Preamble
COMRADE President and Comrade General Secretary of the Non-Academic Staff Union of Educational and Allied Institutions (NASU), other distinguished principal officers of NASU, Comrade Chairs of NASU branches across Nigeria, distinguished Comrade Delegates to the 8th Quadrennial Delegates Conference of NASU, distinguished guests and all members of the Nigerian labour movement!
I want to express immense gratitude to NASU for inviting me to give the Guest Lecture of this Conference on the theme: “Trade Unionism in the Era of Economic Crisis: Addressing the Increasing Poverty Level of Nigerian Workers”. I appreciate this invitation as an endorsement of the continuing comradely, productive, and mutually reinforcing learning and teaching experience that had accrued between NASU and the tendencies in labour activism represented by some of us especially in the last forty-five years or so. We congratulate NASU especially for staying the course on the solidarity in our movement.
We also need to put it on record that the Nigeria Labour congress (NLC), while acknowledging with approval the opposition anti-corruption mantra in the campaigns of the 2015 General Elections, recognised the need for a definitive Agenda for Economic Revival (NLC Agenda For economic Revival, 2015), a copy of which was made available to me in mimeo form, on which I will rely for portions of this presentation, and to which I will return below.
The topic of this lecture reiterates, as we shall show presently, a concern in our movement which surfaced especially in the early 1980s and had deepened massively since then. This presentation will explore the sources (presumed and actual) of the “economic crisis”, the responses of the perpetrators and the victims of the crisis, and what the victims need to do anew.
The antecedents of the current economic crisis and the sources of responses in Nigeria’s labour movement
As we noted immediately above, the current crisis is the result and intensification of an existing crisis for which our movement has proffered analysis and solutions since the late 1970s. It is the same crisis against which the victims (workers, peasants, students and women) have struggled since then. It is also a crisis from which foreign economic interests and their Nigerian collaborators have continued to profit in an unprecedented way through increased national indebtedness, devaluation of Nigeria’s currency, killing of local industries—so called liberalisation of trade, underfunding of social services (education, health, public utilities), low wages and anti-trade union legislations and policies, looting of public assets (especially via the so-called privatization), increases in taxes (VAT increases, increases in school fees, petrol prices, etc.). It is the crisis which the manifestoes of the candidates of PDP, APC and LP endorsed and canvassed in the 2023 General Election.
Various documents from the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), the National Union of Nigerian Students (NANS), Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Campaign for Democracy (CD), etc. became important foundations for the massive resistance of Nigeria’s working people in the 1980s and 1990s. The siege against Nigerian workers did not abate since, even after, the Nigerian ruling class changed from military uniforms to civvies in 1999 when they started the current regrouping under liberal democracy—a “democracy” that had been, largely, a fraud for dividing the victims of neoliberal capitalism. It is neoliberal capitalism that unites the Nigerian ruling class and which had created massive poverty, inequality, insecurity and violence across Nigeria.
General Reflections on, and critique of, the definition of “Economic Crisis”.
The definitions of the term “economic crisis”, are very broad indeed. One such definition is by Zafiu and Zaracu (2013). It was defined as: “…a situation in which [the] economy of a country passes through a sudden decrease of its force, decrease is usually brought about by a financial crisis. The economic crisis may have the shape of a stagflation, of a recession, or of economic depression”.
Financial crisis in the above context occurs “when assets prices in an economy fall sharply. It is a specific instance of an economic crisis…” (https://www.tutorialspoint.com>dif…). When an economy is at the periphery of another as Nigeria’s is in relation to the US dollar’s hegemonic control, the simple affair of naira devaluation leads to assets in Nigeria losing value as a consequence. The definition and characterisation of economic crisis are thus multilayer affairs!
And as we see in the penultimate paragraph above, there is considerable overlap in the definition of economic crisis and specific facets of economic decline in a country. We address these specificities below.
What is recession and what causes it as “experts” in the capitalist hegemonic nations, such as USA, see it?
Immediately below, we quote excerpts concerning the definition and certain basic characteristics of what is called “recession” in the USA – the centre of capitalism in its neoliberal epoch of today study.com/academy/lesson/what-is-economic-recession-causes-effects.html (Sept. 13, 2015):
“Economic recession is a period of general economic decline and is typically accompanied by a drop in the stock market, an increase in unemployment, and a decline in the housing market. Generally, a recession is less severe than a depression. The blame for a recession generally falls on the federal [USA] leadership, often either the president himself, the head of the Federal Reserve, or the entire administration.”
