Continued from Wednesday, December 13, 2023
The task of the labour movement is to develop its own class perspectives robustly, popularise it, politicize it by polarizing it along class lines, and mount a nationwide campaign to defend it. This task is urgent, and we are very far behind schedule.
WE SUMMARISE, below, various and detailed reports of the amount of public resources that the Nigerian ruling class and their foreign partners have seized and turned into their own; we emphasise that these are just few examples:
1. Customs boss, Ahmed Ali blames DPR, NNPC over petroleum smuggling: (Abdul Seye Reporting: August 16, 2021).
2. $6.4 billion debt: NEITI threatens action against oil companies: (Vanguard, Obas Esiedesa reporting: July 15, 2022).
3. As Nigeria expands borrowing, 77 oil companies owe government #2.6 trillion: (The debts of oil companies include various taxes: income, profit, company, education, VAT, withholding, royalty, and concession on rentals. Premium Times: September 28, 2021; Ayodeji Adegboyega reporting).
4. 18 Terminal Operators owe FG $753m, N1.61bn—AGF: (“The Office of the Auditor General of the Federation has queried the National Ports Authority over the failure of 18 port terminal operators to remit a total of $753m and N1.61bn to the Federal Government.
The operators are the Lagos Port Complex, Tin Can Island Port, Delta Port, Rivers Port Complex, Onne Ports Complex, and Calabar Ports Complex.
“…The amounts form part of the debts standing against the operators as at December 31, 2019.
“…The operators were indebted to the government to the tune of $852.094m and N1,878,560,509.57.” [punchng.com; 15th August, 2022).
5. Ex-Governors’ jumbo pension package crippling states’ economies:(Chucks Oluigbo et al. Reporting]. According to this report, and in spite of this virtual looting of the states across Nigeria, “… the first quarter review report by the Nigerian Pensions Commission (PenCom) released in March 2016 shows that 24 out of 36 states of the federation, in total violation of the pensions Reform Act 2014, have failed to implement Contributory Pension scheme (CPS) and Group Life Insurance for civil servants in their states”
It is also generally reported that several state Governors “squander millions on private jets” Some of these are same governors that were advising Buhari recently (Premium Times, August 17, 2022; EXCLUSIVE: Governor ask Buhari to take 33 steps to rescue Nigeria’s economy) to put many, many more burdens on Nigerian masses including retrenchment and heavier VAT, etc.!
6. Again, regarding the profligacy over time of Nigeria’s state Governors, the report:Wike, Fayemi, Tambuwal, and 6 other governors squander millions on private jets.(Daily Trust (dailytrust.com), 20 May, 2022) merit close attention about how generations of state governors and others cripple Nigeria!
“Daily Trust reports that there are 38 presidential candidates in both APC and PDP including Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, the Senate President, Ahmed Lawan…
“While all the aspirants have been travelling across the country in chartered aircraft, the spending of nine serving governors has attracted public attention and scrutiny…[including]… Nyesom Wike (Rivers), Kayode Fayemi (Ekiti), Aminu Waziri Tambuwal (Sokoto), Bala Mohammed (Bauchi), Emmanuel Udom (Akwa Ibom), Ben Ayade (Cross River), Dave Umahi (Ebonyi), Mohammed Badaru Abubakar (Jigawa), and Yahaya Bello (Kogi).”
And in regard to the foregoing, the report, 10 Nigerian State Governors who Acquired Aircraft While in Office [autojosh.com] is also quite pertinent on the squandermania of several state governors.
7. RMAFC begins exercise to recover N10 trillion from government agencies: The unremitted revenues are for the period between January 2016 and December 2019.
[Bassey Udoh reporting: September 28, 2022]
The DG. Budget office of the Federation disclosed during the town hall meeting with Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) in Abuja, according to the report, “In 2018, the federal government and several of its own enterprises, including the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) owned about N10 trillion in unremitted operating surplus as at the end of August that year”. This is contrary to the provisions of the Fiscal Responsibility Act 2007, Sections 21 and 22.
