Read Part Two here, and Part One here
EARLY in its life, the Sunmonu-led NLC produced the Workers’ Charter of Demands which became a basis of engagement with the various tiers of post-military political formations after October 1, 1979. And the resultant May 11, 1981 General Strike for Minimum Wage was a major struggle by the NLC.
Following the Buhari-Idiagbon-Babangida coup on December 31, 1983, both the NLC and ASUU (which already became an affiliate of the NLC) issued powerful policy statements (see ASUU’s How to Save Nigeria, 1984 and NLC, 1980; 1984; 1984a; 1986) stating the expectation of Nigerian patriots and toilers.
In what ways have the conditions of working people and the masses of the Nigerian people changed for the better in the last ten years of the so-called democratic dispensation? Apart from the increasing hunger, insecurity, unemployment and general surrender to hopelessness, the current economic demands by the NLC and the “civil society” groups – an increased minimum wage, opposition to deregulation of the down-stream sector of petroleum industry – show that the current democratic dispensation had dispensed with the welfare and future of the Nigerian people.
These various organisations also engaged imperialism and its agents robustly in the NMA strikes (1984-85), the so-called IMF debate (1986), the political debate (1986), the killing of ABU Students (May 26, 1986) and the anti-SAP uprisings and debates (almost every mid-year between 1986 and 1989). By 1988 when Babangida handed over NLC to John Holt’s Ogunkoya, the Congress was almost fatally wounded. Consequently, after Ali Chiroma, the labour movement had not recovered till today.
In terms of bidding directly for state power, the labour movement had not forged any serious labour-based party since the 1950s and 60s. The effort to form a Labour Party in 1989 was squandered by some of the professional trade unionists when they ended up in bourgeois political parties.
By the opening of the 1990s, it was the radical intellectuals, the students and some of the professionals, all scattered in NGOs, the so-called “human rights” movements, even ethnic-militia movements, and “pro-democracy” movements that led most of the anti-SAP and the anti-military struggles on the streets. With the exception of the brief spell of the involvement of the oil workers (PENGASSAN and NUPENG) in these struggles, organised labour (in NLC) avoided the anti-dictatorship struggles like a plague. It is therefore not surprising that when the dust of administrator control of NLC settled in 1998, Congress was handed over to the professional trade unionists all over again!
The weakness of the popular struggles in the 1990s can be accounted for largely by the complete distancing of organised labour from the efforts. This situation also deprived the popular forces of the education which popular struggles enhance among the oppressed. It partly explains, too, the central role that divisive ethnic and confessional groupings have come to play to the detriment of pan-Nigerian solidarity among the oppressed.
ALSO READ:
The 1981 General Strike And The Struggle For Minimum Wage; By Izielen Agbon
The failure or the limited achievements of popular resistance, especially in so far as it has not coalesced into a pan-Nigerian toilers-based movement, is also what enabled the remnants of the Buhari-Babangida-Abacha dictatorship to regroup and hand-over power to Obasanjo in what they then called democratic dispensation or nascent democracy
The Labour Movement (since 1999) under an alleged democracy
In what ways have the conditions of working people and the masses of the Nigerian people changed for the better in the last ten years of the so-called democratic dispensation? Apart from the increasing hunger, insecurity, unemployment and general surrender to hopelessness, the current economic demands by the NLC and the “civil society” groups – an increased minimum wage, opposition to deregulation of the down-stream sector of petroleum industry – show that the current democratic dispensation had dispensed with the welfare and future of the Nigerian people. Beyond those immediate demands of NLC and the civil society organisations, the general decay in the education and rural production sectors, in the quality of roads and environment, in power supply, health delivery services etc. was a dominant feature of that period.
