September 21 and Unity in the Nigeria Labor Movement

“A tale of two September 21s” was what first came to my mind as a title for this article (and I still see it as an alternative title). I intended to trace out the similarities and differences in the significance of two events, which in different ways affected the two main components of the labor movement in Nigeria.

First was September 21, 1974, when internment led to the unity of the trade union movement. Despite repression, infiltration, self-serving momentary splits, and attempts at state incorporation, the spirit of unity that emerged that day has remained alive.

The second was September 21, 2005, when the death of a leading revolutionary socialist and civil society activist inspired efforts at uniting the socialist movement. After five years during which the initiative atrophied, it became clear that it had failed. It was, however, probably the longest-running attempt at establishing an alliance of the left.

There are lessons to draw from this understudied period of our recent history. Going in-depth into these would go beyond the scope of this brief article, which started more as a personal reflection on September 21 and is dedicated to the living memory of Chima Ubani.

From Apena Declaration to the Third NLC

For years, as an activist in the labor movement, even when a student, September 21, 1974, had been one of the most important days in Nigeria's history to me. On that day, the Apena Declaration was made. This was the first step towards the lasting unification of the trade union movement. 

The Nigerian trade union movement had been riddled with splits since 1948, when the first Trade Union Congress (TUC) was factionalized over support of the trade unions for the bourgeois nationalist NCNC party. Several attempts were made, starting with forming the first Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) in May 1950. But all these were short-lived or even still birthed.

There were four trade union centers in 1974: the NTUC, ULCN, LUF & NWC. The ULCN treasurer, J.A. Oduleye, died. And on September 21, 1974, leaders from all the centers gathered at the Apena Cemetery to pay their last respect and bury his remains. On self-reflection, they concluded that they had more in common than what divided them despite their ideological and political differences.

The working class would also, as they noted, benefit from the strength of a united trade union movement. Based on this perspective, Okon Eshiett, Director of the ULCN’s Trade Union Institute, drafted the Apena Declaration. All four centers dissolved, and a steering committee was constituted to guide the movement towards establishing a single, united national trade union center.

Drawing inspiration from the first attempt at reunification in 1950, it was resolved that the new center would be the Nigeria Labour Congress. The founding congress of this second NLC was fixed for December 1975. The Murtala/Obasanjo junta feared the power that a united trade union movement would avail the working-class. It thus moved swiftly to stop the process in its tracks with an infamous “new national policy on labor”. 

The second NLC was banned. Its leaders were banned from trade union activities for life. The ostensible reason for doing this was that they were corrupt. The federal military government was able to indict them mainly due to evidence, including contrived ones, provided by trade union leaders who felt shortchanged by not being included in the leadership of the 2^nd NLC. But the new federation’s proposed central leadership already had over a hundred persons to ensure drawn from each of the four centers was included.

The main aim of the government was not to curtail corruption in the unions. On the contrary, political corruption was institutionalized with the check-off-dues it introduced. The main aim of the military government was to weaken the trade union movement before reconstituting it.

The eleven union leaders (drawn from all four centers) banned for life from unionism were, you could say, the first eleven of the movement. For me as a person, the irony of life was that the instrument for carrying out this dastardly act was the special panel headed by Justice Duro Adebiyi of the Lagos High Court. As a kid, who knew no better, I saw and looked up to him as a "grand-uncle" of sorts. He had Chaired the wedding reception of my parents, where I bore embryonic witness.

Believing that it had succeeded in breaking the backbone of a united and robust labor movement, the military junta established the 3^rd NLC. At the founding delegates conference of the NLC, which has lived to this date, the military government was humiliated. The left swept the polls, with Hassan Summonu, a protégé of Wahab Omorilewa Goodluck, emerging as President. WOG, or Baba Goodie, as he was fondly called by comrades when I joined the socialist movement, was one of the eleven banned unionists. He was president of the 2^nd NLC, which was snuffed at birth, and leader of the Socialist Working People’s Party (SWPP).

The rest, as they say, is now history. NLC has had its ups and downs, tossed by waves of different sorts. Obasanjo's divide and rule tactic played by recognizing the Trade Union Congress as a trade union center (which is good but done with ulterior motives after the mainly NLC-led anti-fuel pump price increase protests from 2000 to 2004) also failed. NLC and TUC collaborated even more after this (for better or for worse).

Thus, the trade union movement in the country has at least overcome its history of centers fratricidal conflicts. And the seed for this flower – warts and all – was sowed on September 21, 1974.

"On the way to Yola, Chima died for us"

One of the best flowers of struggle that ever bloomed on the Nigerian soil of struggle was Chima Ubani. Someone described him as being to the Nigerian pro-democratic struggle, what Chris Hani was to the South African anti-apartheid struggle. Chima died on the way to Yola on September 21, 1995. He represented the civil society component of LASCO in a preemptory NLC-led mobilization against fuel pump price hike.