The foregoing is, indeed, the tip of the iceberg. The more the one looks, the more one sees! All the facts are in the open about these things! Clearly the reason nothing is done about the deepening crisis is that all the critical functionaries of Nigeria’s neo-colonial capitalist chimera are direct beneficiaries of the decay.
May 29, 2023: Enters Tinubu’s continuation and deepening of the Neoliberal Siege on Nigeria’s working people!
We predicted ahead of the 2023 General Elections that it would not matter which of the ruling class Presidential candidates (Atiku Abubakar, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, and Peter Obi) is declared winner of the presidential elections because their antecedents, electoral manifestoes and body languages were all fully on the side of neoliberalism and “market forces”. It is therefore not surprising that the May 2023 report of the then President-elect Tinubu’s Economic Policy Advisory Council recommended:
1. Declare state of emergency in revenue generation; National security.
2. Transform FIRS, NIMASA into the Nigeria Revenue Service to collect direct and indirect Taxes and levies on behalf or FGN
3. Reform CBN
4. Implement Civil Service (Orosanye report) Reform [rationalisation; a.k.a. retrenchment in the public service generally].
5. Make interim leadership appointments pending NASS ratification
6. Order temporary increases in fiscal circuit breakers e.g. debt limits to be ratified later by NASS.
Human labour, as we have observed above, is primary and pivotal to the reproduction of society. Political power, the power of the state exercised by governments, including those that make and enforce labour and other laws and policies (wages, industrial action, right to unionise etc.) is class power. Governments, laws and other instruments of the state are therefore not neutral in how resources are produced and allocated. This political economy perspective of labour relations is fully grasped in Articles 37 and 98 of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) on Freedom of Association, in the African Charter of Human and Peoples’ Rights and Charter II of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria
Although we know the Bretton Woods origins of the policies of Nigeria’s ruling class since 1978, it is quite telling that the Tinubu Policy Advisory Council did not articulate the institutional foundations of its analysis and recommendations! But another “policy advisory” company was more forthcoming on the matter! The clear articulation of the Bretton Woods genealogy of Tinubu’s economic policy also became known in May 2023 [Oladapo Olayiwola (May 26, 2023), Nigeria Policy Advisory Note: Countdown to the Next Administration. Sweat Your Assets Derivative Limited, Abuja Nigeria (www.sweatyourasset.com)]. Dated May 26, 2003, the Sweat Your Assets Advisory Note was dated May 27, 2023—ten days after the date of the document by the Policy Advisory Council report dated May 17, 2023.
It was obvious also from the quotes, from the Sweat Your Assets Derivative document below, that the economic and social policies of Nigeria’s ruling class, as CAST-NIGERIA Campaign Organisation clearly predicted, would continue to be directed by the World Bank and related global capitalist forces no matter which of Tinubu, Atiku or Obi wins the fraudulent money-bag 2023 General Election!
Excerpts from the notes:
“Key policies that will shape Governance in the next 4 years?”
“…President Buhari launched (in May 2023) a new National Development plan tagged The Nigeria Agenda 2050… a successor to the National Development Plan 2021-2025—to achieve a per capital GDP of $33.328 per annum… By increasing real gross Domestic product by 7% and creating 165 million jobs across the country.
“There are valid expectations that the incoming APC administration will work within the new development plan developed by the outgoing APC administration ” there are clear indication from the aspiration of the new development plan and the private sector antecedent of the president- elect that Nigeria will focus aggressively more on driving accelerated and systematic economic development outcome”.
“Outlook for new monetary and fiscal policy Environment”(p.7)
“A raft of transformational changes to the fiscal and monetary policies of the outgoing administration……economically unviable and unsupportive policies of the CBN…forensic review and audits…of government institutions…”
“Bretton Woods policy imperative that Nigeria must take on board… IMF executive Board recommendations to Nigeria in its Article IV consultation report release on February 8, 2023…[will] enable Nigeria tighten its Fiscal and monetary policies to (1) Secure macro-economic stability combine with (2) Structural reforms to improve government, strengthen the agricultural sector…
Some of the (IMF) key policy priorities recommendation include permanent removal of fuel subsidies by mid-2023; stoppage of oil theft; improved tax compliance through automation; tax payer segmentation; customs-modernisation; rationalization of tax incentives; adoption of excise and VAT rates of comparator Neighboring West African State (Niger 19%, Senegal 18%…Gambia, 15%; Liberia 10%; Nigeria 7.5%)….”.
