Only Total Strike Can Resolve Minimum Wage Talks In Workers’ Favour - Baba Aye*

The latest suicide bombings in Gwazo, in Borno State, caught security agents napping. What do you think about the incident?

This development cannot, but fill one’s heart with sadness. My thoughts and sympathies go to the loved ones of the over 30 people killed in that synchronised suicide bomb­ings. The extensive use of women and girls to carry out suicide attacks over the years is a pointer to the heartlessness of the top hierarchy of Boko Haram strategy. Between 2014 and 2017, for example, they used over 200 females for this purpose. That is the highest number of the use of fe­male suicide bombers by any terror­ist group in the world. Some of them were earlier kidnapped and then coerced or brainwashed. That been said, it is also important to note that this recent development is a pointer to the point we have always made that it would be an illusion for the Nigerian government to think they can defeat insurgency in the North­east militarily. Without addressing the underlying cause of impoverish­ment, disillusionment and illiteracy in the region, there will always be a material base for the sect to replen­ish its forces in one way or the other and operate.

Some House of Representatives mem­bers have called for a return to region­alism and a single term of six years for presidents and state governors. What do you think about this call?

There is a Yorùbá saying about the foolishness of those who leave leprosy to battle over curing sca­bies. Is the fundamental problem facing the poor masses in Nigeria that of governance structure? Is it not more about mass hunger, suffer­ing, hopelessness and the economic structure which generates this real­ity for the immense majority of the population? Those making the call know why they are making it. It is not because they have the interest of the people at heart. If they do, what they should be talking about is how to ensure that the resources of the country are used to provide for the welfare and wellbeing of working class people. No capitalist regime will willingly do this, irrespective of the governance structure. 

Even the welfare state in post-World War II Europe was not constructed out of the benevolence of the capitalists in those advanced economies. They were afraid of workers’ power and gave that as a concession. You can see that they have largely rolled back those concessions with neoliberal­ism. So, if you ask me, instead of talking of returning from the king­dom of Satan to that of the devil, I would simply say that we overturn this hell we are living in. What we need is a government of the work­ing people with state power vested in democratic bodies of delegates elect­ed from the workplaces, farms, and communities of the people, who are easily recallable if they compromise the collective will of the liberated working class people.

How do you think the protracted Rivers State crisis could be permanently re­solved for peace to return in that state?

The situation in Rivers State is a graphic picture of the self-serving nature and arrogance of the band of crooks ruling our country. This tragicomic drama unfolding there also shows you that party and party discipline mean nothing. All that matters is money and power. The PDP has not been able to call Nyesom Wike to order simply because of the money he has lavished on them and the position he occupies in an APC government. There can be no reso­lution of the wahala in that state, if Wike is not cut to size.

The problem is: who will bell the cat? The Gover­nor Sim Fubara’s flexing of muscles over the local government chairmen does not seem to have given him the results he wanted. People were killed. Their blood is in the hands of the elite elephants fighting that are making people at the grassroots bear the brunt of this nonsense. President Bola Tinubu is equally culpable and should be held to account. The kite of state of emergency which they are floating must not be allowed to land. Peace cannot be brought to bear without justice and the people taking to the streets to say ‘Enough is enough!’

It looks curious that the FG, state gov­ernors, Organised Private Sector and Labour are yet to agree on the National Minimum Wage. How do you see this situation?

That we are still at this juncture on the new national minimum wage negotiations shows that those in power are unsympathetic to the plight of working-class people. The over 230 percent increase in fuel pump price last year, coupled with the naira devaluation and an infla­tion increase that has spiralled out of control have made nonsense of workers’ wages. There is no way the N62,000 being offered by the Federal Government, which state governors are still rejecting, can go anywhere within the month. Even economists that are close to the system have argued that there is no way any­body can be expected to live below N120,000 or thereabouts with the cur­rent state of the economy. Yet, they are asking the worker to ‘manage’. Manage what? Manage to die of hun­ger or merely exist instead of living? Is it really that there is no money or that the money is circulating with­in the circuit of the one percent of the population comprising the big politicians and their lackeys, as well as their billionaire friends in big business? Can any of those people feed their dogs with N62,000 in one weekend?

