Baba Aye's

The January Aawkening in Nigeria

2012-01-27T03:55:00.000-08:00

Introduction

Few in Nigeria would have the feeling that 2012 is barely a month old. The past few weeks have been filled with events of historic proportions. First, in response to the unpopular 120% hike in petrol price, the people spontaneously took to the streets across the country in stiff resistance and with an 8-day general strike and mass protests, won a stunted victory. After this, the fundamentalist sect known as Boko Haram, which has killed no less than 935 persons in barely two years according to Human Rights Watch carried out is most deadly attacks on state institutions killing over 200 persons in the northern city of Kano, as it freed 100 of its incarcerated members.

It is pertinent in reviewing this situation which Tell a leading liberal weekly in the country describes as “A Revolution Postponed”, to put in perspective the contradictions and convergence of crisis which the Nigerian society is now embroiled in and make projections about the turbulent road that lies ahead.

The main focus of this review is on the anti-fuel hike struggle, which is distinct from the Boko Haram mayhem. There are however inter-linkages which deepen with the announcement of the sect on January 24, that it would bomb the headquarters of the Nigeria Labour Congress because organised labour “accepted” just a partial reduction of petrol price instead of the full reversal demanded by Nigerians.

The myth of deregulation and the petrol price hike

The President of the Federation, Dr Goodluck Jonathan started a campaign to hike fuel price, in August last year, well after his elections. According to him, the Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN) could no longer afford to “subsidize” petrol prices if it were to carry out infrastructural development in the country. The outcry was loud. Petrol prices had been raised no less than 20 times since 1988. The reasons given were always the same, the primary one being that more money would be available for development. But the reverse has always been the case. Nigerians from all walks of life thus made it clear that any increase would be resisted. Several organisations started mobilizing against the January 1, 2012 date slated for the implementation of “full deregulation”.

The state responded with what now can be seen as subterfuge. While maintaining its position that deregulation was inevitable, it expressed interest in consultation and a national dialogue. It equally assured the country that any deregulation whatsoever would not start before April 1. This was in line with the resolution of the National Assembly that the 2011 budget (which bore outlay for “subsidy”) would run till March 31. Most groups and Nigerians as a whole who had started mobilisation against an impending fuel price hike, simmered their agitations. For example, barely 24hours to the hike, a rally held in Lagos asserting that the postponement of deregulation expressed a (minor) victory for the working people, who must however remain steadfast till April and similarly, there had been arguments for calling off the January 3 protest march organised by the Joint Action Front, also in Lagos, but it was believed that it would serve as a pre-emptive measure and not one to resist what would have been announced.

The FGN’s attempt to catch the people off guard as it announced the increment on January 1 did not work. By January 2, the first spontaneous protests erupted in several cities. In a matter of days, the protests grew more organised and demands expanded to include: inquiry into “subsidy” management; cuts in the costs of state governance & even “Jonathan Must Go!”

Popular resistance and forms of struggle

The January awakening in Nigeria invoked diverse forms of struggle some being novel. The most potent of of all these forms, and which led to the greatest disappointment with its eventual sheathing was the General Strike which lasted eight days. Mass protests in the forms of processions and rallies which have been features of popular dissent over the decades shook over fifty cities in the country, involving millions of citizens. Never before has such spread and magnitude of mass protests been witnessed in Nigeria. The forms that could be considered novel and which have gained the awakening the epithet of “Occupy Nigeria” Movement, included mass occupation of city centres and parks which became designated as “Liberation Square” (in Kano) and “Freedom Square” (in Lagos), for example. It also included the internationalisation of the spread of the protest movement by Nigerians in the diaspora who organised demonstrations in several cities across Africa, Europe and North America.

While the initial outbursts were spontaneous, efforts at having it organised in different forms started from the very onset. In Abuja, citizens had gathered close to the Eagle Square to sign a people’s petition demanding price reversal on January 2. They were dispersed with teargas and over fifty persons were arrested, eight of whom were released the following day, only after the intervention of the National Human Rights Commission, now headed by Prof Chidi Odinkalu, himself a liberal activist.

The first major organised forms of action were on January 3, in the two largest cities of the country. These were the protest march led by the Joint Action Front in Lagos, and a rally in the Kano City Centre under the aegis of “Occupy Nigeria”. The Joint Action Front which was established in 2004 by pro-labour civil society organisations, including most of the socialist left groups in the country is the civil society arm of the Labour Civil Society Coalition (LASCO) which along with it includes the two labour federations, NLC & TUC. Its protest march had been planned as a pre-emptive action that might have drawn at best a few thousands. It became a major platform for venting the rage sweeping through the land in the heat of popular and rising struggle which at the time was still largely spontaneous.

In Kano, “Occupy Nigeria” had been formed by a number of civil society organisations and activists in October last year, with a major aim of resisting any fuel price hike, and drawing inspiration from the Arab Spring and the Occupy (Wall Street) Movement globally, fight for a better Nigeria. By the next day, the rally in Kano became an occupation which lasted till about 1.30am the following morning when it was dispersed by gun-totting anti-riot policemen. At least five persons were killed in that attack. (Police had earlier on January 3 killed the 23-year old Muyideen Mustafa at Ilorin in the heat of one of the spontaneous, peaceful protests then rocking the nation. He would be the first of no less than 20 citizens martyred in the course of the anti-fuel hike struggle). After the general strike was called off, the organisers of the “Occupy Nigeria” group in the state teamed up with other forces to establish the United Front for Good Governance which has faced attacks, including the beating up of one of its leader and the local university teachers union chair Dr Buppa, by State Security Services operatives who then tried to whisk him away, but were stopped by protesters.

There were several other attempts at occupying or protests that designated themselves as being or being part of an Occupy Nigeria movement. In Abuja, this could arguably be said to have started on January 6, with youths with some six young men and two ladies staying put overnight in the surroundings of Eagle Square. The size of this group increased to about 35 persons at the time it was dispersed in the early hours of Monday January 9 by policemen who beat them up. Several scores more joined this Occupy Nigeria/Abuja during the day or late at night, but did not sleep overnight as these determined youths did. The group, whose membership includes young activists around the new Coalition of Youths Against Fuel Price Hike, continued again despite several attempts at curbing it, in the course of the general strike at what was dubbed “Freedom Square”, by the NLC, in the commercial nerve centre Wuse district of the city. But after the strike, the occupation now takes place only late in the evenings after working hours.

In cities such as Port Harcourt, Benin and Ibadan, several groups have also described themselves as part of Occupy Nigeria while protesting under the banner of several coalitions, such as the Coalition to Save Nigeria which organised a demonstration in Benin City before the strike commenced and the United Action for Democracy, which is an affiliate of JAF in Port Harcourt, for example. In Lagos, the “occupation” assumed a carnival-like atmosphere in the Save Nigeria Group-dominated Gani Fawehinmi Freedom Park, where no less than 500,000 people gathered everyday from dawn to dusk with speeches made and revolutionary music blaring through huge speakers, throughout the duration of the general strike. The Gani Fawehinmi Park at Ojota, the entrepôt of the mega-city was where the December 31 protest march led by the National Conscience Party and the family of the late gadfly Chief Gani Fawehinmi who had been its founder had ended with a rally. The JAF march of January 3 established the park as the locus of mass activity in the state.

In no time though, the Enough Is Enough/Save Nigeria Group, which had emerged as a liberal force of civil society in 2010 demanding a resolution of the constitutional crisis the country was then sliding into as the then President Yar’Adua seemed to be in a comatose state, took charge of that space. With much more financial resources than JAF, it made food and water available for the hundreds of thousands of citizens that stayed at the Freedom Park all day. Celebrities and liberal activists graced its dais, wherefrom they demanded for radical reforms, stating clearly that corruption and not Nigerians should be killed by the state.

JAF along with trade unionists under the aegis of LASCO, on their own part, organised daily processions through different parts of the city with tens of thousands in tow. Several smaller “Freedom Parks” where also established in different strongholds of the working people and youths, such as Alimosho, Ikorodu, Surulere and Ebutte Metta. JAF in the second half of January commenced establishing branches in these areas as part of its mobilisation towards the next phase of what could very well be an unfolding revolution.

It is pertinent at this juncture to analyse the general strike which was the heart of the popular resistance while it lasted (with the streets as its soul) and which with the way it ended, led to condemnation of the trade unions and provided a safety valve for the state and the system it represents for the postponement of the hour of revolution.
NLC/TUC General Strike and its suspension

There were calls from several quarters for an immediate declaration of a general strike. But only the National Executive Council (NEC) of the trade union federations could summon such. On Wednesday January 4, NLC at Abuja and TUC at Lagos held NEC sessions were it was resolved that an indefinite general strike and series of mass protests commence on January 9 if petrol price was not reverted back to N65 from N141. A joint communiqué “In Defence of the Nigerian People on Fuel Price Increases!”, was issued. Radical civil society organisations and activists were at both sessions and extracted a promise that the strike would not be called off without such all embracing meeting which would include civil society as well as the NEC members of both federations. This was based on fears from the trade unions suspension of earlier general strikes over the last twelve years.

The strike paralysed the country for the eight days it lasted. Across the length and breadth of the country, workers downed tools, in the public and private sectors as well as in the informal economy. Small scale employers and apprentices were not left out.

It was only in the South Eastern state of Ebonyi that workers in the public sector dejectedly went to work even as private sector employees joined the strike. This was after the state governor declared that there would be no pay for public servants who joined the strike. In Nigeria the “no work, no pay” rule is always declared by employers during strikes (including this recent general strike) but the trade unions undermine this through insertion of a “no victimisation” clause in agreements reached when grievances are deemed resolved. The Ebonyi state governor had however enforced this anti-workers principle in the aftermath of a local strike there in September.

It was not just the strike that was a resounding success. The mass protests and demonstration of solidarity across ethno-regional and religious divides that went with it were such as the nation had never witnessed before. In more than 50 cities, over ten million Nigerians marched in one accord. Non-Muslim protesters surrounded Muslim protesters in defense when they held their prayers, and in several cities in the North such as Funtua in Katsina and Minna in Niger, Muslims organised themselves into bands that surrounded Churches in protection on Sunday, in response to the earlier proclamation of Boko Haram that it would unleash violence against Christians in the northern parts of the country.

In Lagos, the various rallies and processions centrally and in various local theatres of popular activity involved no less than a million citizens. In Abuja where no mass procession had ever had more than 5,000 citizens, the first day witnessed some 20,000. It doubled the next day and for the rest of the week, despite the fact that many had to trek from far distances as there were very few buses on the roads, no less than 50,000 citizens marched in resistance behind the banner of organised labour.

Why then were the mass protests called off on January 17 and less than 24 hours later the strike called “suspended? This is a question that many find difficult to find any answer to other than “treachery”. The answer might not be that simple though; the trade unions primarily represent the working class but are trapped within the rubric of “collective bargaining” ideology with its penchant for middlegrounds & compromises, in a pluralist approach.

It is apt to look at the reasons organised labour gave for its action though. These were threefold. First, the security situation had degenerated, with increased tension in the land. Second, the state had accepted to probe the subsidy regime and the general state of corruption in the oil industry. And third, while labour still “rejects” the mere reduction of the hike instead of a reversal that still represented (partial) victory.

The state and its friends; contradictions and “consistency”

The FGN was obviously thrown aback by the upheaval that greeted its hike in the price of fuel. Since the year 2000, barely a year after the restoration of the Republic, fuel prices had been increased no less than 7times. Each time, there were general strikes and mass protests in response and after a few days; it would announce a “reduction” which actually amounted to significant increases over the status quo ante.

