The Daily Rain Vol 10, Nos 1 and 2

Comrade Abdulwahed I. Omar, at the Opening Session

The Daily Rain, Vol 1, No. 1 

EDUCATE! MOBILISE!! ORGANISE!!!

The editorial board of The Daily Rain welcomes you to the 11^th NLC Rain School, the theme of which is “Strengthening Trade Unions for Defense of Workers’ Rights”. It promises to be an exciting week of learning, making new friends and finding time to generally interact with comrades from a broad number of unions, state councils and across West Africa. Make the best use of this and mingle!

NLC places great premium on its National Schools (Rain and Harmattan). In the course of the week, we will have a broad spectrum of leadership with us for the plenary sessions. Indeed, the NLC President, Comrade Abdulwahed Omar will be gracing the opening session as the Chief Host, while the Akwa Ibom State governor, Chief Godswill Akpabio declares the 11^th NLC Rain School open, today.

The theme of the 2013 Rain School has been carefully selected, according to Comrade Valentine Udeh, the school’s coordinator. Trade unions are the frontline defense organisations of workers. It is through our unions that we fight for better wages and improvements in our working conditions.

The unions’ primary role might be for our economic struggle for enhancing our living standards. But politics play a key role in shaping decisions that impact on our concern      

for better lives. Besides, as human beings, we also deserve respect and dignity. Thus, we have had to be involved in political struggles through the trade union movement in several ways.

Ideas are powerful and cannot be separated from politics. Those who make policies are guided by some set of ideas or the other. Generally, “ideology” or broad sets of ideas reflect the interests of one class or the other. The two main classes in modern society, including Nigeria are the capitalist class of the bosses (and their governments) and the working class of we the toilers whose labour creates wealth.

In the Rain School, these issues will be critically discussed, particularly during the plenary sessions on Monday and Wednesday, where eminent activists and intellectuals will present lead-off discussions.

On Monday, Professor Idowu Awopetu, who has been a leading member of ASUU for more than three decades, will present a paper on “trade unions, class consciousness and workers’ rights: issues and challenges”. And on Wednesday, Dr. Peter Ozo-Eson, the NLC’s Chief Economist will present a paper that looks at: “building the trade union movement in a period of global crisis: problems and prospects”.  

The two papers promise to be very interesting. It would be great for you to ask questions or make comments on your views with regards to the issues which the papers will raise. Such two-way discussions are what enrich our knowledge for action!

But discussions around this exceedingly important theme will not be limited during the school, to only the plenary sessions. In our different

course groups, while we discuss the core-course topics, we will also have time to reflect on the theme of the school as broken down into the sub-themes for each plenary session.

Further, Variety Night comes up on Thursday! You will dine, wine and dance. But it won’t end there, there will be a quiz competition and dramatic presentation of the theme of the School by each of the three course groups. So....you better start thinking, reflecting and internalising the need to build our unions NOW!

It is important as we participate actively in the Rain School to always remember that it is not about “academics”. The School’s activities all have one aim: to equip us better, individually and collectively, in building a stronger trade union movement, in defence of the working class. Thus, the main challenge for us is after the school.

Knowledge, as an old saying goes, is power. With what we will collectively learn from the series of discussions and exchange of experiences and ideas, we should go back tour workplaces and unions, to work more tirelessly and with greater clarity for a better society where the working people, who constitute the immense majority of the population do not just eat crumbs from the bakery of the social wealth which we produce, but can take charge of that bakery!

NO to Senate’s girl-bride resolution!

by Baba Aye

The ongoing constitution review by the National Assembly is showing us once again that the “our” legislators hardly care about representing us. They represent only their individual and collective interests. Despite the mass support for Section 26, limiting the age at which a female could marry to 18 years, to be retained. The Senate has resolved to drop it, thus allowing even a baby girl to be married off!

“Reasons” such as culture and religion in some parts of the country have been alluded to in jusfifying this condemnable act. But the real reason, as almost all Nigerians are aware is because of the shameless support being given by the Senate to one of his own i.e. Alhaji Sani Yerima, who not too long ago married a 14 years old Egyptian girl. Yerima who has governor of Zamfara state was the first to implement political shari’a is at it again, hiding behind religion to project his profane and less than honourable self-interest.

