. Many of the Comrades I see here were part of that core; we are calling on all of them to re-invent the Politics of Liberation.
We also need to clarify the core-periphery metaphor. The layers we referred to are usually characterised by shifting boundaries such that the quality of development of the movement itself will be measured by the degree of the blurring of the boundaries and progressive homogenisation of the movement. The import of the core is that it brings about the long-term vision of the mass movement – a vision that has the capture of state power by the movement as the goal.
In the approach to the goal, specific day-to-day issues and popular concerns will be addressed by specific organisations (NGOs and CSOs, NLC, Trade Unions, the Students’ movement) and co-ordinated and accorded interpretation and popularisation that give synergy and cohesion such that these organisations cease to work in isolation. In other words, the business of networking among CSOs will cease to be voluntarist and eclectic but mandatory and programmatic. These will not of course last for too long because funders and those who want to maintain the current received prospective of CSOs and NGOs will not accept the statuses of on-lookers. In the circumstance, the task of building authentic mass movements, and the cores we referred to, is to quickly empower the movement and de-privatise civil society.
I am not romanticising or theoreticising the core. Without it, there will be no vision. For, the core, which must perforce enlarge itself, is the product of study, education and learning at individual and collective levels: activities which have produced experience, reflections, frustrations and inspirations and, above all, commitment and abiding optimism in the struggles of our people.
Bringing about a social transformation that is not trivial involves learning and teaching, changing people and changing their environments. It requires unpretentious humility and active work in which motivators and motivating organisations seek to reproduce themselves and even better clones of their organisations and of themselves. The idea of a core in an organisation is not posed in this discussion from an elitist, know-all viewpoint. It is being posed to emphasise that the point that the transformational process needs is an engine that will drive it.
The task of re-launching the transformational process for our country is the task of gathering the pieces of that engine (the core), transforming it, and enlarging it. To speak of the pieces implies that there was, indeed, a whole – the core. That whole actually existed. It powered the virility of the labour movement in the 1970s, 1980s and the 1990s. It powered the Students’ movement in the 1980s and 1990s’. It powered CD, JACON and National Consultative Forum (NCF) led by Alao Aka-Bashorun before the latter two. Many of the Comrades I see here were part of that core; we are calling on all of them to re-invent the Politics of Liberation.
Concluded.
Comrade Prof. Olorode first presented this paper at the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) Rain School held at the Workers’ Solidarity Centre, Atan Ofot, Uyo, Akwa Ibom State on 19th July, 2010. He later updated and presented it at the Conference in honour of Dr Dipo Fashina at Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife on May 7, 2013.