While Nigerians always called for full reversals and organised labour would echo this as it commenced general strikes, the new price would be accepted as a compromise position, the trade union centres would call off the strikes and the masses would grumble that labour had once again “sold out” and then we would all continue to live, even if not happily, ever after, until another round of increases.

Many Nigerians had come to cynically believe that the FGN actually raises the price of fuel beyond its target with this scenario in mind to then negotiate downwards to its earlier goal!

This time around, the matter was not that simple. The world as a whole is in a tumultuous state of flux and Nigerians are living witnesses to how regimes have been overthrown and millions are in movement to realise the possibility of another world. This influenced the fight back of the masses and this resistance led to the deepening of the contradictions within the circles of the state. But it still maintains a coherence of its anti-people line, even if it through its legislative arm in particular, it seemingly genuflects to people’s power and goes through the routine of a prologue for change.

We have seen the lies and subterfuge that preceded the fuel price hike. The extent of deceit and fraud on “subsidy” management would however not be revealed until during the on-going public session of the House of Representatives ad-hoc Committee constituted to look into the “subsidy” regime. Scandalous discrepancies emerged in the figures presented by; the ministry of finance; ministry of petroleum; central bank of Nigeria; petroleum products pricing agency &; Nigerian Customs.

While the Minister for Petroleum claimed that only private operators import petrol, the Nigerian Customs showed that up till December, the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) was a major importer of the product. As if this was not bad enough, its records showed that the mother vessels with which NNPC imported this were more often than not berthed in the waters of Togo and Benin Republic. With this, the Comptroller General of Customs rightly pointed out that the problem was not so much one of “smuggling” of “subsidized” petrol meant for Nigeria to neighbouring West African countries, as it was a case of “diversion”.

Interestingly, the FGN had always claimed that the quantum of petrol consumed daily in the country was 35million litres (this in itself is a big laugh! More objective analyses put the figure at between half and two third of this. Besides, this amount includes locally refined PMS which the PPPRA earlier said accounts for 20% of consumption). But the PPPRA Executive Secretary, one Reginald Stanley who had signed the New Year announcement of fuel hike further informed the House committee that what the FGN had been paying for was 59million litres pay day, leaving 24million litres unaccounted for, as the Farouk Lawan the committee chair made explicit. Lies, fraud, deception, roguery & barefaced thievery in high places were clearly hallmarks of the subsidization of corruption in the oil sector, which the masses are now to pay for.

But before this revelations which actually hardly strikes most Nigerians as suprising, the state as “the executive committee of the ruling class” showed itself not only in the form of coercion, but as well that of deception, in the heat of the strike.

The National Assembly made what many consider an “historic” decision when the House of Representatives cut shut its recess to pass a resolution moved by Tajudeen “TeeJay” Yussuf, a seasoned activist from his student day at UniJos, that the FGN revert the price of petrol back to N65 per litre. This was on the eve of the General Strike. During the strike & protests, the Senate passed a similar resolution. The leadership of both chambers played mediatory roles between labour and the FGN which was now presented as being solely the state by being the executive arm of government, as if the state and its apparatus of governance do not include the legislature and judiciary as much as the executive arm! More importantly, when the FGN rather reduced the price to N97, there was not so much as a whimper from our honourable and distinguished legislators despite this being clear disregard of not just their resolutions to the contrary, but indeed their legislation that the 2012 budget year start only on April 1.

The FGN on its part tried its utmost to use “propaganda”, blackmail and attempts at divide and rule, as much as it could. The labour unions were alleged to be in the pay of the so-called “cabal” which benefits from the “subsidy” to the detriment of the masses! Wrap around lines of trash in black and white espousing how pious and good intentioned the state is with its deregulation policy could be found on every single major daily newspaper and weekly magazine.

Shadowy groups such as “Nigerian Youths Coalition for Fuel Subsidy Removal” comprising lumpen elements that were paid the pittance of a mere N1,000.00 in a nearby alley, after attacking Labour House on January 6 were constituted to support such avowed captains of industry like Agedo Peterson a member of the presidential economic team who is also CEO of both Stanbic Bank and Cadbury Nig. Plc, in singing nonsensical lullabies of the el-Dorado Nigerians would blissfully enter with the magic wand of fuel hike.

As if this were not enough, conscious attempts to manipulate ethno-regional differences were made by the ruling class particularly by its cabal of “elders and leaders” from the Niger Delta region which President Jonathan hails from. They claimed Jonathan as their son who must be protected against the country and sang to the high heavens about his sincere motives which the masses who feel the pinch were merely too dumb to see, without a word about the patronage they live on, which has not brought about any visible improvement in the lives of Niger deltans through industries and job opportunities that they never created of course, despite the millions if not billions of naira they are worth, without any entrepreneurship.

Taking a cue from them, (ex-)Niger delta militants barricaded the same oil rigs they once used to blow up, to protect these against being shut down by the oil workers unions (this was a major reason why PENGASSAN could not shut down the flow of oil as it was made clear to them that any attempt to do such would be met with bullets from the “militants”).

All these could not stop the genie of working people’s power which like a fearsome spectre stalked the land for 8days. Even in Bayelsa state, the heartland of the Niger delta and Jonathan’s state of origin, while mass protests on the streets were not possible due to threats by the elders and militants alike, the strike was still total with offices and businesses under lock and key.

The final card of the Presidency and indeed the ruling class as a whole, despite the mimicry of support for the popular rage by a number of its representatives was that of unveiling its ever present (more or less covert when it could be, brazenly overt when push gets to be shove) teeth of dictatorship; deploying troops to the streets. Residents of Lagos, Kano, Abuja and other major cities where the battles between incipient revolution and disgraced reaction had raged for two weeks woke up to find soldiers, anti-riot police men and even sailors and air force personnel totting mean looking rifles and with armoured tanks, on the streets. That same morning, by 7.00am, President Jonathan addressed the nation. He claimed very much like Hosni Mubarak had done, that, miscreants and hoodlums had “hijacked” the strike and mass protests. For good measure, he also accused partisan forces of seeking to turn the mass anger against the fuel price hike to one for regime change.

With jackboots and artillery to enforce “acceptance” of N97/litre, the state, in its war against the people had won reprieve for a while for the ruling class. Law and order had been restored and an end brought to the beginning of the seething revolutionary situation in Nigeria. There would still be a few skirmishes in Lagos, Abuja and Kano, with Octogenarians tear gassed and occupier youths dispersed, but this would be footnotes to that chapter which closed with the “suspension” of the mass strike. All signs though point at this chapter being more of a prologue.

The friends of President Jonathan and his cabal in government are not limited to other members of the ruling class in Nigeria. Madame Lagarde of the IMF was in Nigeria a few weeks before the price hike promoting the suppossed veracity of a creed whose god is dead; neoliberalism which lies de-legitimized, shamed & shaken across the world even if the biceps of the old worn out but cunning man which capitalism is, still props this its most apt incarnation.

The chief priest of the shock doctrine, Jeffrey Sachs was more explicit in commending the FGN for daring to whip Nigerians with the scorpion of hike in fuel price. The views of citizens & the killings of no less than a score of human beings during protests against the shocking hike meant little to this suppossed democrat who would alleviate poverty.

Some of the friends of the FGN came as wolves in sheep clothing to the masses of Nigeria. Probably the most prominent of these was Barak Obama, President of the United States of (part of) North America. He loudly expressed the view that protesters had the right to demonstrate. But of course was silent on his position with regards to the price hike itself. Western imperialism learnt its lessons fast from the slow motion with which it almost got its foot in its mouth on the way down for Ben Ali & Hosni Mubarak. It had to seem to be on the protesters side from the onset in Nigeria, incase that would signal the spread of revolutions in sub-Saharan Africa.

While being one with its local quislings that rule Nigeria and other countries in the periphery of global capital, it has to seem to be our friend so that if -in its view, but when, in ours- we win, it could be relevant in giving direction as it now does in Libya (& this is no plus for Gaddafi either). The United States has not stopped at its prankish support of our right to protest (but not our protest itself). Barak Obama also expressed its concern about the menace of Boko Haram. A few days later, the Nigeria-US Commission signed an agreement of cooperation the contents of which remain largel obscure. This poses grave danger for the masses of this country & must be exposed for what it is. Everywhere the yankees have gone suppossedly to make the country better & more peaceful became worse & terribly blood soaked.

In pointing out the contradictions on the FGN’s side & its friends of the same plummage, we can actually see a bizarre constistency. It is that consistency of placing profit over people, the greed of the few over the needs of the many & of the dictatorial disposition of a bunch of elite over we, the immense majority of the population, even within “democracy”.

In lieu of a conclusion

The troops have been called off the streets as I write this piece. The Inspector General of Police has equally been replaced in the wake of the Boko Haram massacre in Kano. The Joint Action Front and other groups still maintain their stand on total reversal to N65/litre. Even the trade unions did not accept the mere reduction nor call off its strike, rather “suspending” it as they foresaw a stalemate.

What possibilities could lie ahead, & what lessons could we draw from the first dash in what could well be much more than a sprint of resistance & revolution?

It is quite certain from the current situation that without system change, chaos will continue & indeed deepen in Nigeria. The revelations from the House committee’s public sessions are enough to justify full reversal of petrol price to N65/l, at the very least, & to earn not a few persons extensive stays in prison yards. But these exposes in themselves will not bring about these drastic steps. It will take mass mobilization & recapturing the moment of January 1, which might have been lost in its pristine form.

Here could probably lie a major problem of fixation in the perspectives of many who seek alternative pathways for society, in the country. The issue of fuel price is indeed quite critical in so many ways in our country. It is not impossible that the next round of eruption might still be around it. It is very likely that many battles still lie around it in the future. But the chances of it fueling the immediate next chapter of unfolding in the country might be slim. The inflationary trend it has already sparked up is more likely to set of a wild fire of strikes for wages increment.

But this fixation in perspective flows from a deeper problem, the near collapse of radical alternative politics on any significant scale before the popular dam of rage burst. However, while the best time to have planted a tree was 20years ago, the next best time to plant it, if it has not been planted, as the Kanuri say, is now.

It would equally entail a lot of joint work, as well as the transformation of how a organisations & united fronts work. Not a few of these on the sidelines have rather amusingly tried more to frame roles and actions in the past few weeks in appropriative ways than to deepen organising.

Deepening organising would entail the transendence of fighting against power to fighting for power. Establishing organs of mass power from below is crucial for a genuine revolution as we saw a year ago in Egypt. It is however not enough to guaranttee taking decisive steps towards system change.

A new form of partisans politics would be required of the period we have entered, where the streets & workplaces take the main seat from electoralism as the road to power.

Meanwhile, the trade unions in Ghana are poised for a general strike to protest a 20% hike in petrol prices on December 28. This is quite instructive as it is a major indicator of the spread of revolutionary pressures across sub-Saharan Africa as the whole world gets ready for a year of worsening economic realities, political disillusionment with the old order & the the drawing of ever expanding numbers into the arena of contestation of power on the way forward. We would have to express our solidarity with our comrades in Ghana, just as working people & youths across the world expressed their solidarity with us during our recent struggle.It is also now necessary for both political and practical reasons that we raise the demand for a working people’s Republic of West Africa. Apart from such issues of “diversion” or “smuggling” of petroleum products making sense only with the sub-continent carved into several states, this would be a step towards a new Africa based on workers’ power and the establishment of a global socialist order.

The January awakening in Nigeria is part of the global movement of working people & youths against the system of capitalism which fosters our exploitation & oppression. It is in this light that it is equally the opening chapter of what would most likely be a long drawn class war between the ruling class of cabals in the country and the masses, the movement of the people.

phew...back on the track with my laptop!