The nexus among trade unionism, labour relations, economic recession and political economy
In this segment of our deliberation, I seek to show the impact of recession on different social classes in society, how political power relations of the classes determine the legal foundations of industrial and labour relation processes and practices and determine the impacts of recessions on different social classes
Recessions are important and regular features of classical capitalist economies as we have shown above. Investors establish enterprises to make as much profit as possible; the market is said to regulate economic activities. Production will go on and human labour will be engaged until and unless production becomes unprofitable. Production, at this stage, declines (see definition of recession above), workers are sacked (laid-off) and general production levels further diminish because unemployed workers cannot buy products or afford services. In these circumstances, the most immediate negative impacts are on labour. Nobody invests just to create jobs! The GDP drops but the owning class keeps all the wealth they have accumulated from the sweat of worker who are discarded like dirty rags!
Under capitalist market modes of production, society is divided into classes—employers and employees; owners of work places and owners of labour power. There will always be a struggle (class struggle) between the two classes over how much wages workers will be paid and how much profit investors will have.
Arising from the foregoing discussion, Nigeria is a class society comprising broadly of a tiny really owning class and a large class of poor working people with a middle group of constantly varying sizes, group (class) identity and self-consciousness. The owning class (the ruling class) has made tremendous wealth accumulation; so much that huge caches of raw money with disputed ownership are discovered every day in cemeteries, septic tanks, empty apartments, etc.
Societies are of course, at different stages of development regarding the percentage of those in the sort of wage labour we have described. In the stages as Nigeria had been in the last one hundred years or so, the organised power of the ruling class (the state) under successive ruling class governments (under colonialism and post-Independence) also functions as employer of labour in direct production (mines, factories, farms, public works) and services such as banking, hotels etc. and social services—education, health, civil and security services etc.), and thus enters into employer/employee relations and generates surpluses a small part of which the ruling class allocate to workers as wages. Beyond these, the state further extracts surpluses from taxes etc., imposed on petty traders and self-employed people.
Surpluses also accrue to investors in other ways such as produce buying, share cropping etc. as in cocoa, rubber, groundnut and tobacco production. There are reports now of new modes of generating surplus in which capitalists give seeds (rice, cotton, tomato, etc.) and other farm inputs to small holders and the harvests are later sold to the companies. This mode of exploitation will grow as a result of the new propaganda on “return to agriculture”; it is not new!
The foregoing, in a rather simplified form, is what creates labour relations in what is called the formal sector of the economy.
Trade Unionism and Labour Relations have to do with how employer/employee relations are organised and regulated. As we noted above, the relationship is generally conflictual. It is characteristic of the industrial relations concept of labour relations in the so-called tripartite paradigm of the employer, the employee and a regulation agency often representing the state as epitomised by government. The tripartite relationship is regulated by a legal framework that prescribes procedures for various engagements including dispute resolution processes, collective bargaining, recognition and implementation of agreements, arbitration procedures etc. within the industrial relations conceptual framework, the state and its laws tend to be viewed as neutral and certain class activities and agitation not directly related to place and conditions of work such as civil rights action, political action on demands for generalised economic and social reforms (humanisation of society and generalisation of economic and socio-economic opportunities), mass movement and solidarity action across trade union jurisdictions and social groups, are considered to be legally outside the purview of industrial relations.
The justiciability of these legitimate activities is generally denied by trade union laws and regulations thus weakening the influence of the working class as a movement. On the contrary, members of employers’ associations (in NECA, NACIMA, etc.) constantly influence the formulation and implementation of public policies as funders of political parties and as appointees and sinecures such as government representatives on boards of public parastatals university Governing Councils, and as advisers to governments in formations like the Presidential Economic Advisory Committee, etc.