Factors that cause Recession
High interest rates are a cause of recession because they limit liquidity, or the amount of money available to invest.
Inflation refers to a general rise in the prices of goods and services over a period of time.
Reduced consumer confidence is another factor that can cause a recession. If consumers believe the economy is bad, they are less likely to spend money.
Reduced real wages, is another factor, refers to wages that have been adjusted for inflation.
Recessions and Gross Domestic Product
An economic recession is typically defined as a decline in gross domestic product (GDP) for two or more consecutive quarters. GDP is the market value of all goods and services produced within a country in a given period of time. An example of one type of GDP would be the value of all automobiles produced within United States for one year. GDP only takes into account new products that have been manufactured.
The Great Recession of 2007-2008
Poor and irrational lending policies from the financial industry led many people to buy houses they cannot afford because everyone thought housing prices would continue to rise. In 2006, the bubble burst as housing prices started to decline. By August 2007, banks became afraid to lend to each other because they did not want these toxic loans as collateral. This led to the $700 billion bailout from government to help save several large financial institution from bankruptcy.
We may just add that in relation to the foregoing definition, four economic recessions had been identified since the end of the Second World War (i.e. since 1945)—1975, 1982, 1991 and 2009 “all of them lasting a year (although the 1991 recession would have lasted until 1993 if the IMF had used normal exchange rate weighted per capita real world GDP rather than the purchasing power…” (https://en.m.wikipedia.org>wiki>Global Recession – Wikipedia; see also Ekpo, op. cit. on the rebasing of the Nigerian economy).
Obviously, all the indicators of economic downturn prior to declaration of recession rarely begin at the same time or proceed at the same speed. This is what the critical contributions of the housing bubble and unemployment rates in USA (Keybridge Research, 2008) illustrate. We may just add that the declaration of the onset of recession in spite of being the province of “experts in economics” not only relies on opinion but is often influenced by political considerations!
Nor are these declarations even made with definitive certainty. Sometime early in 2017, we were hearing declarations (some feeble, some very bold and magisterial, that the President Muhammadu Buhari administration has finally led Nigeria out of recession (NAIJ.COM [https://www.naij.com/11009 (accessed on April 23, 2017):
Nigeria has finally moved out of recession according to reports… According (sic) London-based organisation [April] Sales Manager Index (SMI) data by Word Economics… Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) also corroborated this in a recent report…
These sorts of declarations, speculations and interpretations, etc., we must note, are characteristic of “experts” during capitalist recessions as we have for the economy of the US since the meltdown of 2007/2008!
This presentation has neither the mandate nor the time to spell out how the above declarations on, or interpretations of, economic performance are arrived at. Suffice it to say that certain indices, comprising the interplay of various elements have been devised towards measuring economic performance. These include Economic Performance Index (EPI), Misery Index (MI) and Discomfort Index (DI) [see Ekpo, 2016]. How did Nigeria’s touted exit from the recession mode by “experts” in April 2017 tally with the Score of MI by Hankok (2014), quoted in Ekpo, Ibid) thus “A higher misery index score reflects higher levels of misery”. Consequently if, indeed, Nigeria was out of recession, what would the MI since then look like? There can only be social class answer(s) to this question!
How does the NLC see itself? This question is important if we are to measure NLC’s response to the crisis of neo-liberalism and chart a programme for the fulfilment of its mission as perhaps the most visible vanguard of Nigeria’s labour movement. We quote copiously, below, from the Nigeria Labour Congress Policy Document (NLC, February 5th 2007)
Having regard to our firm belief that the answers to what a recession is (or is not) will be class-influenced, i.e. that they will depend on the position(s) groups occupy in production and social relations, we shall need to examine the class character of the Nigerian polity and the affiliations of these groups in international, now allegedly globalised, division of labour.
Nigeria’s Economy under Buhari’s APC: Was there or was there not “Economic Crisis”; however defined?