Chima became a revolutionary socialist at the University of Nigeria Nsukka (UNN), where he became President of the students’ union during the Babangida military dictatorship. He was detained in the wake of the ABU massacre of May 25, 1986. An agronomist in the mien of Amilcar Cabral, he threw himself into political work on graduation, starting with the Civil Liberties Organization (CLO), where he worked till that fateful day when he died as its Executive Director.

One can say without a doubt that Chima's central role during the early days of the June 12 struggle was pivotal to the historical mass mobilization of widespread anger against the regime, which shook the country to its foundations, as exemplified on July 5, 1993, when upwards of a million people marched in Lagos. There are few comrades I have met who were as orthodox and at the same time non-sectarian in their views and praxis.

He was an avowed Marxist-Leninist. But after reading the copy of Leon Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution, which he collected from me, he said it was one of the most insightful and inspiring texts he had ever read. We were neighbors at Onipanu, where he stayed with some of his siblings. What was probably my primary "safe house" amongst a few refuges which facilitated my political work and life underground, at the time, was adjacent to the building they lived.

But even more refreshing than his theoretical openness was his anti-sectarian politics. He introduced the idea of an "expanded secretariat" in Campaign for Democracy (CD) as the left found itself thrown into the dynamics of mass politics. Revolutionary comrades and organizations affiliated with CD could participate actively and thus enrich our collective thinking to unite and fight. Since then, all left and "left-led" coalitions have adopted this method to different extents—all but one, in recent times.

When CD split at its Teachers’ House, Ibadan Convention on February 4, 1994, Chima's faction walked out and set itself the task of building a national liberation movement of a party. This was partly inspired by the history of the ANC, which was swept to power in South Africa's first democratic elections around that time.

This project resulted in the formation of the Democratic Alternative at Benin on June 4, 1994. Chima was the heart and soul driving the process. By 1996/7, the Sani Abacha reaction had entrenched itself, and the earlier radical phase of the June 12 struggle was fast becoming history. The need for a new coalition to fuse several groups' efforts, inspire and reawaken fightback was palpable. Chima again stepped into the fray as a driving force behind the establishment of the United Action for Democracy at Bariga, on May 17, 1997.

It is also to his eternal credit that he never cut loose ties with comrades even after the most scathing of splits, so long as they remained committed to the struggle. He was thus able to be the bridge for radical and revolutionary forces realignment once again, this time within the context of reinstatement of the civilian wing of the ruling class and the trade union movement's raising the working-class to the stature of the power it could wield.

This realignment led to the formation of the Joint Action Forum (JAF), just some months before his death in 2015. JAF was conceptualized as the civil society arm of the Labour Civil Society Coalition (LASCO) tripod, including NLC and TUC. Chima was secretary of JAF (and co-secretary of LASCO), while Beko Ransome-Kuti whom he had politically parted ways with earlier, was Chair. It was, if you will, a 21^st-century incarnation of the Campaign for Democracy.

Away from the klieg lights, Chima’s was a socialist with a keen sense of organizational discipline. The Socialist Congress of Nigeria (SCON), to which he belonged, had split down the middle in 1994 (like most socialist left organizations over strategy during the first revolutionary shocks of the June 12 struggle).

The CD's teachers' house split was partly a reflection of this. However, noting the need for left unity, Chima played the role of the engine room for the "3^rd All-Nigeria Socialist Conference” of February 21-23, 2003, held at the University of Benin. He and Festus Iyayi (another colossal figure, whose commitment flowed from the heart), on the two different sides of SCON, represented a united SCON in the leadership of the short-lived Nigeria Socialist Alliance (NSA), which emerged from the Conference.

Unfortunately, the pressures of his work at the time made it impossible for him to pay as much attention as was needed to build the NSA. Serving on the Alliance’s Steering Committee, I was always on his case about the need for us to move forward. There were several important resolutions reached but which were never implemented (one of these was for the quarterly publication of Socialist Discourse, a would have been the journal of the Nigerian left). He did appreciate this initially, but I think the “pestering”  got on his nerves later. Long story short, the NSA was dead a year before we lost Chima to all intents and purpose.

I was down with quite a bad case of malaria that fateful day. The following morning, I received a call from Laitan Oyerinde. He was like, "Segun, did you watch the network news yesterday?" Before I could say no, he informed me that Chima was dead. I still can’t recollect how I drove down to Labour House, and from there, after discussions with comrades, to the then Gwagwalada Specialist Hospital and National Hospital Abuja to make arrangements for receiving Chima’s corpse.