The above leads us to the political economy conception of labour relations. This conception of labour arises from the fact that labour relations do not consist of legality of relations alone but also legitimacy of relations—right to work, right to freedom, right of association and right to participate in the politics of how one’s country is governed.
Human labour, as we have observed above, is primary and pivotal to the reproduction of society. Political power, the power of the state exercised by governments, including those that make and enforce labour and other laws and policies (wages, industrial action, right to unionise etc.) is class power. Governments, laws and other instruments of the state are therefore not neutral in how resources are produced and allocated. This political economy perspective of labour relations is fully grasped in Articles 37 and 98 of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) on Freedom of Association, in the African Charter of Human and Peoples’ Rights and Charter II of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (ASUU, 2017: p. 6)
Recession, Political Economy, Trade Unionism and Labour Relations in Nigeria Today.
Arising from the foregoing discussion, Nigeria is a class society comprising broadly of a tiny really owning class and a large class of poor working people with a middle group of constantly varying sizes, group (class) identity and self-consciousness. The owning class (the ruling class) has made tremendous wealth accumulation; so much that huge caches of raw money with disputed ownership are discovered every day in cemeteries, septic tanks, empty apartments, etc. A former President boasted how he made only 50 Nigerian billionaires out of the 100 he planned to make and a state governor followed with declaration of how many millionaires he had made in his state! Certain Nigerians have also been declared the richest people in Africa!
We have tried to show in this discussion that what is referred to in today’s Nigeria as economic crisis or recession is a normal state in the regular economic cycles of market- or the so-called private sector-led capitalism. It is not new as it has almost predictable ten-year cycles. Its effects are most disruptive in the peripheries of global capitalism like Nigeria where the ruling class are collaborators, agents and beneficiaries and the working class, and the poor generally, are the victims.
But all these did not start in 2015 or even 2005! They are not even autonomous and isolated processes. They result from the joint demolition by the Nigerian ruling class and IMF of periphery of global capitalism called Nigeria early which began with the SAP processes of late 1970s and early 1980s leading to de-industrialisation, debt peonage, demolition of social services, privatisation and war on the labour movement. This, what I call the Neoliberal Siege against Nigeria (Olorode, 2016), matured especially in the last two decades. It is being consolidated in the ERGP of the current ruling party (APC) as we observed above.
The declaration of economic recession by Nigeria’s ruling class is also significant in relation to the history of global economic recession and its economic and political consequences in Nigeria. The global recessions of 1975, 1981, 1991, 2001, and 2007 coincided, year-for-year, with major economic crisis and political upheavals occasioning regime changes in Nigeria (Gowon/ Murtala Muhammed-Obasanjo, Obasanjo/Shsgari, Shagari/Abacha-Buhari-Babagida, Abacha/Abdulsalami-Obasanjo-YarÁdua-Jonathan-Buhari)! These upheavals are also almost invariably, instigated and supervised by the financial institutions and agents of imperialism—IMF, World Bank, ADB etc.; this got particularly brazen since 1999 when the agents and employees of these institutions were posted to Nigeria as ministers, advisers, consultants etc.
Consequently, in all these changes of regime (through military coups or allegedly democratic processes), the same general reasons are advanced for alleged new economic policies. These include allegations of corruption and mismanagement against the immediate past regimes; fall in prices of export commodity (oil), alleged bloated public service, “indiscipline” among citizens etc. Various “solutions” are then canvassed in the public sector as means of overcoming recession. These include all manners of austerity measures such as embargo on employment, sack of workers under various guises removal or reduction of “subsidies” (high fuel prices, subsidised feeding for university students in 1984), introduction of new charges (school fees, toll gate charges, new VAT, other new taxes etc.), reduction or non-payment of workers’ salaries (1985/1986; part-payment of salaries in universities in the last two years or so; non-payment of salaries in many states of the federation; non-payment of pensions; high taxes on wages imposed by state governments).