2012-01-27T03:41:00.000-08:00

how great it was on Wednesday to get this lill' machine functioning once again since the early hours of January January 12! forward ever! backward never!!

The state versus the People by Baba Aye

2012-01-12T19:28:00.000-08:00

The Federal Government declared war on Nigerians on New Year day, with its 120% hike in fuel price. With heads held high, the people gallantly rose across the country in stiff resistance, immediately. The resistance snowballed into a General Strike and series of escalating Mass Protests of historic proportions, with over ten million Nigerians demonstrating in more than 50 cities and towns within the country and no less than a dozen cities across Africa, Europe and the Americas.

After nine days of this earth-shaking manifestation of the people’s power, in which over twenty citizens were brutally murdered by the police, particularly on the heels of four days of an indefinite General Strike, it seemed the state wanted peace and normalcy returned to the land as it summoned a meeting with organised labour and representatives of civil society. Alas, it only feigned concern for the people and the country. The meeting ended in a deadlock as the state refused to heed the legitimate demand of the masses that petrol pump price be reverted to N65, as it was on December 31, 2011. It rather “offered” a mere pittance of reducing the criminal N141 to N120.

This position of the FGN takes the struggle to another level. The ruling class with the Federal Government at its head now faces the people with the working class as its vanguard, in mortal battle of epic proportions. Popular resistance which has birthed a revolutionary situation now takes a tentative step towards leaping into revolution, where decisively we, the people, will rise to win our self-emancipation and overthrow the system which the state and ruling class of “cabals” represent.

We are indeed at a precipitous juncture in the annals of our country’s history. It is not accidental that this is happening at a time of turbulence and change in the world. Regimes once thought to be unshakeable in North Africa have been brought down by people’s power on the streets and Mass Strikes that shut down their economies. In each of these, the state had confronted the people as a power beyond their might, which could treat the people’s demands with disdain, and sought to crush their uprisings in blood. In Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, the people triumphed with arrogant governments humiliated and overthrown by united and determined people.

It is instructive to note that in none of these countries did the initial demands of the people include bringing down the governments they defeated. Their grievances were against economic hardships such as unemployment and poor minimum wages and on political/legal issues such as police brutality and for free speech. As the momentum built up, mass anger burst across the banks of resistance into the seas of revolution. We are at such a juncture.

The primary demand of the working people and youths was on reversal to N65 per litre we stand! There is no justifiable reason for the fuel hike, as Nigerians have shown with facts and figure. In the course of the last ten days, the demands of the people have come to include: no to corruption in high places & for drastically pruning down the high cost of governance.

This is not surprising as Nigerians know just how genuine the need of the FGN to raise money for national development by hiking prices is, from the 2012 budget proposal before the National Assembly! With N1b meant for the feeding of the president’s family; N530m for new cars & SUVs in the presidency; N512.4m to overhaul power generating sets; N101.67m to rehabilitate the transformer sub-station in the villa; N512.4m to refurbish the family wing of the main residence in Aso Rock; N357.7 to renovate the administrative building in the villa (which N302.3 had been spent on refurbishing last year) & so on and so forth, that near makes me want to puke, we are definitely being only reasonable to consider President Jonathan’s tales by moonlight about using monies from removal of the “subsidy” for the betterment of our lives, as just simply bedtime stories that can only result in ghoulish nightmares.

We equally know that less than 17,000 political public servants are to gulp N1.125 trillion and security (plus defence & office of the National Security Adviser) would corner some N1.8 trillion of our national wealth, out of a budget of N4.749 trillion. This is while N400.15b, N282.77b & N31b only are allocated to education, health and science & technology respectively.

It is obvious enough that the FGN does not have its priority right & would not require the N1.3t it claims it is necessary to raise by making us groan under the burden of the dire consequences of its fuel price hike. Democracy is meant to be the rule of the people, by the people, for the people. But what we see here is the intent of the rule of and over Nigerians by Jonathan (and his ruling class of cabals) for Jonathan (and his ruling class of cabals).

Nigerians from all walks of life spoke with one voice against this nonsense and what do we get? Rather than heed the voice of the people and the call of reason, Jonathan ordered the killings of youths in the land. Muyideen Mustafa killed at Ilorin last week Wednesday was the first martyr of this struggle, in the war waged by the state in Nigeria against the Nigerian people. That was barely nine days ago. Since then, Ademola Aderinto, in Lagos; Raheem Mojeed in Osun; Olurin Olateju in Ibadan; Abdulgafar Mohammed Hadis, in Kaduna; Yahaya Abubakar Adamu, in Lambata; Rabiu Abubakar, in Suleja & at least fifteen other citizens in Lokoja, Jalingo, Kano, Maiduguri, Ibafo, etc have been made to pay the supreme sacrifice by a degenerate state which gives citizens bullets for bread.

These killings have been roundly condemned at home and abroad. Amnesty International, has demanded that police stop “firing indiscriminately at protesters”. The state has however not tired of violence against the people. Apart from its use of the police, it has recruited no less than 5,000 armed thugs, which it intended to use in dispersing the rallies called by NLC & TUC in Abuja, just as it had mobilised similar paid thugs that had marched on Labour house on January 6. The sheer mass of the rallies which kept rising from 20,000 on the first day to about 100,000 by day 4 was much more than the thugs and their pay master in Aso rock had envisaged.

The situation in Abuja is replicated across the country. In virtually every city where the people reclaimed the streets, our numbers kept swelling! In cities such as Kano, Ibadan, & Benin, the state declared curfews, ostensibly to curb “hooliganism” but really with the hope of curtailing the spread of people’s power. These have been futile. The draconian step by Governor Sullivan Chime in Enugu to ban protests has equally not quelled the revolutionary fervour of working people and youths. As if we were in the military era, this governor who is a lawyer constituted a special mobile tribunal with its base at the State CID office, with which he tried and summarily jailed Comrade Festus Ozoeze for mobilising the people for a mass protest. The state however remains grounded by a mass strike.

The General Strike has been total, with businesses and offices shut down, even in those few states where mass protests could not continue due to the antics of the state or based on the decisions of organised labour to avoid playing into the state’s hands and witnessing more loss of lives. In the past four days, the Federal Government estimates that N1.28t has been lost. Is this not being penny wise pound foolish when this war it unleashed is to cut-off a “subsidy” worth N1.3t for the whole year?

This is however in acting true to character for the class of the 1% across the world. We the masses, the 99% whose labour creates the wealth they appropriate are not meant to benefit from the sweat of our brow, in their view. They have led the world to an economic crisis from which we are still reeling. But we must pay the price for their greed, corruption and the inefficiency of the capitalist system.

We have however chosen to seize our destiny in our hands and fight unto victory. We are more than them and with our unity and determination, we will win. The belligerence of the state and its continued contempt and war against we the people can only spur us to even more determined strides of struggle and solidarity. Indeed, the cry across the country as labour leaders and representatives of civil society met with the state was that even N65.10k would not be accepted. That organised labour held the forte for the people has sent adrenaline shooting through our blood as men, women and youths cry out boldly: to the barricades tomorrow!

We are very aware that our struggle is part of the broader struggle of working people and youths across the world. The 99% of toilers in every land equally realise the singularity of our different struggles as being for the self-emancipation of we who have been exploited, alienated, marginalised and oppressed for just too long and now rise to break the chains. As Nigerians in the diaspora “occupied” spaces in several cities across the world, our brothers and sisters, comrades and colleagues from other climes have marched with us. The World Federation of Trade Unions, National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa and the Communist Party of Swaziland amongst others, have equally expressed their solidarity with us as we fight.

We call for more of such support, even as the Nigeria Labour Congress and Trade Union Congress prepare to take President Jonathan and Hafiz Ringim the Inspector General of Police to the International Criminal Court for prosecution, in the light of their continued murders of unarmed protesters. As our struggle gathers momentum, moving from resistance to revolution, such solidarity could greatly help us to minimise the loss of lives, as each martyr that falls fills our hearts with pain.

Making the leap from resistance to revolution involves broadening our demands. It also entails moving from fighting against power, to fighting for power. It is the moment of occupying what we have been alienated from, the freedom to be the masters of our own destiny. Our movement is that popular, because it is one of people’s power. Our movement is one of revolution from below! The power we shall win can not be from top down. This is the power oppressors covert for such power being over and above the heads of the 99%, can only be the power of the 1%.

We have to build mass power now and in earnest, from below. We must expand the social and political spaces we occupy as much as the physical space of the streets where we manifest this. In our different “Tahrir Squares”, from Gani Fawehinmi Freedom Square at Ojota to Liberation Square at Kano and Freedom Square in Abuja, as well as in our different neighbourhoods, we must create structures of popular power NOW. Form General Assemblies of People’s Power constitute Action Committees in defence of the unfolding Nigerian Revolution. Occupy power from the Local Governments and the states and together we will bring the Federal state to naught and build on it one which is ours, for the construction of a new society based on cooperation and solidarity.

Together with the 99% seeking to realise the possibility of another, better world, we shall overcome and establish an order in which the fullest development of each and every one is the essence of the development of society as a whole.

A luta Continua! Victoria Ascerta!! FORWARD TO VICTORY!!!

Baba Aye is the National Chairperson of Socialist Workers League

Who are the hoodlums in Nigeria?

2012-01-11T16:54:00.000-08:00

In the past few days, the Federal and state governments have tried to find a straw man to bear the responsibility for the turbulence they stirred, in ways and manners to break the collective of citizens rising against the system they represent and its insensitive policies such as “deregulation” & “removal of fuel subsidy”. The straw man’s other name is “vagabond”. Several top functionaries of the Federal Government have cried themselves hoarse that the streets have been seized by hoodlums.

Mohammed Bello Adoke, the Attorney-General, has threatened to bring the full force of the law to bear on them for causing breakdown of law and order. Anyim Pius Anyim, Secretary to the Government of the Federation went a step further, demanding that organised labour condemns these “vandals”. In a number of states, including Kano, Kaduna, Edo & Oyo states, curfews ranging from dusk to dawn to 24 hours have been declared ostensibly to forestall further violence by these same hoodlums.

Who are these hoodlums and how can they be explained as anything but cancerous outgrowths of otherwise peaceful processes of protest, that we are made to believe they are? Are they Martians or simply deranged? Is it possible to make any sense of their activities? Are they some different species from other more peaceful demonstrators?

It is important in my view to point out quite clearly that, first and foremost, they are citizens and no less so than the rulers of this country. They are the wretched of the earth who have lost faith in the system and hold only a thin line of faith in themselves. They are not a species particular to the unfolding revolutionary situation in Nigeria. No revolution has or can occur, in modern urban society without these sans culottes or if you like in the Nigerian parlance, area boys, as –in their own way- players. Their own way, no doubt could come with destruction. Revolutions though are by nature, both destructive and creative.

Is this to glorify destruction, vandalism, or hooliganism? Definitely not! It is rather to face the reality of the whirlwind that the ruling class-sown wind harvests and how in real life, this harvest plays itself out. Is this also to join in seeing these “hooligans” as being merely destructive, thieves and extortionists? Again, definitely not! They are human beings like the most genteel of us and often bear much more noble spirits than many in high places. I fought with a number by my side, when coordinating Campaign for Democracy actions at Mushin during the heady days of revolt that marked the early days of the June 12 revolution. Many of these “area boys” won my highest respect, not only as fighters, but as well with their sincerity and singular sense of commitment to the tasks at hand, which with many of the more gentlemen fighters often come with that veneer of posturing and make-belief.