Yerima had never been much of a religous adherent until he was contesting for governor and decided to use ride on the crest of religous sentiments. Based on his selfish interest which he couched in religous terms, he set in motion a process that led to violent conflicts, claiming thousands of lives. His current attempt is one with dire consequences as well. Psychological and physical trauma turns out to be the painful lot of most child-brides. Vesico-vaginal fistula for example, is closely linked with this ugly phenomenon.

We must not stop at mere condemanation of this tacit support for child-bride marriages which the Senate is hellbent on forcing on us. We have to take action. There are a number of petitions circulating on social media like facebook and twitter. One of these that could be found on change.org, calls on the United Nations to call the Senate to order on the matter.

This is all well and good and we should support such calls. But we must realise that the power to change society for good, including rolling back backwards policies that do us no good, lies in our hands. It was not the United Nations that got the FGN to reduce the sharp hike in fuek price last year. It was our mass action.

We have to mobilise through demonstrations and other forms of protest, including signature campaigns (like those earlier mentioned), to stop this atrocity. It represents an attack on child rights and is equally sexist as the victims are not children in general but the girl child in particular.

I hope to learn a lot – Femi Abolade, MHWUN National Youth Committee Treasurer

TDR interviewed Comrade ‘Femi Abolade, Treasurer of the Medical and Health Workers’ Union of Nigeria’s National Youth Committee, on his expectations at the school.

TDR: Comrade, what are your expectations from the 11^th Rain School?

FA: I am very excited to be here. I have heard so much about the School and appreciate MHWUN’s nominating me to participate.

I have a lot of expectations all of which centre around how I can be a better trade union leader in defense of the members of MHWUN and the working class as a whole, particularly the youths.

TDR: what role do you play in your union?

FA: as you are aware, I am the Treasurer of the National Youth Committee of MHWUN, which is the only union in the country that has a National Youth Committee, democratically elected at our National Youth Conference last year, the first ever of such in Nigeria’s trade union movement.

This means that there is little practical institutional knowledge for us to draw from. But with the support of the MHWUN leadership, we are trying our best to get youths more involved in building the union. This is one of the main reasons why I am happy that since our elections, youths have always been nominated to participate in the NLC Harmattan and Rain Schools.

I am also a branch Chairman of MHWUN in Ogun state, just like other members of the Youth Committee who are all shop stewrads.

TDR: thank you for sparing the time to talk to us. We do hope you have a fulfilling time at the 11^th NLC Rain School.

OBITUARY: Comrade Dora Etuk

TDR and all the members of the NLC Education and Training National Coordinating Group which facilitates the NLC Schools remember Comrade Dorothy Etuk, with a heavy heart.

Comrade Dorothy, who until her death on May 20, was the Education Officer of the National Association of Nigeria Nurses and Midwives (NANNM). She had earlier served at various times as an elected officer, state secretary and Gender Desk Officer of the union.

Dora was a very cool and calm member of the team . When debates got heated, as they could over ideas, She was always there to soothe frayed nerves. A very efficient organiser, she never toyed with deadlines and rolling up her sleeves to get any assignment she was given done with dispatch.

                     

She had battled with breast cancer for years but never gave up her commitment to the struggle. Rest in peace, comrade Dora.

The Daily Rain, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 23, 2013

Is Socialism the Way Forward for Workers?

Prof. Idowu Awopetu presenting the lead paper

The first plenary session of the Rain School’s discussions, yesterday, was very lively, with a central debate on the way forward for workers’ emancipation. The session’s theme was “trade unions, class consciousness and workers’ rights: issues and challenges”.

The lead presentation was made by Professor Idowu Awopetu a leading member of ASUU and veteran socialist activist. Comrade Ekwe, a former member of the House of Representatives and HOD International Relations of NLC chaired the session, while Barrister Emma Ugboaja, HOD Organisation/Industrial Relations and Administration of NLC served as discussant.

Fourteen participants out of about a 100 from the various affiliates of the NLC asked questions or made comments. Many more wanted to, but time was far gone. However, the debate continued in the three course groups where reflections on the plenary session is always the first item on the curricular after introducing the course.