For many reasons that we cannot be debating in this discussion because of limited time, we cannot do much about NLC constitution for now. But given the possibility of re-awakened consciousness along with improvement of our organisational breadth and depth, we can begin to forge new working-class and mass consciousness that will transform Nigeria for the benefit of the working class.
Contrary to these increasing burdens on the already overburdened working class, underperforming private and privatised enterprises are variously subsidised (banks, privatised electricity companies, private universities and other education institutions) by ruling class regimes through bail-outs, tax reliefs, provision of public-funded infrastructures, preferential patronages etc.
Again, in relation to the power of members of the ruling class to appropriate massive resources and surpluses, we must take account of the cost of running governments at all levels—federal, state, and local; not to talk of massive allocations to First Ladies and parasitic institutions such as the so-called traditional rulers.
In recessions the state also intervenes in the exercise of the rights of working-class organisations by changing existing laws on trade union organisation, affiliation, pensions (e.g. The 2004 Pension Acts etc.). Where the ruling class is sufficiently confident, the trade unions and labour centres are banned totally as in the mid-1970s and in 1988 and 1994/1995 when NLC was banned; ASUU was also banned several times. When a government embarks on, or continues, privatisation during a recession, as the current government does, the omnibus effect is to legitimise lay-offs, encourage employers’ opposition to unionisation and weaken the labour unions generally!
As for the so-called private sector during recessions, the employer/employee paradigm, the primacy of profit or profitability and the overarching powers of the state, as we have observed above, simply confront the employee with the choice of reduced wages or retrenchment. When their organisations have become extremely weakened as in the Banking, Finance and Insurance, workers are simply sacked or casualised! On the specific question of job losses, Lucky, Minai and Hamzah (2015) addressed aspects of the plight of working people regarding job security during what they call “Economic Downturn” (https://www.researchgate.net/publications/276242267 Employee’s Job Security during Economic Downturn [accessed Apr 18, 2017] as follows:
“For example, Diamond Bank Plc has also downsized its workforce by 500, First Bank has also sent 500 staff packing, Intercontinental Bank has also compiled the list of 200 staff that will be terminated in December. At Bank PHB, the staff is presently living in fear as names of those to go are also being compiled and Spring Bank has just relieved 300 staff their jobs (Adigun, 2009). In the production sector, the Manufacturing Association of Nigeria (MAN, 2009) has reported that the Nigeria economy has worsen (sic) in such that many firms are closing down while the fate of the remaining ones is uncertain, and others are relocating to the neighbouring country like Ghana. Accordingly, Katsina (2012) reported that despite being the largest employer of labour after the public sector, about 675,000 Nigerians have lost their jobs owing to the closure of 150 out of the 175 textile mills in operation across the country. All these are as a result of the economic downturn.”
Re-Awakening the Working Class for Economic and Social Transformation—the Nexus
We have tried to show in this discussion that what is referred to in today’s Nigeria as economic crisis or recession is a normal state in the regular economic cycles of market- or the so-called private sector-led capitalism. It is not new as it has almost predictable ten-year cycles. Its effects are most disruptive in the peripheries of global capitalism like Nigeria where the ruling class are collaborators, agents and beneficiaries and the working class, and the poor generally, are the victims. The current recession acquires its particular virulence and endurance because of the constellation of national and international class forces that brought it about and supervised its today’s phase characterised as neo-liberalism.
As a result of the unending class-struggle in a class society, as we have in Nigeria, all political, economic and social regimes, policies and events (policy statements, laws, budgets, protests, negotiations etc., elections coup d’états etc.) are attempts by the ruling circles to stabilize themselves and maintain their dominance. In our own situation today in Nigeria, the goal of transformation for and by the working class is to build a country in which the interests of the working class become dominant; this will happen as working-class consciousness permeates society, become the engine of policies, and deepen economic and social transformation by and for the exploited.
The task of re-awakening working-class consciousness is then, one that has to proceed, always, with political power, controlled by the working class, as the goal. There are at least two roads to that goal: one insurrectional and revolutionary, the other electoral. There are also varieties of these two roads or mixtures of the two processes that history has made available to the working people of the world. We do not have enough time to address the complexities pitfalls of these options. Suffice it for us to assert with confidence that the processes and the balance of forces in the processes will determine the specific tactics of the arriving at the goal. In these circumstances, what we are sure about is that only a fully conscientized and, therefore confident, working class will be able to defend a working-class state when they midwife one.