I watched Comrade Peter Esele, President of the Trade Union Congress on TV telling the SGF to his face that even when protesters lost their phones during the rally with 100,000 citizens at Area 1 roundabout on the General Strike’s day 3, these were brought to designated points and returned to the owners. I could confirm even more than this personally. As I hastily jumped over a gutter to go and control a break away group of “hooligans”, my phone fell out of the pocket I’d tucked it in & I was not aware. It was someone who looked every inch of what our genteel SGF would have called a “hooligan” who picked it and shouted “oga, come take your phone, e don fall”. Many a “hooligan” might be hungry and disillusioned, but that does not necessarily turn such citizens into a thieves.

“But some of them just like “feral” rioters in the UK barely five months ago, looted and vandalised property in some of the states of the federation”, some could argue. What of the thirty cars burnt in Kano, according to the police? These luxurious items confronted the “hooligans” and not the other way round. These inanimate objects confronted living souls with how beautiful life could be for an infinitesimal few, and just how they, like the bulk of the 99%, could never taste of such beauty. In property and ostentatious wealth they saw theft and not wrongly too. These lumpen wretched of the earth that the “hooligans” are, are as much products as they are victims of the degenerate capitalist system with its sickening consumerism which they are mere window shoppers of, when all is calm and quiet. They hate the rich and his/her wealth because they hate their own poverty and disillusionment.

It is however instructive that the different governments at both the federal and state levels that have condemned elements of hooliganism in the course of the General Strike and Mass Protests, or even taken actions such as declaring curfews, have not limited their grouse to the actions of vagabonds. They have quite slyly with the states and much more explicitly with the Federal Government tried their utmost to tie such side events, so to speak, to the main show which is people’s power on the streets and in the workplaces.

The SGF and ministers who have condemned the real and perceived vagabondage on the sidelines of the struggle thus far have equally demanded that NLC & TUC call off the strike, in the same breath. Their claim has always been the same thing; the atmosphere of General Strikes provides vintage opportunity for vagabonds to roam the land. Organised labour is thus to call off the strike so that such violence and hooliganism stops and then like gentlemen, its executives would negotiate with government on the fuel price hike.

In the case of the states governments, they equally in every case did try to get the strike called off, to which the NLC State Councils’ officers made it clear that it is a national action which they have to stand by. The next best thing which they insisted on thus, was for the workers to call off mass protests on the streets. Considering the fact that live ammunition had been used to quell “hooliganism”, resulting in deaths, in a number of states made it commonsensical for the labour leaders to accept this option in their bid to save the blood of more Nigerians from being senselessly spilled.

There are however critical fault lines in the governments’ argumentations. First, the Federal Government and not organised labour created the atmosphere of crisis in the country, very much like those whom the gods want to kill and first run mad. And it did this, not just with its eyes wide open, but with the utmost sense of contempt for the views of the people and without the slightest shred of honour or dignity that one would expect even from vagabonds. A government that gave the impression that it would still pursue the path of dialogue and consultation, assuring the nation that any change in price would not be until April and a few days later with the sneakiness of a thief jacked up fuel pump price is one devoid of shame. Beyond even shame, the National Assembly had extended the 2011 budget implementation to March. It thus acted illegally, as the “removal of fuel subsidy” was built into the 2012 budget which as of now has not yet become operational.

How would such a government expect the citizenry to have anything close to trust in it when it slyly says “call off the strike and we will then negotiate”? Negotiate what? Nigerians, including “hooligans” on the streets are nobody’s fools, with or without shoes.

Second, it is instructive that no single case of “hooliganism” took place during the processions and rallies organised by labour and its allies in the course of the last few days. The house of labour is very much like that of the great man which Chinua Achebe wrote about. It has room for all and sundry persons. The lumpen wretched of the earth are no less welcome than the entertainment celebrities and politicians who have graced our podiums. But within the chaos of the birth pangs of rebirth, people’s order is maintained with mutual respect. In all the NLC & TUC state councils, the strike committees have arrangements and persons responsible for crowd control. That much however can hardly be said for the police. Why should bullets be used on protesters, even if they be hooligans? Are there no means of crowd control that could be used in those fringe cases of riotous protests by some citizens in the penumbra of organised labour’s mass actions?

Third, the FGN misses the point totally if it thinks calling off the strike, without heeding the rather simple demand of reverting the pump price of petrol to N65, would like a magic wand cause riotous protests to disappear from the streets. Indeed, if the memories of our self-declared rulers were not as short as not to remember the events of last week, they would have recalled the fact that protests were much more riotous before labour stepped into the fray, to give organised leadership to the anger seeping through every single pore of the land. And even at that, government must also be reminded that the first of the eighteen martyrs that have fallen in these past dozen days of 2012 were killed in the course of peaceful demonstrations last week in Ilorin and Kano.

The bottom line is that while despite its inevitability “hooliganism” must be eschewed by the movement of protesters as it has done –being at best a side show of sorts- the leading hooligans in this country are not on the streets, they are far from being the wretched of the earth who have been naught. They are to be found in the cosy interiors of government houses and flashy cars. They are those who point one accusing finger while three and a thumb rightly point back at them. They are VIPs, those whom Fela aptly described as vagabonds in power. They are the lumpen capitalists, whom the Yoruba would consider as omo ale a ko ti ‘le ta (bastards who sell off the common patrimony), in the service of imperialism and their wanton gluttony, for which they would steal the poor blind to subsidize their blatant thievery.

FUEL SUBSIDY, INFLATION AND NATIONAL SECURITY PRESS RELEASE BY THE EXECUTIVE SECRETARY OF CATHOLIC CARITAS FOUNDATION OF NIGERIA, ABUJA, FR. EVARISTUS BASSEY

2012-01-11T16:42:00.000-08:00

We are alarmed at the fact that government is not intending either now or in the future to reduce the pump price of petrol. Whether government builds ten refineries in the nearest future and Nigeria’s refining capacity is increased beyond domestic demand, it is alarming that government is not intent on reducing the price of petrol, ostensibly because it wants prices to compete with neighbouring nations in order to avoid smuggling of the products across the borders. Instead of government initiating ways to man the borders and prosecuting fuel smugglers, government is intent on sustaining the hardship on Nigerians. This is terrible. This means that if those in neighbouring countries increase their pump prices beyond the present level, the Nigerian government will immediately increase the pump price of petrol again, in order to avoid smuggling. This is subversive, as government thinks only of economic value and not human value.

If it makes economic sense to remove the subsidy, this should be separated from fuel pump price; as it is quite possible to reduce the pump price of petrol while eliminating the corruption in the subsidy regime. The template that PPPRA has used to arrive at the pump price is suspect and must be reviewed. Till date government has abandoned its tank farms and preferred to rent private tank farms and adding this inefficiency to Nigerians. Government cannot keep giving the excuse of vandalisation of pipelines, as government has all it takes to patrol the pipelines even by helicopter. Government has been held captive by barons in the downstream sector and is transferring this fickleness to Nigerians. This is unacceptable. Fuel can cost less with or without subsidy and it must. Corruption in the down stream can be fought, as has happened in the Petroleum Equalization Fund where transactions are automated, paper less. The Jonathan government must convince Nigerians that it is not part of the corruption in the downstream sector.

Meanwhile we advise Mr. President to project more confidence in order to inspire millions of those who voted for him. If the president and Commander- in- chief sounds helpless in the face of security threats, how can he guarantee the protection of lives and properties of Nigerians ? The president should have included in his startling remarks a promise to fish out the fifth columnists and deal with them. Meanwhile in our considered opinion the security agencies should not separate the call for Christians to vacate the North from the quest for power in 2015, as there may be fear about voting outcomes with the presence of large numbers of non-indigenous populations in the north. As everyone becomes more security conscious, no one should be tempted to abandon the Gospel injunction of the Lord Jesus who taught about the unconditional love of everyone including the perceived enemy. Even the Prophet Mohammed(bless his soul) taught the tolerance of others.

We call on citizens to take more active interest in the budget processes of government in order to influence it, and engage the legislature more and more at all levels, for it is they that have the power of appropriation of the budget. As citizens we must keep up the ante until government brings down this contrived price.

Fr. Evaristus Bassey

Executive Secretary

CCFN

ON “NO WORK, NO PAY”

2012-01-10T22:40:00.000-08:00

The Federal Government’s contempt for Nigerian workers was expressed once again yesterday as it threatened to invoke the “no work, no pay” clause of the Trade Union (Amendment) Act, 2005. What arrant nonsense! Has any of the endless numbers of ministers, special advisers, senior special assistants, special assistants etc ever failed collect “pay” from the public treasury for doing NO WORK,? Or what work have they done, with the way Nigeria has continually moved from bad to worse as a nation, economically, politically and socio-culturally? How many service chiefs and IGP have been sacked for not being able to halt the menace of Boko Haram? Which minister of industry has lost a dime for the continued de-industrialization of an economy that was under-industrialized from the word go?

It is however not surprising that the state makes this threat. Its functionaries are worried & scared silly! They had thought that we would go on strike for just two days as some of our socialist friends had suggested. They never imagined that we would find the embers of fire and fan the blaze of revolutionary struggle! They felt they could brave whatever we have to give. But they failed to gauge the power of the working class and the steadfast determination of Nigerians as a whole. They hope to separate the working class from the mass of Nigerians, as they know the great might of the working class and understand how united & determined WE CANNOT BE DEFEATED!

It is not only the state feels our strength and wants to break it. Oh, what a damned wish that is! It is the capitalist class of exploiters and oppressors as a whole! This is why the “no work no pay” principle is supposed to be applied to both public and private sector workers. But, THEY WILL FAIL! We will continue with this struggle and we will get our pay at the end of it, because WE WILL WIN!

This is a popular struggle; this is the people’s struggle. We will not retreat and we will not surrender. It is REVERT FUEL PRICE TO N65 & it is about our dignity as a people and our desire to win our self-emancipation. Nigerian workers ARE NOT shaken by this balderdash.

FORWARD TO VICTORY!

Baba Aye, a Deputy National Secretary of the Labour Party is the National Chairperson of the Socialist Workers League

NUMSA Supports Nigeria's Workers

2012-01-10T22:19:00.000-08:00

The National Union of Metalworkers Union of South Africa (NUMSA), the genuine and trusted ally of the Steel, Engineering Workers Union of Nigeria (SEWUN) supports the ongoing class struggle against high fuel prices imposed on the working class by political elites and fuel profiteers.

We denounce the current profit embedded Capitalist assault meted against the working class on their right to cheaper and affordable transport, access to basic amenities and a right to free and unhindered movement amidst deepening of capitalist crisis and worsening living conditions in the world today.

We pledge our solidarity with the entire trade union movement and broader working class in Nigeria. We are fully aware of the consequences and devastating impact the high cost of fuel will mean to the workers, marginalized, unemployed, youth and the poor of Nigeria. It is the very same workers and the poor who will have to endure the burden and hardships of soaring food prices and escalating cost of transport.

Our militant and agitated workers across the length and breadth of our country identify with the class struggle waged by the working class in Nigeria. We call on our allies SEWUN, and the entire trade union movement to intensify their action until government concedes to workers and the poor's demands.

Cedric Gina Irvin Jim
President General Secretary

WFTU Statement of Solidarity with the Nigerian Struggle!

2012-01-10T22:12:00.000-08:00

Solidarity to the People of Nigeria

The World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) on behalf of its 82 million members from 120 countries, denounces the decision of the Nigerian government to end the fuel subsidy for the people which will bring the further increase in the petrol price up 50% until 130%, in addition to the existing living conditions of the Nigerian people, the poverty and the high prices for the daily essentials that are already a huge burden for the popular family.