Prof. Awopetu addressed each of the variables in the topic: trade unions; class consciousness and; workers’ rights, starting with basic definitions.

Trade unions, he pointed out, were formed by workers to resist the exploitation and oppression they were suffering in the hands of the bosses, during the industrial revolution, over two hundred years ago.

Human society, he argued had evolved over time, from early communal living where property including those used to provide sustenance for everybody were collectively owned, to slave-owning societies where human beings were held as property to serve the slave-masters in producing wealth, to feudal societies where the land was the central means of production and  landlords ruled as chiefs and kings with the poor working people being free unlike slaves, but still bound to serve the masters by farming for them, to capitalist society where the masters are the bosses who own factories, etc, that are the means of producing the social wealth, with workers as the servants who are technically not slaves but in reality are wage-slaves, slaving to “earn” wages and salaries that are much less than the wealth they create, and which the capitalist bosses pocket as profits.

Throughout these different social formations as he showed, it was, and it still is labour which creates the wealth that a few appropriate. Thus, it could be said that it is “labour that creates society”. Indeed “the role of labour in the development of society and social organisation”, is central, but the labourers have always been short changed by tiny minorities of persons who constitute the oppressor-ruling class. Oppression, he inferred, is necessary for them to sustain the exploitation of the immense majority.

From this general reality, he dwelt on the fate of workers under the present capitalist system. Drawing from Chris Harman, who had been a leading member of the Socialist Workers Party (Britain), until his death in 2009, he showed that “once the most elementary needs of workers have been met” (so that they can continue to work without necessarily starving), the bulk of the wealth generated from the huge productive powers of the capitalist system “goes to the employing class as profit, interest or rent”.

But this fate, he argues, is not a sealed one. Workers can change it, and have to some degree or the other reduced it, through struggle. He traced the history of the trade union movement in Nigeria since 1912, to show this. He buttressed his argument that even in more recent decades, despite the dominance of neoliberal globalization’s ideology; the working class has continued to struggle for better wages and working conditions as well as for a better society, with references to several publications from the 1980s to the 2000s.

The struggle of workers, he insisted cannot and has hardly ever been limited to just economic demands for better wages and working conditions. This is because without the working class winning political power, whatever is won economically is sooner or later taken back by the bosses.

This realisation, he noted does not come automatically, it arises from workers becoming class conscious. “Human consciousness” in general, “is recognised in our ability to distinguish the past from the present, on the one hand, and the present from the future on the other, and also in our ability to understand how the past determined the present and in turn how the present shapes the future”. “This ability”, he said, “is central to human and societal development”.

Moving from this general sense of consciousness, Awopetu in his paper noted that “class consciousness is active awareness of one’s social or economic status in society. This awareness includes the understanding of the structure of one’s class and also what constitutes the interests of the class”.  This leads to and includes the building of “solidarity with others belonging to our class”. “Above all”, he then said, “we must comprehend fully our class relationship with other classes in the society”.

On the basis of this understanding, Awopetu pointed out that bosses are always clear about their class interests. They are committed at all times to making the workers work more for less. Using such ideology as ethnicity and religion, they try to divide the ranks of the working class.

Trade unions on the other hand serve the purpose of uniting workers. But they might not necessarily come to the conclusion that the capitalist system itself is the problem and try to overthrow it. This is because, as he quoted from Sharon Smith of the International Socialist Organisation (USA), the unions are primarily “engaged in negotiating the ‘terms of exploitation’ of their members under capitalism”.

This he noted stems from one of the key issues and challenges that the working class faces, which is “the fact that labour unions have to operate under a law formulated to promote capitalism. So, all the conditions for registration have to be conducive to the growth and consolidation of capitalism”.

Capitalism, despite its expansion of the capacities and wealth of human society, he stressed, has been a failure in terms of fostering the development of a humane society. And it is an exploitative system that cannot be fundamentally reformed. He then said that for the working class “SOCIALISM is the alternative”. He noted four basic conditions for “a socialist state” as being: collective/public ownership of the means of production; enshrining of the right to work; enthroning labour as a collective endeavour, and: universal access to the products of labour.