As we noted above the state councils of the NLC are generally weak; they are perhaps the weakest links in the chain of organised labour in Nigeria. A firm commitment from all industrial unions therefore needs to be extracted for the invigoration of the state councils of NLC (and TUC). Needless to say, it is almost an absolute certainty that only strong state councils (SC) of the trade union federations that can foster virile or any Local Government chapters of Congress.
Below, we address the content of the reawakening of working-class consciousness in terms of required knowledge and the dynamics of knowledge application to practical day-to-day events of class struggle and class solidarity among the working class.
Required knowledge and its application
There are two main loci for the re-awakening and deepening working class consciousness: inside statutory trade union formations; and outside them. The ruling class, through various laws and cultural institutions limit the potentials of trade unions; the underdevelopment of trade unions may also limit their potentials and capacity. But the entire labour movement, from our own experience has the capacity and the responsibility to anchor and deepen working class conscientization in a way that the trade unions and their structures may not have developed to be able to handle.
In these circumstances, the challenge is to empower the trade union movement and the labour movement to develop their separate potentials towards developing a synergy between both of them. Beyond regular trade union education and conscientization program with the minimum of the following syllabus: History of Nigeria from a working-class perspective, History of the trade unions and the labour movement in Nigeria: labour laws and regulations, History of colonialism and anti-colonial struggles in Africa with emphasis of the role of labour, women and the youth, Tribalism, religion and class; what is the material base?, Class and class struggles in society, Class, Human Rights and Democracy, Slavery, wage labour, capitalism and socialism, The state, governments, class and society, Imperialism, Neo-colonialism and Neoliberalism, and The heroes and heroines of Nigeria’s labour movement.
The above minimum syllabus may be rearranged, or expanded as appropriate. The topics may also be further graded so that we can have introductory level and advanced level syllabi. In the 1980’s, we actually implemented similar programme at Ile Ife. Beyond formal educational and conscientization programmes, the movement, as we suggest below, must creatively engage in mass actions, campaigns, and creative media engagements etc. Education and conscientization are achieved, ultimately, in active class struggles; that is the laboratory!
Organising for the re-awakening of working class consciousness
The Nigerian trade union set-up is a creation of ruling class law. This, as we have said, creates certain problems for organisation and the liberation of the working class. Similarly, the level of the consciousness and the material and ideological commitments of labour leaders determine, very much, how deep working-class consciousness can be. The struggle of working people is at once economicist and political. Trade union struggles tend to be largely the former whereas the political is a steadier guarantee for the political and the economic.
The classical responses to recession in the centres of capitalism like the USA and UK had been some form of welfare-state program involving massive public works programmes, programmes that increase the purchasing powers of the poor and institute subsidy regimes to farmers and workers. This sort of response characterised economic recovery in the USA (the New Deal – 1933-1938) and UK during the so-called Great depression. It was the basis of the post-1945 nationalisation programmes in Europe. It worked until capitalists fought back or war economies intervened to give the false hope that capitalist market forces are the only means through which societies can guarantee human progress.
We see two major weaknesses in the organisation (structure) of organised labour in Nigeria today. First, arising from NLC’s constitution as a federation of industrial unions (the democratic potentials not withstanding) there is too much voluntarism among the industrial unions. Secondly, the voluntarism mentioned immediately above multiplies the weakness of organised labour at state council levels and most especially at local government levels. Addressing these two key weaknesses requires fundamental political and class commitment of the leaders of the labour movement—elected and appointed officers of industrial unions, labour activist and intellectuals and other allies and leaders of the movement. It is only the re-awakening of the activists of the movement that will, ultimately, re-awaken the working class and renew the creativity of all segments of the movement.