Nigeria is the biggest oil producer in Sub-Saharan Africa. The wealth-producing resources of the country are exploited by multinationals and monopolies leaving only hunger and poverty to the majority of the population while the capitalists are gaining huge profits.

The World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) demands from the government of Nigeria to immediately take back this anti-labor decision.

We express our support to our brothers, the working people of Nigeria and we express our internationalist solidarity to the strikes and their struggles.

Glorious Day of Rage

2012-01-09T22:36:00.000-08:00

Never before has Nigeria witnessed such a massive display of people’s power on the streets. On July 5, 1993, one million people had marched on the streets of Lagos to MKO Abiola’s house in a procession which we had all though would be a huge success if we could have brought ten thousand people out to claim the streets, when mobilizing. But, yesterday, more people marched on the streets of Lagos than the number that had marched on July 3, 1993! The same goes for Ibadan. And across the country, in virtually every major city except those in states in the North East which have been militarized under state of emergency, millions of Nigerians altogether took charge of the avenues, roads, streets and neighbourhoods. But even in those states, the NLC & TUC state councils constituted Strike Monitoring Committees, which went around the cities in buses to ensure, or more aptly put as it turned out, observe, the strict compliance that the strike achieved.

As the people marched on the streets, the country’s economy was ground to a halt. Factories, banks and offices were shut down. Shops and the plethora of informal services outlets in the country were closed. Workers’ power was self-evident as being decisive for social change and genuine transformation in Nigeria, not just because of the quantitative size of the barely 7million organised workers that are members of the affiliates of NLC and TUC, added up. The strategic position of the working class within any modern economy, including a backward one like Nigeria’s in the global modern industrial system, can definitely not be overemphasized.

The fact that the trade union movement is the only pan-Nigerian democratically structured social force, cutting across creed and ethnic identity is also very important. But probably the most important reason why the working class in Nigeria and indeed generally is the most decisive element of we are to realize in deed, the possibility of another Nigeria and indeed another world as the social forum process rightly asserts, is because of the leadership which with its intrinsic nature and its ties with all other segments of the 99% marginalised and dominated by capitalism in some form or the other, it can bring to bear in our rising to reclaim our humanity and build a new world based on cooperative solidarity. This is what we have seen as revolutionary upsurge builds in Nigerian revolution.

The ruling class of course will not just fold its hands in a situation like that which is now unfolding. The ancien regime always vacillates between the use of the carrot and the stick in the hour of its twilight. Yesterday, even as the Senate on behalf of the ruling class as a whole sought to win organised labour to some form of compromise, before its session today Nigerians were killed in cold blood with guns and bullets bought with tax payers’ money in several cities including Lagos, Kano, Gusau and Asaba. The perpetrators in Lagos were identified by vigilant citizens who took the vehicle number of the police van which the bloodthirsty purveyors of violence came in, and broadcast this widely, using social networking media. To quell the people’s anger, armed with this information, Mr Raji Fashola the Lagos State governor ordered the arrest of the policemen involved. We must also unmask the killers of our brothers and sisters in every other city. This calls for vigilance as demonstrated by the citizens at Ogba, Lagos state. We salute these martyrs whose labour, with their blood, shall never be in vain and must continue to demand with our words and deeds that it is our right to protest and the state must halt the killing of protesters. We call on all well-meaning persons and organisations across the world to echo this cry, as every life lost fills us with pain.

Violence against protesters also included the use of tear gas and pepper spray. An example of this was at Ibadan, when the mammoth crowd of a million people marched on the seat of the state government house, this resulted in the hospitalization of a 1-year old child, who happily for us, is now okay. The state governor sent the Commissioner of Establishment and Labour to express the state government’s regrets. The protesters who, as it might soon become generalised, demanded that Jonathan Must Go and a Sovereign National Conference be summoned by the people, made it clear that this was not enough. They insisted that the governor himself come and express the government’s apologies if sincere about it.

It was not only in the streets that the carrot and stick were used by the ruling class, who employ labour. The Ogun State Television (OGTV) General Manager asked the workers who had been on the night shift to stay back as it was clear that those on morning shift would not be coming to work. He offered the carrot of overtime allowance which they rejected; he then invoked the carrot of an order, effectively making them work, as forced labour for the duration of the day. The 7Up bottling company did a similar thing, while at Dangote Cement Obajana, management issued an order that any employee who does not report to work today would be sacked. The NLC/TUC National Strike Mobilization Committee and Leadership are aware of these and taken necessary action, with the state councils directed to mount massive pickets at these few recalcitrant workplaces in the course of today’s street protests.

In Abuja, the state cordoned off the Eagle Square which was where the processional rally led by Comrades Abdulwahed Omar and Peter Esele, Presidents of the NLC & TUC respectively was to have ended. Blockades also littered the procession’s route. After overwhelming two of these with people’s power, it was considered expedient to change the end point to avoid possible mayhem. While the rally and procession were peaceful, it kept swelling as it was moving and the virulent anger of many people, which is quite legitimate, was very palpable. With the state’s siege at Eagle Square, a single incident could have sparked bitter confrontation that might not only be diversionary and thus be in the interest of the state, but that could equally have led to shootings and possibly death. The procession’s final rally thus held at Wuse II in the commercial heart of the city, which was devoid of any commercial activity.

Across the country, we have not and will not take the bait of their carrots, nor will we succumb to their sticks. The time has come upon us, and we, Nigerian people are rising up to the call of history. The enthusiasm is high and today promises to be even much more massive on the streets than yesterday. Indeed, the time has come for change in Nigeria and the masses are not equating change to a mere reversal of fuel pump price. The change we seek, which we fight for and which we shall win, is that of the system. We want to and shall build a new Nigeria. As the flames of rage sweep through our land, the 99%’s anger like never before rises across the world. Revolution from below is international and together we shall build a new world with working people across the globe.

Venceremos! We Will WIN!

Baba Aye, a Deputy National Secretary of Labour Party is National Chairperson of the Socialist Workers League.

OUR DAY HAS COME!

2012-01-08T18:41:00.000-08:00

Introduction
Today, we the Nigerian people arise to take our destiny in our hands, as the most massive General Strike & labour-led mass protests in our history commences, in a face-off with the state/government of the 1% that have held us in bondage and led the country to ruin, for the reversal of the increment in fuel price, and indeed for more: for our self-emancipation! The revolutionary situation that marked this year as one that will birth change for us and children yet unborn started with the year itself.

2012 commenced with a big bang, ignited by the Federal Government when it raised the price of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) better known as petrol, from N65.00 to N141.00, as its New Year “gift” to the Nigerian people. Within days, well over a hundred thousand citizens had participated in some form of demonstration or the other in cities across half of the states of the Federation, in virtually all of its six geo-political zones.

New organisations and coalitions have been formed, & old organisations and alliances revitalised in a massive wave of mass anger on the streets, by working people and youths. The two trade union federations, Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and Trade Union Congress (TUC), reached an historic joint resolution in defence of the Nigerian people against the fuel price increase, at their separate National Executive Councils’ meetings, attended by radical elements of the civil society on Wednesday January 4, to prosecute what has been described as “the mother of all general strikes & mass protests” ever in Nigeria, commencing today, to subsist indefinitely, till the will of the people prevails.

The Federal Government’s response has been one of recalcitrance filled with arrogance. The Minister of Information, Labaran Maku, who used to be a fire-brand activist and a founding member of the United Action for Democracy castigated the labour movement’s opposition to the so-called “removal of fuel subsidy”, while the Minister of Labour, Emeka Wogu asserted that government would not submit to “threats” from those it “rules”. The final word of the Federal Executive Council was by President Goodluck Jonathan on January 7. He claimed to understand how the people feel and promised palliatives. Such palliatives, which are part of the Subsidy Removal Reinvestment and Empowerment (SURE) scheme, headed by the former Cadbury Nigeria boss, Dr. Christopher Kolade include the establishment of a “robust” mass transit scheme. At the heart of this scheme is the distribution of 1,600 buses to various cities in a country with an estimated population of 167million people, to alleviate the pangs of transportation, considering the sharp increases in transport costs. Quite robust indeed, it could be said, if one where to think with his much loved shoes.

The president’s Rehoboam-like speech did not draw much applause from Nigerians. Yesterday, January 8, the House of Representatives stepped into the fray, with its special session to discuss the state of the nation. It passed a resolution moved by Comrade Paul “TeeJay” Yusuf, a former students’ union leader, demanding that the fuel price increase be reversed. It is also to hold discussions with labour by Tuesday after an attempt to include calling on organised labour to call off its strike in its resolution was thrown out.

It was clear when the sun went down yesterday, that, the die was cast for a major battle between the 1% of the country’s population comprising its wealthy ruling class and the 99% dispossessed, suffering people that have chosen to stop smiling, who have borne the brunt of the fuel price hike this last one week and have equally fought against it with all our might. A revolutionary situation has sprouted in the country, what would come out of it is still in contention, but it is certain this time around that the masses, and no less the state, have dug into what could turn out to be Nigeria’s moment of decision.

At a historical conjuncture
We are at crossroads, where the death of fear, resurrects the boldness of life, in moments of struggle. Here, for once, like never before, the nation stands as one against the bulwark of the might of the state and its few shameless paid tools who for the love of filthy lucre can not hear the bells ringing across the land, bells of the stiffest resistance in words and in deed. The National Medical Association, the Nigerian Bar Association, the Federation of Informal Workers Organisation of Nigeria and the Joint Action Forum of pro-labour civil society organisations have, along with hundreds of other national, regional and local organisations placed themselves at the standpoint of the working class, demanding reversal of the fuel pump price and subscribing with no reservations to the leadership of the working class in the nation’s waging of this struggle against the state of the 1%.

Indeed, the binding demand has been NO TO FUEL PRICE HIKE. But with this, virtually every section of society, except for the big employers have clearly said ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.

The country has been bedeviled by astounding poverty, rising insecurity and utter disillusionment. The general elections last year, had been for many, a first step towards re-making this country despite its condemnable flaws. But the elite, comprising the ruling class, have not only failed to provide moral and intellectual leadership, it has wittingly or unwittingly made the state of the nation worse. Most of those who voted for the current government now regret it. This of course is not to say there were alternatives that could have turned our lives around, for without us as the people fighting to emancipate ourselves, as we now shall do, all hope is lost.

While grinding want and despair reign with no regards for creed, ethnic identity or region Nigerians live in, sectarian violence has been the dominant news focussed on globally when you talk of Nigeria. This has been defined more, in recent times, by the terror antics of the Boko Haram group, which reports, including from wikileaks show, have had the tacit support of key figure in the state machinery, at different times. Where we are now however has demonstrated even within the miasma of continued perpetuation of such dastardly acts, gallant demonstrations of solidarity across faiths.

Last week, non-Muslims stood guard in Kano as Muslims said their prayers in the City Centre now called Liberation Square, where they were all brutally evicted from at about 1.30am by anti-riot police, while on Sunday at Funtua, Katsina state, Muslims surrounded churches as Christians worshipped, to provide security. This was in response to threats of Boko Haram attacks that had spread across the state. Similarly, Muslim youths who had been Occupying the sidewalk of the Eagle Square since Thursday, as well as civil society activists, organised around the Alliance for Credible Elections and the Joint Action Forum went to churches with leaflets, forging solidarity across creed.

We now fully know that it is the elite that play up our ethnic and religious identities as “differences” to be manipulated to keep us divided and thus weak. Hunger and disillusionment know no creed or “tribe”. And the elite when they meet to decide our fate and fleece our social wealth do not consider themselves then as Muslims, Christians, animists or atheists! But they have pitted us against ourselves, time and again. But now, the hour has come for our self-redemption through collective struggle for a better society.