Socialism will however not just happen simply because there is actually enough wealth in society to go round for everybody. It will have to be won through struggle by the working class organised politically. Professor Awopetu thus summed up by saying: “THE MAIN CHALLENGE BEFORE LABOUR IS HOW TO WIN POLITICAL POWER FROM THE CAPITALIST RULING CLASS”.

There paper signalled robust debate and discussions. First, the discussant, comrade Emma Ugboaja said that “the takeoff point for us as trade unions is the economic struggle for better wages and working conditions”. He was of the view that workers need not concern themselves too much with politics directly. Further, he observed that some of the most anti-workers Special Advisers on labour were once trade unionists. Trade union leaders that have become politicians in other ways have also not been different from the capitalist politicians because of human nature.

He summed up by saying that even socialist countries like China exploit workers, so it is hardly plausible to consider socialism as the answer to the problems we are confronted with in Nigeria.

The Chair of the session, Comrade Ekwe was of the opinion that socialism is definitely the answer. The question is just how far we have to go. Both the extremes of capitalism and socialism are utopian he said. But a moderate sense of socialism will lead to a more humane society. He further expressed the view that former trade unionists that became anti-workers when they came to government were those who never had class consciousness.

Fourteen comrades then asked questions or made comments. These included comrades: Jibrin Mohammed (MHWUN), Rita (NLC Hq), Jibrin (Plateau NLC), Aboderin (ASSBIFI), Morakinyo (AAEUN), Abdullahi Adamu (NULGE), Nuhu (NURTW), Chioma Aboola (NCSU), Nuhu (NLC Hq), Femi Abolade (MHWUN), Baba Aye (MHWUN).

Issues raised included: the place of women liberation in the struggle for a better society; how socialism could be established with the neo-patrimonial structures that are characteristic of capitalism in a society like Nigeria; the contributions of capitalist to development by employing workers and thus giving them a livelihood; morality as the primary matter, if we love each other the world would be a better place; can socialism be pursued by the working class with lack of internal democracy in the unions?; apathy by workers at the continued tailing of the bosses by the leadership of the labour party; the need for continued radical ideological discussions within the trade union movement; the need for radical literature to be developed/circulated more within the movement; what exactly is socialism?; what is to be done here and now, while we fight for socialism?

These issues and lots more were further taken up in discussions within the course groups. They are likely to resurface along with other related points of healthy contention on Wednesday when Dr. Peter Ozo-Eson the NLC’s Chief Economist presents a lead discussion on “building the trade unions in an era of global crisis: prospects and challenges”.

And quite importantly, these are issues we have to take back to our unions and state councils and foster comradely debates and discussions on. As was pointed out by one of the contributors to the discourse at the session, there used to be very lively ideological debate within the trade union movement before the collapse of the Berlin Wall. The “Wall” of more action with little theory, now has to be brought down.

As part of its contribution to renewed discourse in the Rain School and beyond, TDR will occassionally publish a “What is?” column on basic concepts like capitalism, socialism, the working class etc.

Keep Minimum Wage on Exclusive List – President Abdulwahed Omar

The 11^th NLC Rain School opened yesterday with a fiery speech by Comrade Abdulwahed Omar where he called on the Senate to keep the minimum wage on the exclusive legislative list. This was a response to the ongoing attempts to remove the minimum wage from the exclusive list, as part of the National Assembly’s deliberations for constitutional amendments.

The consequence of this action, if it is allowed to sail through is that there will no longer be anything like a national minimum wage. Each state’s legislature will have the powers to pass laws on what workers in both the state’s employment and the formal sector in the state can earn as minimum wage.

The impact of this would be disastrous. Even now that the minimum wage is on the exclusive legislative list, several states have refused to abide by the “New Minimum Wage Act”, over two years after it was passed. What of when the powers to enact laws on minimum wage are then left to them? Most likely they will ensure that no law is passed, or something worse than the present paltry minimum wage will become the norm.

This is the time to wage a sustained battle against the intended removal of the minimum wage from the exclusive list as Comrade Omar has pointed out. Forward ever! Backward never!!

WHAT IS?

