NBS: poverty on the rise in Nigeria

The National Bureau of Statistics release that poverty is on the increase in Nigeria with over 70% of its citizens (ie over 70% of Nigerians) living below the poverty line (ie $1 = N160 per day) is really no news to us. On the contrary, it goes to confirm the lie of NEEDS which SURE amplifies that on the basis of capitalism in general and its neoliberal practice in particular, like could be made b...etter for more Nigerians. The increase in fuel prices will make matters worse, indeed has started making matters worse and now we have been told by the Nigerian state that electricity tariff would be increased by 88% in about a month's time & further that we should still expect another increase in the price of petrol any time from now. What is to be done? We demonstrated this in January, a sign of things to come: build workers & youths power on the streets to reclaim our destiny & this time...take it to the logical conclusion of kicking out the capitalist fat cats, emancipate ourselves from their yoke and rebuild society on the basis of socialist solidarity and cooperation. Venceremos! We will win!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Trade unionism and trades unions; an introductory perspective

Introduction Trades unions have become key components of most modern societies be such societies democratic or totalitarian, advanced capitalist or backward post-colonial. The nature of trade unions and trade unionisms are however quite different, even in otherwise similar societies. The United Kingdom and the United States for example could be considered as similar as societies could be (being the leading “liberal market economies” in the world), but they have quite different types of trade unions and approaches to trades unionism. Similarly France and Germany, two leading “coordinated market economies” in the West, have clearly different trades unions’ characteristics. Coming closer home; on one hand there are distinct traits that mark the industrial relations systems and trade union practice as heritages of our colonial past i.e. along English-speaking and French-speaking Africa lines. On the other hand, there are specific features of trade unionism and trades unions even in the cl
Read more

On neoliberal globalization 1

Neoliberal Globalization and the Informalization of Work; a Critical Class Analysis of Trade Union Strategies in Nigeria and South Africa Baba Aiyelabola Introduction Thatcher’s emergence in 1979 signalled the beginning of ‘the globalization of neoliberalism’, a hegemonic project of the transnational capitalist class (Sklair, 2001) which has had dire consequences for the working class globally and within countries. We shall utilize a neo-Gramscian perspective for our class analysis of the impact of this neoliberal counterrevolution with its TINA mantra which started in 1973 as “a war” in Chile. This war of a “few winners” against the ever more “precarious popular classes” (Amin, 2007) has entailed the restructuring of work, work relations and the ‘forms of state’; in the interest of capital. Social and economic inequalities have risen like never before in human history, unemployment and under-employment in absolute terms have been on the rise. The “many losers” in the neoliber
Read more

Tools and skills for trade unions’ engagement with the state’s policy cycle process

1.0 Introduction It gives me great pleasure to present this paper for several reasons. NUPENG is definitely one of the most important unions in the country today, due to the strategic place of oil in the economy, nationally and globally. It has also, along with its PENGASSAN sister union which I have had much closer training relations with , played very progressive roles in the trade union movement, and national polity, over the last three decades, in different ways. This is the more reason why the theme of this workshop and the topic I am to speak on is very germane, for which I commend the leadership, and education department of NUPENG. I have taken the liberty of re-phrasing the topic somewhat in two different ways, which have key significance for our discussion. First, I have replaced “government” with “state”. The former is more temporal, as we can talk of the governments of Babangida, Obasanjo, Yar’Adua and Jonathan for example, while the latter is the structure that governm
Read more