It would not be out of place, in considering how we got to this conjuncture to point at the contentious issue of “subsidy” removal. While barely 17,000 executives and their coteries across the country pocket N1.125t annually and the National Assembly alone gulps a quarter of total recurrent expenditure, the state claims that N1.3t fuel “subsidy” for the Nigerian people is not sustainable. It further goes tongue-in-cheek to admit that this amount arises not from subsidising petrol for Nigerians but largely as corrupt enrichment of a “cabal” in the oil sector. This is despite the fact that if the country’s four refineries with a combined refining capacity of 445,000bpd were producing at optimal capacity, domestic need could be secured. Why must Nigerians pay for the government’s subsidizing of corruption and its grandiose inefficiency?

To limit the cause of the extent of anger and simmering revolt in the land to the fuel subsidy question would however be to fail to see the wood for the trees. The clouds of revolution had been gathering for years in the horizons of Nigeria, as even members of the ruling class could see. In 2008, 2009 & 2010, different leading members of the elite class of capitalists in the country, from diverse ethnic and regional backgrounds had pointed at the possibility of such in the near future. They had noted: abysmal poverty; severe rates of unemployment; mass discontent and; the bland ostentatious lifestyles of the elite in the face of these. They could point at the symptoms but dare not identify the crux of the matter; the inhumanness and non-sustainability of capitalism for lasting social development.

In the wake of the Arab Spring, Dimeji Bankole, the then Speaker of the House of Representatives whom an anti-corruption agency has clearly identified now as a mega-thief declared that revolution could never occur in Nigeria. Months later, the former President, Chief Olusegun Obsasanjo, who sold off our collective patrimony for pittance, to himself and his cronies, as part of the neoliberal agenda of the Nigerian state warned in faraway Geneva that revolution might be imminent in Nigeria. He reiterated this positionin December, when in a seeming uncharacteristic manner, he took a stand against the then looming “removal of fuel subsidy”.

The people of Nigeria now rise, to reverse the increase in the price of petrol and for more. “We have been naught, we shall be all”; that is the cry that rings through the land today as we face our destiny. That is the crossroad at which we now are; to win, or to fight to the last drop of our blood!

The global context and the working class
It is not accidental that the present situation is unfolding in Nigeria at this moment in history. We are living through historic times in which the “automatic legitimacy” of the capitalist system has been critically cracked, but the ascendancy of an alternative is itself not assured. While we are surer now that another world indeed is possible, we must contend for what such possibility could mean. But without the generalisation of that “death of fear” and commonsensical “acceptance” of this anti-people order which while obsolete still remains real, no revolution from below could occur.

It is important to stress the crucial role the working class, nationally and internationally, has to play in finding and entrenching the emergent new. This has practical significance for us in the moment we now are in, as not a few of the youths who have tirelessly and ceaselessly been on the battle field of an unfolding revolution this past one week have many a time in discussions asserted that “let labour do its thing, we will (or can) do ours and still win”.

I will extensively draw from an earlier paper, “A World in Turmoil, Problems and Prospects of the MENA Spring & the Occupy Movement”, presented in December at the Social Action-organised anti-imperialist camp for youths at Port Harcourt, to drive home my point:

It is only proper to ask ourselves why such turmoil seizes the whole world in an orgy of “crisis and resistance”, “revolution and counter-revolution”. The capitalist system is now being questioned, even by its icons and epigones. But it is a system that in its very inhumanity could not but have always been questioned by the emancipatory spirit of humanity & all who stand for people over profit & the fulfilment of social needs over individual greed. Why now and why is it thus, that anger, sweat and blood mark its question mark?

The capitalist system, like earlier class societies is based on the exploitation of the immense majority by an infinitesimal minority. Oppression tends to go with exploitation. The elite class have to wield state power to keep the majority who actually work to create society’s wealth, subdued. They use such apparatus as the police, army, prisons and courts to coerce the poor. Even in Western “democratic” states as we have seen in recent times, youths are tear gassed and the democratic freedoms of assembly, expression, etc, curtailed, using truncheons, water cannons, police dogs and guns.

It is however impossible for the ruling classes to maintain their dominant place in society with only the means of coercion. From the cradle to the grave, the status quo of particular societies is presented as divine and eternal. Under capitalism this is even more systematic and intense. The school system, mass media, religion and even family ties are used to make us believe that there is no choice for humankind beyond capitalism.

Thus, most people just try to live their lives, even if it is not much of a life, during periods of seeming stability of the system. Many cling to hope that tomorrow will be better somehow, under the system that keeps them down. They merely try to get some incremental benefits. But periods of economic and political crises shatter illusions of the system’s omnipotence and omniscience.

These objective conditions could lead to a revolutionary situation, an historical conjuncture where in the miasma of disillusionment and despair, the very possibility of all things being possible is opened as vistas of what is to be done to those having nothing to lose but their chains, the indignant mass of working and poor people. With rising unemployment rates, austerity measures, cuts in public spending, etc, mass anger boils over. And in the present situation, as working people and youths see the capitalist state bail out the banks and businesses that led society to the brink of abyss, while we are made to suffer like never before, angst paves way for confrontation.

Within the ruling class, confusion also sets in. Sections of the elite realise that they cannot continue to rule as they used to. Some of them align with demands of the masses as we saw in North Africa and even to some extent in the US with “patriotic millionaires” begging for higher taxation of their wealth. Of course, their main reason is to limit how far the revolution would go, seeking to curtail it from within.

The middle classes feel the brunt of crises as well. During periods of capitalism’s relative stability, they have hope of joining the 1% by dint of their expertise and relatively secure income. As their proprietary hopes are damned they turn from the big bosses to the mass of working people, including the unemployed, for their salvation, swelling the ranks of the people.

Revolution as we see before our very eyes is primarily the indignant intrusion of the masses into the political arena, which under normal times are dominated by “statesmen” and politicians. The wretched of the earth in revolutionary situations alone, the people, see themselves as the force that can determine their own fate and not some elected or appointed “representatives”.

The determinant force within “the people”, in revolutionary moments, is the working class. The turning points in the revolutions that swept through North Africa, for example, where when workers entered the insurrections as a class. Similarly, the support of the American trade unions for the OWS movement provided it great leverage. This is because of the central role of the working class to capitalist production. Indeed, a deeper look at the three triumphant revolutions in North Africa and the different pathways they took shows that the nature and level of development of the working class was, to a large extent, the determinant factor.

In Tunisia, the UGTT was in a sense incorporated into the Tunisian regime’s corporate state. But it still had some more independence in its action compared to the parastatal-like Egyptian Trade Union Federation. UGTT even dared to voice anti-neoliberal rhetoric and was the anchor of the social forum process in the country, being the host secretariat of the Tunisian Social Forum. During the Tunisian revolution, its actions saw to the entry of workers as a class, much more quickly into the fray of the struggle.

In Egypt, the ETUF was a dyed-in-the-wool “Mubarakist” organisation. There were however more and stronger independent trade unions in Egypt than there were in Tunisia. This would constitute themselves as an independent federation which has grown in numbers and in stature ever since then and is now at the fore of working class action as the Egyptian revolution gropes for its October of February 12, in November. Well before the revolution, there were several wildcat strikes organised by these independent trade unions and even rank and file structures within the establishment “trade union” federation, in defiance of both the state and the recognised labour aristocracy.

The so-called “brother leader” on his own part constricted every form of civil life with political spirits, including, the trade unions. The national “trade union” centre was not only incorporated, it was to all intents and purposes, not something really existing. Even the ritual of collective bargaining which in many corporate states exist, albeit emptied of any but some supposed contents, was banned under the Gaddafi regime. As with many an underdeveloped country where the working class is weak in numbers and/or organisationally, insurgency became the pathway of insurrection.

It is important though to note that even in the worst case scenarios, such as in Libya, the working class from below, burst asunder the fetters of its bureaucratic layers official “leadership” to assert its role as historical progress’ motive force in modern society. The fall of Tripoli, from within, lay in the uprising within the uprising that commenced from working class quarters in the city of the mermaid.

In Bahrain, the working class has been very active in the popular uprising that the Bahrainian state and indeed the entire Gulf States have tried their utmost to drown in blood. Not surprisingly, trade union activists have suffered intimidation, detention and disappearances, before and after the pulling down of Pearl square which the Bahraini people had tried to recreate as their own Tahrir square. Yemen which is the poorest country in the Arab world traditionally has a weak working class base. But despite its low level of industrialisation and consequent proleterianization of its working people, being sucked into the dynamics of a capitalist world economy, it has witnessed sharp rise in urbanisation and the expansion of an urban informal economy littered with precarious workers, but workers, nonetheless, who have been at the fore of struggle there.

The spread of revolutionary fervour across the world reflects the close interconnectedness of the capitalist order. International working class and socialist solidarity is needed to overthrow capitalism and build socialist society. We are indeed at a revolutionary conjuncture. There would be more moments of triumphs and equally those of reverses. We should not be dismayed if this would not be the final conflict. A new generation of working people and youths is learning from the moment of history we are living through. As we remake the world, we would transform ourselves. The foundations of tomorrow are being laid now and blocks of struggle in Nigeria as well, would be there moulded.

As our day starts today, with a national General Strike and mass protests in every major city in the country, the might of the working class and the possibilities it holds for generalising and giving leadership to our collective struggle, definitely stamp itself on the course of the unfolding situation in Nigeria.

In lieu of a conclusion
It is all well and good to interpret the situation we have entered and which is now deepening. The greater challenge might be that of adequately responding to the question; “what is to be done?” In challenging the will of the state we are fighting against power. To win more i.e. to emancipate ourselves entails yet another logic being laid on this; our fighting for power.

In this light, we would have to organise organs of people and street power, as the situation deepens. In our neighbourhoods, schools and yes; workplaces, we would have to entrench direct democracies, by constituting General Assemblies with action committees to address diverse needs of keeping the revolution alive.

I mention workplaces despite the General Strike for a simple reason. In the course of the week, or even beyond it, it is not impossible that despite its bravado, the state would back down, although as they say; “those whom the gods would kill, they first run mad”. But even if with a reversal and consequent suspension of the strike (and this is not given at this moment, but we must consider all possibilities), the wind is stolen from our sails, it cannot but be for a while. The genie is out of the bottle. We might be entering into a long drawn period of people and street power (PSP) of the 99% against the >1% that have brought Nigeria to its knees and made our lives a misery.

International solidarity would be crucial as the 1% is tied by a thousand strings across all lands. But no less so are we! The spread of revolutionary upsurge across the world, berthing now in Nigeria as the sub-Saharan Harmattan further attests to this. Nigerians in the diaspora have taken up this gauntlet, starting in London and marching again today in Washington. We must as well call on the police ranks to sheath their weapons if directed to shoot at protesters. The killers of 23-year old Mustafa Muyideen Mofoluwasho Opobiyi during demonstrations at Ilorin must be brought to book. The fact that some 300 police officers marched in Lagos and other junior ranks rebuffed a Deputy Commissioner’s order to use live ammunition on protesters also goes to show many junior police men (and women) would rather tear off their uniforms of servitude than become tools that will bring death to their brothers and sisters in our collective struggle.

It is still morning yet on creation day for the Nigerian revolution. But yes, we the people dare say; OUR DAY HAS COME!

FORWARD TO VICTORY!

January 9, 2012

Baba Aye, a Deputy National Secretary of the Labour Party is the National Chairperson of the Socialist Workers League

pickung up the gauntlet!