And what has the ruling class done with this alleged surrender of peoples’ sovereignty which we call democracy. Essentially, they have used it to deepen the suffering and the servitude of the working people, to dispossess the polity and to feather their own nests. In specific terms, apart from the disenfranchisement of Nigerian people in what they call elections, they have forged electoral laws (see Insider Vol.16, April 22, 2002); they have alienated Nigeria’s patrimony through the BPE and privatisation, they have crippled the public education sector through underfunding and privatisation, they have demobilised the other social services sector (housing, healthcare even public security) through privatisation and what they call deregulation; they have subverted public morality, and they have institutionalised cynicism in public affairs.
We can only contrast the foregoing deterioration in the condition of the masses with the unprecedented private wealth that have been accumulated by individuals and groups of the various wings of the ruling class especially among professional politicians and their friends in the legislature and executive, in the bureaucracies and parastatals and among the members of the commercial classes (especially in the stock exchange, the petroleum importing and oil-lifting rings and the banks) and the consultants and contractors.
Where do they get the private resources from? Most of it is from the public treasury at different tiers of government and from the manipulation of laws and state power as the PTDF and the privatisation rows showed.
ALSO READ:
After The AU Summit, Africa Continues Its Drift; By Owei Lakemfa
As for democracy itself, the dispensation has simply turned out to be a blackmail which the ruling circles have appropriated in the sustenance of private primitive accumulation and progressive dispossession of Nigerian people. By 1998, it became clear to both imperialism and its Nigerian agents in uniform and the civils that accumulation could not proceed by means of direct military dictatorship or by civilianisation of the incumbent military administration. Imperialism, through a few murders here and there and retooling the solidarity among the surviving big soldiers and their civilian friends, settled for a civilian regime that will be led by retired soldiers and their civilian friends.
Media reports in the thereafter have shown that even Obasanjo’s kinsmen (and kinswomen) who were opposed to his emergence in 1999 started negotiating with him subsequently (2003?) on how to retain the South West while Obasanjo continued as Nigeria’s President. And three retired generals and former Heads of State of Nigeria were reported to have gone to the 10th Anniversary of General Abacha’s death to declare that Abacha did not loot any money.
As we now see, both dictatorship and its continuation by “democratic” means since May 29, 1999 have produced devastating effects on Nigeria and its peoples. However, while it was always possible to disown the military as usurpers of peoples’ power, it has not been easy or totally credible to disown an allegedly democratic regime – nascent or mature! This is the strategic import of their politics of liberal democracy and democratisation since 1998. The ruling class started by registering only three political parties all of which had the same pedigree. By the time they were forced to register more parties, they had settled down to subversion of democracy, public welfare and Nigeria’s sovereignty.
ALSO READ:
Government Panics As Cost Of Living Crisis Deepens; By Jibrin Ibrahim
To underscore the total contempt for the Nigerian people, the World Bank openly sent its agents into our key ministries and the Central Bank and the war against the people proceeded in high gear in what Obasanjo’s government called Reforms (“The Mafia takes over” Tell, May 17, 2004: pp.16-21). Okonjo-Iweala (2012: pp.6-7; pp.130-131) told us how the “international community” (the World Bank, IMF, Jim Wolfensohn, Gordon Brown, Tony Blair, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Anne Kruger, Condoleezza Rice, George Soros, and Bonos) cobbled the “mafia” together. She acknowledged they were powerful allies “to support reforms in a developing country by speaking out or backing reformers.” The resulting impunity was festooned with arrogance of power and Obasanjo was reported to have insisted that by electing his government, Nigerians have surrendered their sovereignty to that government.
And what has the ruling class done with this alleged surrender of peoples’ sovereignty which we call democracy. Essentially, they have used it to deepen the suffering and the servitude of the working people, to dispossess the polity and to feather their own nests. In specific terms, apart from the disenfranchisement of Nigerian people in what they call elections, they have forged electoral laws (see Insider Vol.16, April 22, 2002); they have alienated Nigeria’s patrimony through the BPE and privatisation, they have crippled the public education sector through underfunding and privatisation, they have demobilised the other social services sector (housing, healthcare even public security) through privatisation and what they call deregulation; they have subverted public morality, and they have institutionalised cynicism in public affairs.