For many reasons that we cannot be debating in this discussion because of limited time, we cannot do much about NLC constitution for now. But given the possibility of re-awakened consciousness along with improvement of our organisational breadth and depth, we can begin to forge new working-class and mass consciousness that will transform Nigeria for the benefit of the working class. Below, we provide a labour movement model for organising our urgent conscientisation programme.
The model identifies the conscientisation programme of organised labour and proposes a complementary organisational structure that carries out organisational and conscientisation programme, whose participants and programme are not restricted to members of the industrial unions or limited by the legal fetters of trade union legislation.
As we noted above the state councils of the NLC are generally weak; they are perhaps the weakest links in the chain of organised labour in Nigeria. A firm commitment from all industrial unions therefore needs to be extracted for the invigoration of the state councils of NLC (and TUC). Needless to say, it is almost an absolute certainty that only strong state councils (SC) of the trade union federations that can foster virile or any Local Government chapters of Congress.
As I have canvassed previously in several other fora, the Labour Support Group at state (SSG) and local (LSG) levels is a parallel but complementary structure which derives its activism from the politics of class struggle involving actors inside organised labour and outside it (the youth generally, students women, non-unionised workers, farmers and peasants, petty traders and the unemployed). The labour support group is thus envisaged as a political arm of the labour movement!
Conclusions
This presentation had addressed the issue of class consciousness and its material base. We have seen that Nigeria’s working class has a robust history of working-class struggle that has also raised its class consciousness and produced potentials for social transformation. We noted that by their nature, social struggles produce victories and defeats from which appropriate lessons must be learned. We insist that the economic and the political elements of our struggles need to be pursued simultaneously and consistently because politics decides how the material base of society may be maintained or transformed. We concluded by observing that class struggle and/with conscientization needs to be carried out simultaneously. Having regard to the legal constraints on the trade unions in an economy dominated by an exploiting ruling class, the working class needs to build political organisations (for now, not necessarily electoral) that strengthen working class consciousness, sustain working-class political power on its agenda and win day-to-day economic struggles.
The ruling-class policies and programmes, including the one on the current recession, are class-interest policies and programmes. This is why we said the optimism of the NLC Agenda for Economic Recovery, 2015 was misplaced; the agenda asserted: “The Congress remains committed to the process of robust and constructive engagement with the Buhari Presidency convinced that its administration would favourably disposed (sic) to working with all segments of Nigerian society in its much appreciated commitment to… Fighting corruption… Addressing security situation…Repairing the national economy in ways consistent with sustainable and inclusive growth and development as well as creation of ample decent employment for the teeming population.”
The preface to a 2004 report, Renewing Public Ownership (Cumbers, 2014: p.1) observed, among other things, that: “Neoliberalism, the dominant political orthodoxy since the 1980s views the state as primarily the defender of national sovereignty, protector of private property and maintainer of social order…; there is no role for the state in promoting sustainability, social justice or technological progress.”
Let me also quote, at length, part of the Executive Summary of the report (Cumbers, Ibid: p.3): “Since 1979, privatisation and marketization policies of successive governments have delivered the economy into the hands of a narrow set of corporate and financial interests. The consequences are that decision-making is geared towards short-term profit and rent-seeking at the expense of more long-term thinking and in particular strategic concerns for the common good.
“Privatisation has also been accompanied by a growing foreign ownership of [UK’s] most strategically, important resources and assets…
“In particular, we need to create new forms of public and collective ownership that are better able to develop an economy to serve social needs and environmental concerns over private gain.
“The report also counters the widespread myths and caricatures of the past forms of nationalisation [in the UK] to stress the under-reported effectiveness of many forms of public ownership at delivering public goals, in contrast to the experience with privatisation.”
Believe it or not, these are all reflections on neoliberal crisis in the UK! The parallels with the crisis in Nigeria are obvious. But because the Nigerian ruling class is a client of global capitalism, it is handicapped more definitively. Consequently, the Nigerian ruling class handicaps Nigeria and its working people!