As the evening turned to night, we kept vigil at Labour House. I remember Owei Lakemfa, Laitan Oyerinde, Chris Uyot, Benson Upah, Vakentine Udeh and Denja Yaqub staying all night; we were all waiting with a heavy cloud of sadness weighing down our hearts. We got a call just before 3:00 am that the ambulance bringing his body and Tunji Oyeleru’s was almost at Abuja, and I headed to NHA with Esther Ogunfowokan. I received the bodies of Chima and Tunji, the Vanguard photojournalist who also died in that tragic incident, and deposited these at the NHA morgue at 4:17 am on September 23. Like the earlier September 21, Chima's death inspired unity, albeit this time on the socialist left.

A week before Chima's death, we had issued a call to constitute the Abuja Socialist Collective. It was initiated as a non-sectarian initiative of the Mayist tendency, which was then known as the Socialist Workers Movement (SWM). To make it a broader appeal, though, we worked with Dan Umaru, a deputy general secretary of AUPCTRE and one of the former SWPP cadres who had regrouped as the dozen-person Communist Party of Nigeria (COMPON). But these were tried and tested old guards (which included Abdulkareem Motajo, Joel Emereole, and Dr John O.) whose sense of sincerity and commitment to the struggle was not in doubt anywhere on the left.

The founding meeting of the ASC was fixed for October 12, exactly three weeks after Chima died. By the time the meeting took place, the date for Chima's internment was already fixed: October 27, at his hometown of Ubette-Umoaha, Abia state, with an activist wake/night of tributes on October 26.

The turnout for this founding meeting which took place at the AUPCTRE secretariat, was astounding. It exceeded our expectations. Comrades from virtually all traditions on the left were present, and the discussion was frank and productive. Referring to the historical significance of the date of Chima's death and pointing out that if we could achieve such unity at Abuja, even though it was the first meeting of the Collective, I proposed that we should discuss with comrades and groups at Obette Umoaha on the need for a united left platform. This was unanimously adopted.

Most comrades at the October 12 meeting expressed their regrets that they would not be at the Odette. And almost all of those who would be attending would come in only on the day of interment. The task of engaging comrades in discussion during the preceding vigil thus fell on me. The response was fantastic. Early in the morning, we had a short meeting of comrades present and agreed on forming a united platform of the left.

An interim steering committee was set up, which comprised Dung Pam Sha, Ngozi Iwerre, Abiodun Aremu, myself and one other comrade whom I can't immediately recall. We were charged with organizing the first of meetings to this end on December 3 at Ife. There were a series of other meetings thereinafter, February 2006 at Abuja and August 2006 at Lagos.

There were debates on what form such desired unity could best take for rejuvenating left politics as a significant force. There were several proposals: Nigeria Socialist Federation (at the Ife meeting), Socialist Movement of Nigeria (SMN, suggested by Festus Iyayi, with the backing of the Abuja Socialist Collective at the Abuja meeting), Movement for Total Liberation (MOTAL, suggested by Eskor Toyo, also at the Abuja meeting). Eventually, the Lagos meeting resolved All-Nigeria Socialist Alliance (ANSA).

I was tasked with coming up with a draft of the “Socialist Unity and Struggle” program while Comrade Dipo Fashina came up with a draft of the ANSA rules. In 2008, ANSA adopted the Abuja Socialist Collective’s monthly Working People’s Vanguard as the Alliance’s newspaper. The SRV’s Mass Line, it was resolved, should also serve as a theoretical journal. But this did not get to materialize.

Despite all these steps, it was evident by 2009 that ANSA was in a state of, what turned out to be terminal, paralysis. There were several reasons for this, which one we do not have time to go into now. Probably the most important, though, was ANSA's lack of a living link with the actual struggles of working-class people on the ground.

ANSA operated as an underground alliance, due mainly to the discomfort in some sections that working openly would make it a lame-duck target for the state. Even when ANSA was to commemorate the first anniversary of Chima's death in 2006, we had to come up with what turned out to be a one-off front, i.e., Friends of Chima Ubani for Socialism (FOCUS), as the face of the activity.

It was bad enough that ANSA chose to be subterranean. It was worse than it did forge direct links in its name, with the open and active coalitions such as UAD and JAF. So, while a few individuals played leading roles in these coalitions and in ANSA coordination, they operated as parallel lines that never met. The Alliance ended as a twice-a-year and later annual talk shop of comrades. Eskor Toyo declared it dead, and rightly so, in 2010.

In lieu of a conclusion

Historical moments present us with opportunities in themselves or facilitate our ability to create such on their pedestal. The outcomes of these moments are not inevitable. It is in this sense, one might say, that wo/men create history. I find it interesting and inspiring, that even in death Chima drew from the fount of the labor movement's history to provide the Nigerian left an opportunity to complete what he couldn't finish. But the socialist movement lost it by not building on what he did with such tenacity and creativity.

There is a lot to learn from Chima’s politics and the spirit behind the Apena Declaration. For now, it suffices to salute the tireless and unallowed efforts of Chima and the many heroes of our revolutionary past whose labor must not be in vain.

 

Baba Aye

21/09/21