Among the characteristics of historical societies, including our own today, Claude Ake (1981) observed: “Those who are economically privileged tend to be interested in preserving the existing social order; and those who are disadvantaged by the social order, particularly its distribution of wealth, have a strong interest in changing the social order, particularly its distribution of wealth.
More concretely, it is significant that Nigeria’s working people have suffered more direct and more sustained attack under post-Abacha democracy than at any other time. Every segment and every generation of working people is under siege – able-bodied workers, the youth and the aged (the pensioners and senior citizens).
Maybe, we should begin with the precarious fate of the Nigerian pensioners and the Pension Reform Act of 2004. The Pension Act of 2004 (National Pensions Commission, 2004) delivered the gratuities and pensions of workers, especially in the public sector, to traders in, and friends of, the ruling class with various provisions that short-change those who actually work for the gratuities and pensions. The excuse was that the subsisting scheme in the public service was inefficient without, of course, accusing or indicting anyone or group of public operatives in particular.
Pensioners under the new 2004 Act are actually forced to fund fat profits for Pension Fund Administrators. Meanwhile the victims of the old scheme are still in dire straits! And incidentally, workers in the federal public sector, the direct captives of ruling class at that level, have been the main, if not exclusive, victims of the Pension Act of 2004.
No other policy epitomises the class character of the Nigerian State more than the unrelenting constraints it has put on trade unions since 1973. The laws not only constrain what workers can do in their unions, they prescribed how they can organise and which groups of workers can organise. Through the instrumentation of the Trade Union Amendment Act of 2005, the ruling class returned to the scene of their previous crimes. Section 11 of the Act continues, for example, to deprive certain categories of workers the right to unionise.
ALSO READ:
Workers Struggles And The General Strike Of 1963; By Izielen Agbon
Section 12(4) of the 1973 Act was amended in 2005 to make recruitment of new union members more difficult by making union membership voluntary. Registration of trade unions by the registrar was without any condition under the 1973 Act. The right of Trade Unions to be registered unconditionally was removed by the 1999 Amendment (of Abdulsalami) and the removal of the right was retained in the 2005 amendment.
In so far as there is economic inequality in a society, that society cannot have political democracy because political power will tend to polarise around economic power. Also, a society where a high degree of economic inequality exists must necessarily be repressive. This repression arises from the need to curb the inevitable demand of the have-nots for redistribution. We see here economic conditions not only setting the tone of politics but also defining the role of coercion in society.
Section 30 of the Amendment 2005 6(b) has the intention and the effect that workers cannot go on strike on matters of socio-economic and political policies that affect their lives. It is thus contrary to ILO Convention (ILO, 1996; ASUU, 2006). Section 33, 34, 35, by permitting what the 2005 Act calls Federation(s) of Trade Unions, sought, directly, to weaken NLC as the sole Central Labour Organisation. This was also attempted by government in the moribund (New) Autonomy Bill for Federal Universities to weaken the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU). Today, privatisation in the education and health sector has resulted in the systematic denial of the rights of teachers and health workers to unionise in those sectors.
Class, Politics, Democracy and Electionism in Nigeria (1999-2009)
Among the characteristics of historical societies, including our own today, Claude Ake (1981) observed: “Those who are economically privileged tend to be interested in preserving the existing social order; and those who are disadvantaged by the social order, particularly its distribution of wealth, have a strong interest in changing the social order, particularly its distribution of wealth. In this way the economic structure sets the general trend of political interests and political alignments. In so far as there is economic inequality in a society, that society cannot have political democracy because political power will tend to polarise around economic power. Also, a society where a high degree of economic inequality exists must necessarily be repressive. This repression arises from the need to curb the inevitable demand of the have-nots for redistribution. We see here economic conditions not only setting the tone of politics but also defining the role of coercion in society.” [My emphasis]
To be continued…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.