The classical responses to recession in the centres of capitalism like the USA and UK had been some form of welfare-state program involving massive public works programmes, programmes that increase the purchasing powers of the poor and institute subsidy regimes to farmers and workers. This sort of response characterised economic recovery in the USA (the New Deal – 1933-1938) and UK during the so-called Great depression. It was the basis of the post-1945 nationalisation programmes in Europe. It worked until capitalists fought back or war economies intervened to give the false hope that capitalist market forces are the only means through which societies can guarantee human progress.
It is neoliberal “there-is no-alternative” (TNA) mantra globalised that has deepened poverty and inequality in the world, created wars and violence inside polities and across national borders, generated immigrant crisis and inaugurated Trumpism, ultra-nationalisms, racism and xenophobia.
As the fundamental ideological posture of the main ruling class parties in the 2015 and 2023 electoral contests clearly indicated, it will be always futile to advise them to abandon neoliberal policies. The ideological foundations of the government’s 2017 ERGP and recommendations of the May 17, 2023 report of Tinubu Policy Advisory Council corroborate the correctness of our assertion! It is failure to understand these that leads organised labour to keep thinking that the ruling class can be persuaded, via industrial relations processes and prescriptions alone, to deliver in favour of the working people.
But it is this neoliberal programme that the Nigerian ruling class is still peddling with the ERGP between 2015 and 2023. It is the same program and policies that the leading candidates of ruling class parties canvassed with their manifestoes in the 2023 General Elections. It is the program and policies that the Tinubu Policy Advisory Council published on May 17, 2023. The same program underpins President Tinubu’s current policies on privatization, liberalization of trade (removal of import restrictions on importation of toothpicks, rice, cement, that impose new fuel prices, that canvasses increases in taxes, that will reduce the size of the public sector! These are the policies that the entire labour movement in Nigeria and at global levels need to combat in order to outlaw capitalist recessions in Nigeria and throughout the world.
To achieve the task of outlawing recessions and its consequent subversion of Nigeria’s national independence, to outlaw the burdens of recessions on the working people, to build an authentic and nationalist foundation for a sustainable and genuinely egalitarian peoples’ republic, the Nigerian labour movement needs to more vigorously assert its working-class economic and political line: against imperialism and capitalism, against ruling-class ideologies of ethnic and confessional divisions of our peoples; for socialist planning of the economy, for a public-purposed economy, for renewing public ownership of privatised public resources, for expropriation of all public resources looted in the last three decades, for resuscitation of public-funded social services (education, health-care, housing, security), for rebuilding solidarity among all our peoples.
The ruling-class policies and programmes, including the one on the current recession, are class-interest policies and programmes. This is why we said the optimism of the NLC Agenda for Economic Recovery, 2015 was misplaced; the agenda asserted: “The Congress remains committed to the process of robust and constructive engagement with the Buhari Presidency convinced that its administration would favourably disposed (sic) to working with all segments of Nigerian society in its much appreciated commitment to… Fighting corruption… Addressing security situation…Repairing the national economy in ways consistent with sustainable and inclusive growth and development as well as creation of ample decent employment for the teeming population.”
As the fundamental ideological posture of the main ruling class parties in the 2015 and 2023 electoral contests clearly indicated, it will be always futile to advise them to abandon neoliberal policies. The ideological foundations of the government’s 2017 ERGP and recommendations of the May 17, 2023 report of Tinubu Policy Advisory Council corroborate the correctness of our assertion! It is failure to understand these that leads organised labour to keep thinking that the ruling class can be persuaded, via industrial relations processes and prescriptions alone, to deliver in favour of the working people. This is why all government deceit of 2012 regarding palliatives after fuel price increases are still being deployed in 2023! It is why organized labour cannot change ruling class policies by presenting “Charter of Demands” to ruling class parties during elections!
The task of the labour movement is to develop its own class perspectives robustly, popularise it, politicize it by polarizing it along class lines, and mount a nationwide campaign to defend it. This task is urgent, and we are very far behind schedule.
Concluded
Emeritus Prof Olorode is Member, CAST-Nigeria Secretariat Collective] Odoje Biodiversty Center, Ogbomoso. omotoopo@gmail.com.