2012-01-08T03:12:00.000-08:00

It seems a century since I've been at my blog here now. It is however rather unfortunate that this particular e-platform has been bare through this one week that seems like 7decades in Nigeria! I've concentrated more on micro-blogging and good ol' fashioned leafleting, engagements in discussions etc.

Henceforth though, here would serve in blending this together, on my own part, as the revolutionary situation in Nigeria deepens, as a platform for "solidarity and struggle" in truth and in deed.

Our Day Has Come! FORWARD TO VICTORY!!

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

2011-08-23T08:29:00.000-07:00

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 governments inherit and equally relinquish. Thus, the (post-colonial) Nigerian state remains the same despite the transitions of governments. While some policies pass away with the specific governments that enact them, many get institutionalised by the state, with consequences well beyond the tenure of specific governments. A few examples of such are: the re-organisation of the trade unions on the basis of the “new labour policy” of December 4, 1975; the Land Use Act of 1979; privatization, which commenced with the IBB years of SAP; public sector reforms & monetization, which are more recent but have been carried on by three governments now.

Second, I have replaced “policy formulation and implementation” with “policy cycle process”. This is quite important for two intertwined reasons that influence the perspective with which we engage with policy. The first is for us to aptly grasp “policy formulation and implementation” with a cyclical process perspective. The second is to bring attention to the fact that the “process cycle” is broader than those two key components (i.e. “formulation” & “implementation”) and the other components are equally vital terrains for broader civil society (and particularly in our case; trade unions’) engagement with the state.

The paper is thus organised into three broad sections. In the section immediately below, we summarily put in perspective: the policy process; why trade unions need to engage &; how trade unions engagement with the state’s policy process could simultaneously enrich social reformation for working people & build workers’ power for such contestations as would be necessary, for far more qualitative social transformations. The second section looks at the internal and external challenges and limitations workers and trade unions confront in rising up to the tasks involved in policy engagement, noting the roots of these. In the third section, we address the tools and skills unions would require for achieving significant policy influence, on the basis of building workers’ power.

2.0 The state, trade unions and the policy process
2.1Policy, the state and the working class
Policy is a term used to describe a framework or guidelines for reaching decisions and steering the course of actions of a specific social actor or set of actors. It could be considered as a documented or implied “statement of intent” or “commitment”, based on some principle(s), which guides actions and dispositions. Policy is thus in general inherent in the rational activities of persons , groups & states. It is sometimes implicit, particularly for persons or informal groups. Formal organisations however tend to have explicit policies in some form or the other.

State policy is very fundamental and different from organisational policies, because they could and do impact on persons, groups and organisations within the territory of the concerned state. It is important to understand what the state is, in general and particularly in modern society, to better grasp why state policy is so important and the possibilities and limitations of engagement with it.

The presence and character of a state in society reflects the reality of classes and class struggle. There were no states in the earliest human societies which were communalist social formations, based on a primitive mode of production. What was produced at this period was barely enough for everybody to feed and cloth. To produce the food for society through hunting and fruits gathering, also required a communal form of existence and a primitive form of egalitarianism. As humankind improved on the means with which it produced means of livelihood , men and women could produce surpluses of basic necessities and as well luxurious items.

A few people got to corner these surpluses for themselves, taking these through their greater strength, wisdom, or claims to being part of the families that first founded the settlement of different communities. Of course it was obvious to them that there was the need to institutionalise their power to exploit the immense majority by grabbing the social surplus or they would be challenged and indeed stopped in their tracks. They established states, to safeguard their interests, making themselves kings, lords and such like. Every ruling class has thus had to construct states in defence, primarily, of their interests, but presented as a body, over and above society in the interest of all members and groups in society.

States have been described as being no more than the executive committee of every social formation’s ruling class. This position is not an incorrect one. The state has also been described as a kind of “opposite” to civil society. This is to say that civil society comprises the entirety of relations and organisations between the nuclear unit of family and the state, which of course includes trade unions. This is also an enlightening perspective. There are however overlapping areas of relations between the state and civil society, particularly in modern societies. Unlike earlier states such as those where the word of the king was law, capitalist society, in general, cannot but guarantee some freedoms and liberties which collectively are best expressed as liberal democracy.

This is for several reasons. First, there is the need for workers to be free to sell their labour power to the employers and for the employer as investor to be free to move his or her capital to where profit is best maximized, irrespective of the social cost . Second, modern industrial society with its characteristic mass production and consumption (indeed more of “consumerism”) creates mass publics. The mass media also further binds these, although not as neutrally, or objectively as we are often made to believe. Third, the possible antagonism of the mass of working people could burst out in flames of rage if authoritarianism is overtly made the dominant form of state rule in all the forms of capitalist states.

We thus have the core of the state i.e. the assemblage of coercive and ideological apparatus for maintaining the domination necessary for capitalist accumulation to continue, absorbing elements of civil society and thus establishing what the Italian Marxist, Antonio Gramsci described as “the integral state”. It is in the context of this that the possibility of “non-state actors”, such as trade unions having policy influence, emerges.

This possibility makes it possible for us by engaging state policy to be able to win some reforms. Reforms in themselves are not necessarily bad things. They are actually necessary to further the amelioration of the working conditions of workers, and to ensure improvements in our living standards. In winning reforms through policy engagement and struggle from below in general, the confidence of the working class is equally bolstered that it can win fundamental concessions.

It is from this point of departure that as a trade unionist, I perceive the challenges of policy engagement. It is also from this perspective that it is necessary to note the dangers of perceiving the tokenism of reforms as being adequate for the emancipation of the working class and the fundamental transformation of human society.

2.2 Trade unions and policy influence
Trade unions are the primary and most representative organisations of the working class. This legitimacy was won through struggle and particularly by organising. It is also through organising i.e. building workers’ power that such legitimacy as the primary voice and structure of the working class is and can be maintained.

Trade unions were at some point in time or the other in most countries, illegal combinations. In Nigeria for example, while there had been manifestations of trade unionism from the nineteenth century and a trade union organisation since 1912, it was not until April 1, 1939 that trade unions became legal entities. The Colonial Secretary at the time, Lord Passfield, who originally was a reformist socialist known as Sydney Webb, had pointed out that if trade unions were not allowed to be legal, they would easily become allies to the radical nationalist movement then demanding “self government now”, for Nigerians in Nigeria. Thus legalization of trade unions was itself a policy aimed at incorporating them into the colonial scheme of things. Similarly the policy of “guided democracy and limited intervention” of the military in 1975, which led to the establishment of the current NLC on February 28, 1978, was with the same intent.

Of concern for us here though is how trade unions can and do influence policies and the policy processes as a whole. Why do trade unions have to wield policy influence? State policies affect both trade unions’ members and trade unions as collective organisations. Thus, unions have to be interested in influencing the contents and forms of policies, in defence of rights already won, and to further their interests on matters that affect workers as citizens and as workers as well as those affecting unions as corporate entities.

2.3. The Policy Cycle and Processes
Policies have life in that they are born and die to be replaced by similar or quite different policies. This “life” of a policy could be considered as the Policy Cycle, with different interlocking stages which have different processes. Each stage, or component of the Policy Cycle involves different actors , these could of course include trade unions, especially where and when they realise the crucial need for policy engagement. The processes at each stage equally require different, albeit interlocking tools and skills, to be able to adequately engage and influence state policy.

The stages of the Policy Cycle are thus:

• Agenda Setting
• Formulation
• Adoption
• Implementation
• Evaluation

Agenda setting: this is the point of problem identification. It involves awareness raising and contestation over priority This stage could be initiated by the government, as is the case with many executive bills and administrative policies. They could as well be initiated by civil society, such as the Media Rights Agenda/Freedom of Information Coalition’s work on the FOI Bill which is today, after about a dozen years, the Freedom of Information Act, 2011. Trade unions also initiate this, particularly on wage-issues. While this is legitimate, not only do non-wage issues directly affect union members, but so many other economic policies, which we could be more proactive in engaging equally affect the real wages of workers;

Policy formulation: this is the stage at which policy starts moving from a diffuse sense of defining what the problem is, to trying to construct the solution that the policy is supposed to bear. It involves: interpretation or, framing of the identified problem; setting of the policy objectives and; towards meeting those set objectives, fashioning out propositions as options on strategies that would inhere in the policy;

Adoption: this is the stage of decision-making, subsequent to the policy formulation stage. It often is by the legislative or executive arm of government at different levels, but could be bi-partite or tri-partite and thus involving organised labour, as well;

Policy implementation: the major representative actor for government at this stage is the bureaucracy. It tries to ossify policy as given presenting it as; thus not possible to be influenced. But this is not necessarily so, particularly where and when trade unions have been very active in bringing their influence to bear at earlier stages in the cycle;

Policy evaluation: it is critical to determine the extent to which policies meet set policy objectives. This is both for the purpose of learning from the successes or failure of particular policies as well as for drawing public attention to the grave limitations of policies that trade unions have pointed out from the onset would be nothing but disastrous, such as the SAP and other neoliberal policies of government. Policy evaluation need not be only after implementation, i.e. summative. It should as well be formative, i.e. a form of monitoring while policy implementation is ongoing.

2.4. Policy influence and social reformation
I have pointed out earlier that policies of reforms have severe limitations when they are not tied to more thorough-going social transformation. It is however very difficult, if not impossible for the ruling elites in economically backward countries such as Nigeria to make that needed linkage of reformation-to-transformation. Indeed our history is replete with several declarations of such intent but which the reality of praxis have shown the other direction towards stagnation. Be that as it may, how trade unions engagement with the policy processes and thus securing of policy influence leads to some level of amelioration of the lives of working people and the strengthening of the working class could be gleaned from the different types of policies and how we have won some concessions from challenging them in recent times.

Trade unions have engaged with the following types of policies over the years:

Distributive policies: the struggle for re-distribution is ever constant in capitalist societies. Policies have been used as tools for effecting or blocking this. Trade unions have engaged with this directly by struggling for new minimum wages and combating wage freeze policies. They have indirectly battled this through protestations against the huge allowances of legislatives and demanding increased funding for public education;

Social policy: which is a distinctive form of distributive policies dwells on state policies that affect the welfare of citizens. Of particular importance are; healthcare, education, social security, & pensions. Organised labour has engaged with these through involvement in structures, mechanisms and processes; that led to establishing the National Health Insurance Scheme in 2005, of the social insurance trust fund, related to the Pensions Reform Act, and (particularly with regards to unions in the education sector) some minimal increases in government spending on education;

Regulatory policies: the most visible one which labour has consistently challenged is that of the deregulation of the downstream sector of the petroleum industry. The public sector reforms and privatization in general are also some of the regulatory policies that organised labour has attempted to influence.

It is noteworthy to stress here that while the foregoing show that we are not starting from zero, the limited extent of these engagements’ successes, as we all know, serve as a pointer to two things, which are not mutually exclusive. One is the abridged nature of the commitment of the country’s rulers to the citizenry. The other is that organised labour could probably have won more concessions if it were better equipped.

3.0. Prospects and challenges for unions’ engagement with state policy
It is necessary to understand the major challenges trade unions face that limit their ability to adequately influence policies in the interest of their members and the working class in general, for us to make propositions on the tools and skills needed to overcome these. It is however apt to point out that there are also prospects or opportunities for deepening policy influence.

3.1. Prospects for trades unions’ policy influence
Probably the most important of the contextual prospects for unions’ engagement with state policy in Nigeria today is the democratisation of the national polity. While there was room for engagement with state policy even during the military rule, this was decidedly constrained. The institutionalisation of the legislative arm of government as well as the expansion of room for engaging with the executives at different levels as well as the bureaucracy are elements of the context for policy engagement which organised labour has exploited, but only to an arguably minimal extent.