On May 29, 2015, the Nigeria ruling class regrouped under another retired army General (Muhammadu Buhari) of the All Progressive Congress (APC) to continue to rule Nigeria. Its main agenda, outside various promises whose various elements keep receding, is war against corruption. We have shown (Olorode, 2016) that the war against corruption would make rather limited impact as long as the Nigerian ruling-class remains committed to private accumulation under neo-liberal market ideology which, typically, locates countries like Nigeria at the periphery of global capitalism.
We also need to put it on record that the Nigeria Labour congress (NLC), while acknowledging with approval the opposition anti-corruption mantra in the campaigns of the 2015 General Elections, recognised the need for a definitive Agenda for Economic Revival (NLC Agenda For economic Revival, 2015), a copy of which was available to me in mimeo form, on which I will rely for portions of this presentation, and to which I will return below. The ruling class party APC, formally launched its Economic Recovery and Growth Programme only this April (2017) – two full years after it took power from the other faction of the ruling-class, PDP, whose members are daily decamping into the ruling-class APC. Talk of a ruling-class constantly regrouping! And two full years after the NLC articulated the Agenda for Economic Revival!
Needless to add, the NLC Agenda for Economic Revival 2015 re-iterated and built upon the radical nationalist, anti-SAP and anti-imperialist tradition of the Nigeria labour movement of the 1970s and 1980s and the NLC Policy Document of 2007 which we elaborate upon later (see also ASUU, 1984; NLC, 1980; 1984; 1984a; 1986; Olorode, 2016). It appears, however that the NLC 2015 Agenda for Economic Revival was for the purpose of engaging the ruling class government rather than for mobilising the victims of ruling-class social and economic siege and working towards installing a nationalist and working-class economic and political dispensation. In this regard, the 2007 NLC Policy Document was far ahead of the NLC 2015 agenda! We shall return to this clear inversion in the conclusions to this presentation.
As for what they call “recession” in Nigeria and had become the excuse for imposition of further and highly disproportionate economic burden on the working people of Nigeria and other oppressed classes world-wide, it was clear in 2007 and 2008, when the crises surfaced in the capitalist metropolises, that the oppressed of the so-called global village will bear the brunt! At that time both Professor Charles Soludo (former Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor) and Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala (the then Minister of Finance and ‘Coordinating Minister of the Economy’) and others were insisting that the recession would not affect Nigeria. It was not until the debacle advanced under Buhari that the Minister of Transport (Mr. Rotimi Amaechi) claimed that he told Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala earlier on that recession was under way!
While we were at it, the World Bank, the IMF and the ADB agents, inside and outside Buhari government, kept telling Nigerians that we are on our way out of recession. Indeed on-line media and other reports in the middle of April 2017 were already claiming that the Buhari government, from NBS and other data available to them, had already taken Nigeria out of ‘recession’!
What is the formal position of the NLC on the dynamics of the Neo-liberal Crisis?
How does the NLC see itself? This question is important if we are to measure NLC’s response to the crisis of neo-liberalism and chart a programme for the fulfilment of its mission as perhaps the most visible vanguard of Nigeria’s labour movement. We quote copiously, below, from the Nigeria Labour Congress Policy Document (NLC, February 5th 2007):
Stripped of all the confusion and the illusions that Nigeria’s ruling-class formations, intellectuals and their media have erected and imposed on the masses of the Nigerian people and itself, the labour movement in Nigeria has insisted from the late 1970s that the agenda of the ruling class and international capital had remained consistently antagonistic to that of the working people of Nigeria.
“The crisis is essentially a product of the domination of Nigeria by global capitalism with its ideology of the rule of market forces, libralisation, globalisation and the rule of international finance institutions. Successive Nigerian regimes, including the present [2007] civilian government, have subscribed to this ideology.
“Congress [NLC] envisions a people-driven people-centered and people-owned process of economic management pursued through an activist developmental and popularly controlled state.
“We believe that the trade union movement is best placed to provide leadership in building a just society and sustainable democracy in Nigeria.
“We shall work towards a planned and performing Economy
“We want to see an end to industrial backwardness, mass poverty, illiteracy, the collapse of health and social services and institutions, foreign economic dependency, gross exploitation of labour and political dictatorship and instability.
“We envision an economy founded on twin-pillars of state led industrialisation and agricultural development within the context of wholistic (sic) national development plan.