Socialism

The severe global economic once again makes it clear that capitalism is a system which is not sustainable and which can only cause grief for the immense majority of the human race. Socialism has been presented as an alternative to capitalism in different ways over the last two hundred years. Many workers and youths today, though, still cannot but ask the question; “what is socialism?”

Socialism is simply put; humankind’s liberation from the chains of necessity (e.g. work as a must to survive) and establishment of cooperative associations based on solidarity, in both work and recreation. From the primitive beginnings of the “early man” (and woman), humankind has been in constant struggle to master nature, and provide sustenance, and this, we have always had to do socially, through relations of production that have been shaped and which have equally shaped the kinds of tools with which labour has transformed nature                and society             itself.

For tens of thousands of years, necessity was lord over human beings, even if step by step, progress was made towards freedom from want and backwardness. But such limited freedom as the whole of mankind won, has never been made available to all humans. The dominant classes of a few who owned the property with which social needs were met continually seized such freedom, resting on the backs of toiling masses. The freedom of a few has always rested on the unfreedom of the  many.

During the slave-owning epoch for example, the slave owners basked in the warmth of such liberty while they held slaves who were the toilers in bondage, just as feudal lords and kings were free to enjoy of the fat of the land while their poor subjects tilled the soil. The capitalist epoch for the first time provided a possibility for freedom to be something beyond the preserve of the few. The might of productive forces which it called forth in the forms of factories, machines, infrastructure, cell phones, internet etc, is such that could never before have been imagined and such as could banish the primary unfreedom of insufficiency.

The members of the working classes are now also not mere slaves or subjects but, are, like the rich, citizens who are formally deemed to have constitutionally guaranteed equal rights. While such modern democracy might be possible only with capitalism though, such rights had to be won through struggles that working people could and did wage as masses that were now brought together by the huge socialisation of large-scale production and a national life.

But capitalism like all earlier forms of society still rests on the exploitation of the immense majority by a few. It is actually, even worse. Unlike earlier exploitative societies it rests on competition. Contrary to capitalist ideology, competition between the capitalists makes the system unstable, resulting periodically in crises, and also promoting grave environmental damage that has resulted in climate change.

Competition is equally fostered between workers so as to weaken our solidarity. Most importantly a society based on “competition” when some are rich and own big property and many more are poor and own virtually nothing cannot but be about competition between the 1% of predators and we the 99% that they make their prey.

As Albert Einstein puts it “the real purpose of socialism is precisely to overcome and advance beyond the predatory phase of human development”. Towards this, socialism involves economic planning. But socialism is not just an economic system as many think. And central planning of the economy is not the same thing as socialism. As Einstein further points out; “it is necessary to remember that a planned economy is not yet socialist. A planned economy may be accompanied by the complete enslavement of the individual”.

This was exactly the situation in the state capitalist countries of the Soviet Empire, which continued to parade itself as being “socialist” though a class of bureaucrats using the instrument of central planning, collectively ran the economy on the basis of the capitalist law of value and governed without any the democratic empowerment of working people.

In a capitalist economy, it is not the needs of the people that determine what is produced but value which the capitalist can extract from such production. In a socialist economy, the needs of citizens, who all work to the best of their ability, are what determine the goods to be produced. And in socialist society, politics is not something reserved for some leaders to rule us as they deem fit until general elections.

Governance involves everybody and is not restricted to government. In our workplaces, neighbourhoods, schools, etc, we will be the masters of our own fate through inclusive decision-making structures and mechanisms, in the forms of committees that anyone could be easily elected into and recalled at any point in time, if s/he fails to carry out our collective resolutions.

We see flashes of such socialist governance and its revolutionary democracy from below during insurrections like the General Assemblies and Action Committees set up in a number of neighbourhoods during the January Uprising, last year.

Workers’ governments in socialist society will be truly representative of the masses, unlike earlier state powers. They will comprise delegates elected from governance structures from below, that earn the average wages of other workers, with all adults having military training to defend the revolution as we build a society based on solidarity and cooperation.

Socialism would be established as an international order through revolutions across several countries. As it triumphs globally, it will bring about the conscious restoration of our human essence, which is freedom, and open new realms of human development, where exploitation and oppression of humans by humans, would gradually become a thing of the past. Socialism is the future we are making with our revolutionary struggle today.