Let us get real, please. You cannot be asking the poor to man­age to eat non-existent cake, while you are living the most ostentatious of lives. But, I don’t blame those in power. Why we are still having this discussion is because the matter has once again been reduced to discus­sion. It is the labour of the workers that creates the social wealth. The only sensible negotiation for organ­ised labour at this point in time, in my view, is simple: shut down the economy with an indefinite and complete general strike. They will be the one that will come begging with a much more reasonable offer than the disgustingly miserly non­sense amount of money they are still talking of putting forward or not.

Discussions are on over the plan to purchase two presidential jets for the president and the vice president. What is your take on this?

This is a further confirmation of what I was saying earlier. It is not that there is no money. It is that those ruling us think that they have a right to enjoy till infinity, but the working class people are born to suffer. The funny thing is that these same people have already robbed us blind, claiming to be businessmen. But they will never stop feeling enti­tled to keep milking our patrimony. Is it not this same Bola Tinubu that his wife Remi was saying that they are already rich and do not need Nigeria’s money? Their insensi­tivity to the people’s situation is only matched by their arrogance in demonstrating this. That is also how you saw the Senate President saying that no blackmail can stop the approval of presidential jets. This is the same man of the “off the mic” fame o. The problem is that they do not mind us simply complaining, so long as they get away with what they are doing. We must not only reject this use of our resources. We should have demon­strations on the streets already to stop it.

With the way Nigerians politics is being played, do you think the Leftists can ascend to power in the states and the FG? What do you think are their challenges?

This is an interesting question, once again. It is important to be clear about what we are talking about. There are leftists and there are leftists. There are those who want to reform the capitalist system. They have the illusion that this sys­tem built on, and which runs on the basis of the continued exploitation of working people, could be just and made to work for those it was designed to exploit. Those sort of leftists, and they are by far in the majority, have fine tuned the art of talking left, but walking right. You will see them in the exploiters’ par­ties, APC, PDP and their ideological satellite, including the Labour Party. They will give you justifications of entryism and claim to be in a war of position. But, they are actually just in their personal wars for po­sitions and further enrichment.

With such leftists, you hardly need rightists. Revolutionary leftists on the other hand, whom you find in parties like the African Action Con­gress (AAC), and the PRP-Vanguard, are fully committed to a root and branch transformation of society. We are not for cosmetic makeovers of exploitation. We want to raise the consciousness and self-organi­sation of the working people to end the exploitation and oppression that have been our lot, while a handful of parasitic capitalists appropriate the fruits of our labour. Naturally, in periods of normalcy, we are in the minority of politics because politics are shaped by ideas and the domi­nant ideas of all ages are the ideas of the dominant classes. 

However, behind the normalcy of capitalism are severe contradictions which reforms cannot overcome. That is why you see eruptions like Occupy Nigeria, EndSARS and more recent­ly the struggle against the finance bill in Kenya. The primary politics of revolutionary leftists is on the streets with the people. But, does this mean that electoral politics does not matter to us? No, it does matter. But, it cannot simply be about win­ning office and doing things for the working people. It has to be about us­ing the political space won through elections to enable working people to run society themselves, from the bottom up, instead of the current nature of politics where power is top to bottom, the power to exploit, deceive and oppress.

There are defi­nitely a lot of challenges to leftist politics. Many will tell you that lack of financial resources is the most primary one of them. It is definitely a major challenge. But, in my view, it is not the most important one, except as an enabler. During revolutionary situations, everybody joins. As some of my Kenyan friends were saying this past week, no one bussed anyone down to the demonstrations, unlike what would be the case during polit­ical rallies. The greatest challenge is generalising the spirit of such mo­ments during periods of normalcy. The politics of the revolutionary socialist is a battle for hearts and minds.

*interview in the 7/7/2024 Sunday Independent, first published online here: https://independent.ng/only-total-strike-can-resolve-minimum-wage-talks-in-workers-favour-baba-aye-2/