“An objective appraisal of organised labour in Nigeria reveals [that]: With a population of over 110 million the wage labour force in the formal sector which is rapidly expanding is largely not unionised. Some indigenous employers and some foreigners are hostile towards unions. The existing trade union law prohibit some segments of civil employees from unionisation.
“NLC will work towards ensuring that:
“All un-unionised workers in the formal and informal sectors are unionised… Existing labour legislation, which undermine voluntarism, rights of workers, unions and trade union independence are repealed.”
APC’s “Change Agenda” and the “Unchanging Agenda” of the Nigerian Ruling Class
Stripped of all the confusion and the illusions that Nigeria’s ruling-class formations, intellectuals and their media have erected and imposed on the masses of the Nigerian people and itself, the labour movement in Nigeria has insisted from the late 1970s that the agenda of the ruling class and international capital had remained consistently antagonistic to that of the working people of Nigeria. From President Shehu Shagari’s austerity measures of the early 1980s to SAP, to Vision 2010, 2020 and 2020-20, to today’s 2017 ERGP, the commitment of the ruling class had been to neoliberalism—private-sector led economy characterised below (Olorode, 2016) and enforced, over time, by the same personnel from military, civilian an civilianised wing of the ruling class:
“…the constancy of the neo-liberal ideology that has shaped the destiny of Nigeria from the late 1970s and the constancy of the personnel that drove that ideology entrenching the interests of transnational capital and itself, and engaging in private accumulation. …..[T]he neo-liberal agenda of selling Nigeria, liberalising trade, government disengagement from social services, reduction of employment in public sector, removal of the so-called subsidies, devaluation of Nigeria’s currency and continued build-up of foreign and domestic debt, are going on with dizzying speed! As for the alleged War on Corruption, there is nothing new about it or about its overall selectivity. In any case as corruption is always a corollary of capitalist accumulation, the façade of War Against Corruption is important largely for legitimizing ruling class power and periodic cosmetic purges. In all capitalist economies, preponderant proportions of surpluses from public wealth and sweat will, given the political economy of capitalist accumulation, remain in private and corporate custody.”
Concretely, according to an on-line report of Vanguard on 7th March 2017, “the [ERGP] document reads thus”:
“It [ERGP] is also articulated with the understanding that the role of government in the 21st century must evolve from that of being an omnibus provider of citizens’ needs into a force for eliminating the bottlenecks that impede innovations and market-based solution.”
This is an unequivocal re-statement of market fundamentalist assault against Chapter II of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria—an assault formally launched under military dictatorship in the mid-1980s!
Of course, given the continuing neglect of education through underfunding and privatisation, the claim of ERPG that “The Plan also recognises the need to leverage Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) and build a knowledge-based economy” is not just only sheer sloganeering; it is a cruel joke!
Nothing in the 2016 Strategic Implementation Plan (SIP) to which the ERGP referred, was new. Consequently, we must re-iterate a segment of NLC’s Policy Document already cited above (with my own emphasis) to show that the class interests of the succession of Nigeria’s ruling class regimes is antagonistic to that of labouring people:
“We shall work towards a planned and performing Economy…
“We want to see an end to industrial backwardness, mass poverty, illiteracy, the collapse of health and social services and institutions, foreign economic dependency, gross exploitation of labour and political dictatorship and instability.
“We envision an economy founded on twin-pillars of state led industrialisation and agricultural development within the context of wholistic (sic) national development plan.”
Of course, given the continuing neglect of education through underfunding and privatisation, the claim of ERPG that “The Plan also recognises the need to leverage Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) and build a knowledge-based economy” is not just only sheer sloganeering; it is a cruel joke! In any case there is already a significant quantum of STI on ground in Nigeria to enable us address Nigeria’s most urgent needs in food production, safe and accessible drinking water, transportation, energy, security, general education, housing, health-care delivery and amelioration of environmental degradation. It had always been exploitation and private accumulation that subvert these possibilities!
To be continued…
Being a Public Lecture delivered at the 8th Quadrennial Delegates Conference of NASU held December 5-7 in Abuja. Emeritus Prof. Olorode, foremost progressive intellectual and elder statesman, is Member, Secretariat Collective, Campaign for Socialist Transformation of Nigeria (CAST-Nigeria) Campaign Organisation. He can be reached via email: omotoopo@gmail.com