Related to the spate of democratisation are some of the reforms that have already been won, such as the Freedom of Information Act which, at least formally, broadens access to official information. Trade unions and other civil society organisations would need to concretely test the actuality of this freedom of information.

Along with democratisation, the national polity has witnessed decentralisation. Despite the shortcomings of Nigerian federalism, it is possible to engage with states’ governments and (even though on a more constrained plane) with LGAs in the federation. Indeed in some instances, partisan contestation between the federal and some states’ governments could be exploited by trades unions in the process of policy engagement.

The new information and communication technologies provide a highway of opportunities for influencing policy in two ways. On one hand the open a vast expanse of information which unions could need to further their positions in the setting of agenda or formulation of state policy. On the other hand, it provides trade unions with a platform for reaching an ever expanding audience of publics towards winning broad social appeal and support for their stands on policies. These include the possible use of bulk sms, facebook groups and pages, telephone calls, blackberry broadcasts and emails. Related to this is the expansion of spaces of globalisation from below, expressed through international structures and mechanisms for generating solidarity between workers and trade unions across the world.

3.2. Key problems affecting trades unions’ engagement with state policy
Trade unions face a wide range of challenges in engaging state policy. Some of these problems are external to the unions. A large number of these are internal.

3.2.1. External challenges
The major external challenges that unions could face include the following:

Political context: the context of the policy processes is of great import for any actor, particularly non-state actors that want to influence policy. Corruption is a major drawback to non-state actors’ policy influence. It is not however apt to consider countries like Nigeria as being so corrupt while there is no corruption in advanced capitalist countries for example. This is utterly false, as several news scoops have revealed in the UK, the US and several other Western countries. A major difference though is the mitigating role of institutionalising processes and mechanisms that make policy engagement more impersonal;

Extent of openness of the policy processes: this is related to the extent of institutionalization of the policy processes. It needs to be stressed that this extent is not divine but partly circumscribed or expanded through policy influence itself. The extent of institutionalised consultations and even participatory democracy, such as in budgeting in Porto Allegre, Brasil or Kerala, in India were won through policy engagement which was linked with overt political engagement. Policy is decidedly political and the policy processes are political processes, involving vested class (and non-class) interests, contending actors and institutional pressures. But they could be engaged in a strictly “technicalist” manner or from an organising approach. The later approach helps over time to expand the extent of the policy processes, while the former could keep trade unions on the fringes of the policy processes glass ceiling;

Limited (technical) legitimacy: legitimacy of (non-state) actors in the policy processes is crucial for their winning policy influence. There are basically four sources of policy influence legitimacy. These are; political, moral, legal and technical. Trade unions tend to be rather weak in their repertoire of the technical source. While the membership base of organised labour gives political legitimacy, its role as champion of the causes of the downtrodden provides moral authority and registration of trades unions as corporate bodies that could restrain trade in a sense ensures legal legitimacy, the weaknesses of unions’ propositions in terms of depth and expertise, aligned with the prejudice of trade unionists as “table bangers” could be said to rob them of much needed technical basis of legitimacy, particularly in Nigeria.

3.2.2 Internal challenges
There are close correlations between the external challenges and the internal challenges. The major internal challenges are:

Lack of (technical) capacity: trade unions generally have inadequate capacity for processing, analysing and generating the necessary kind of information for critical engagement with policymakers and other actors in the policy processes. This has a lot to do with the absence of functional research departments or units within the unions both singly and collectively;

Poor knowledge and inadequate concern with policy processes: few unions have requisite knowledge about the policy processes and many more even lack much concern about these. This situation is closely related to the lack of capacity but distinct from it. The two challenges however reinforce a vicious cycle of self-marginalisation;

The funding problem: critical engagement with policy requires funding. A number of unions hardly have enough funds for what are considered the more “line functions” of administration and organising. It could be argued though that for quite a number of unions, it is not so much a case of lack of funds as one of priority. It is not impossible particularly if unions in the same sector pull resources together to fund the needed research work and campaigns for aptly engaging with state policy;

The human resource problem: where unions have (functional?) research units/departments, these are grossly understaffed and the few staffers rather under-trained. This results in both quantitative and qualitative human resource deficits for policy engagement by the trade unions;

The problem of communication: communication is of the essence for policy engagement. Interventions of trades unions in the policy process need to take note of the different audiences and how to aptly pass across their message in language that elicit further dialogue, as much as possible, even when they are in disagreement with the state. Thus, such interventions should have the apt balance of technical jargons where necessary and simplicity without being simplistic. Interventions also need to be timely at each stage of the policy processes;

Poor traditions of alliance/coalition-building: there are ever-expanding spectra of non-state actors involved in different ways at different stages of the policy cycle with the increase in NGOs and the spread of “NGOism”. Trade unions have not learnt how to use alliances and possibly coalitions with these, effectively for broadening policy influence;

Episodic (non-strategic) approach to engagement: trade unions engagement with the policy processes is hardly ever strategic. Different stages are engaged, where and when they are at all, in spasmodic, episodic manners.

These challenges are quite daunting, but not insurmountable. Indeed a critical necessity for unions that intend to utilise the democratic space and expand this for their memberships and the working class as a whole is to be able to rise above these challenges.

Possible tools and skills for achieving this comprise the last section of the main body of this essay.

4.0 Engaging with state policy; tools and skills for trade unions
There are no magical portions for curing the “ills” or if you will, overcoming the obstacles that presently confront trades unions in engaging with state policy. The tools, skills and strategies that unions have to bring to bear require doing some things we already do, better. They also require that we introduce some practices that we have not hitherto considered as necessary.

There are elements of the challenges before us that we cannot wholly resolve, such as the external challenges. But we can significantly influence the re-constitution of their dynamics. There are others, bearing on internal inadequacies which we can more decisively confront. But even these would not be automatically resolved. Habits take time to change and entrenching new ways of work, which in a way is what policy engagement as an approach to our work would entail, would be faced by some extent of internal resistance to change. It is in this light that I would say the first thing needed most is political will to walk the talk of this workshop. Such political will requires leadership, but to be thorough-going and successful must come from bottom up, with the structures of the union, from the base to the apex, buying into the “project”. This for me is a major reason for commending NUPENG in bringing its branch level officers together for this workshop.

We now look at some key tools and skills, in the light of the foregoing:

4.1. Context assessment
The external situation that trades unions operate in to win policy influence need to be aptly understood. The external situation is both general and specific. That is to say that there are some contextual issues that could generally apply to state policies, such as the: macro-economic context; politico-legal realities; other non-state actors that could have some form of allied or antagonistic interests to that of the union’s quest of policy influence; formal and informal networks that bind several actors within and outside the implementing bureaucracy and; the way policy formulators and implementers think and their proclivities.

This is the broadest sense of context assessment. Where a trade union has its contextual assessments regularly updated, it serves as a very useful point of departure for engaging with different specific policies’ processes.

4.2. Policy processes mapping
Policy processes mapping is a form of specific context mapping. It however also goes beyond this as it addresses both the context and possible contents of the policy processes at each stage of the policy cycle, right from the onset.

It draws on the broader consummated context assessments to distil out specific context assessments, it then goes further. It is about strategic planning. The union should try identify what the issues at each of the five key stages of the policy cycle are and: how these could resonate with general public sentiments in relation to the union’s interest; the different actors at each stage and what there interests could be; possible actions they could take, possible allies and possible opponents; how the message of the union’s interest could be framed; possible scenarios of the resultant endpoint; possible decisive moments and how it could handle these; resources (financial, technical, human & political) that the union would require for its policy pursuit.

4.3. Research and evidence
Trade unions seriously need to build on their capacity and/or access to qualitative research. Research is crucial for providing evidence at different stages of the policy process to influence the options taken as being in line with union positions or for placing before the policymakers and the public the fact that those choices taken in contradiction to the union’s well thought out propositions have failed or are failing. Qualitative research is also key for the apt interpretation of evidence generated by different actors in the policy processes.

Thus, the need for functional research units/departments cannot be overemphasized. This can however, not be built over night and unions are not to fold their hands while building such, on the contrary, building such has to be part of a broader research strategy.

The use of existing research institutions and mechanisms is of great importance. Research reports from a number of institutes and institutions could provide excellent materials for context assessment as well as for elements of policy processes mapping. It is also necessary for trades unions to re-address the challenge of building the hitherto proposed NLC Labour Centre for Social and Economic Research (LACSER). Meanwhile, trades unions in the same or similar sectors could pull resources together for sector-specific research work that could be commissioned or conducted using active research methods.

4,4 Interventionist communication
In engaging policy, communication is meant to serve intervention that will broaden policy influence. Trade unions have to be very strategic in communication. The first place to start would be an evaluation of the extent of success or failure of earlier policy engagement-oriented communication. The main questions to address would be; how adequately were the union’s positions addressed to policymakers, allies, opponents and the general public at the different stages of the cycle?

Communication for policy influence would have to be: planned, based on the context assessment and policy processes mapping; packaged, in terms of envisioning & framing to inspire buy-ins by several other actors in the policy processes field; targeted, using several media including the press, the internet and advocacy visits; monitored entailing on-going evaluation of its effects in the course of the policy cycle &; evaluated, at the end of the policy cycle to properly assess its extent of effectiveness and for lessons drawn from this to be brought to bear in subsequent policy engagement efforts.

Thus, trade unions must have policy engagement communication strategies, which will entail such general elements as stated above and particular dimensions based on the specific policy’s characteristics, distilled from the policy processes mapping.

4.5. Networking as a fortress for policy engagement
The pivotal role of networks for building policy influence is indeed near unquantifiable. A trade union that horns its networking skills is very likely to be much more successful in engaging state policy than one which does not. Networks help to coalesce the strengths of different collectives (and individuals) while attenuating their different weaknesses.

Forging alliances (which could be bilateral with another organisation) or building coalitions (these are more multilateral by implication) are just two forms of networking. Trade unions could network with a broad array of actors for different purposes within the overall goal of specific or general policy influence-building. Examples of these include networks with: researchers or research institutions for evidence-building and interpretation; training institutes or CSOs for capacity building; solidarity support organisations (“donors”) for financial, material or technical assistance; specific policymakers that an history of relationships had been established with as means of working behind “enemy lines” &; journalists both for prompt dissemination of information and for having quick access informally, to information relevant for policy engagement.

4.6 Globalisation from below and the boomerang tactic
International working class solidarity and networking with pro-labour or international organisations (as well as some that might not necessarily be always pro-labour but might have a coincidence of interest with the union on a particular policy issue), is proving to be a veritable tool for building national policy influence. One of the general tactics used with this tool is called the “boomerang”. Another tactic which is specific to unions is that of Global Framework Agreements with a corresponding spread of Global Memorandums of Agreement.

The boomerang is when a trade union or any other civil society organisation in lets say country “A”, appeals to another organisation(s) in country “B” to put pressure on the government in country “A”, by mobilizing public opinion and lobbying the government in country “B”.

The Global (also called “International”) Framework Agreements are reached by Global Union Federations with multinational enterprises and could be invoked in affecting national state policy, within some context. Global Memorandums of Agreement are signed between multinational corporations and communities, albeit often with the intent of dousing radical engagements by these communities, as we have seen with Chevron & Shell in relation to communities in the Niger delta, since 2006. They however do provide some contextual framework that in some circumstances could be invoked in engaging policy.

The international networking of globalisation from below also helps provide unions with information on best practices in other lands that could be useful in engaging with national state policies.

4.7 The centrality of campaigns
A campaign is basically a project for making an issue the issue. To influence policy, it is thus necessary to integrate the different strands noted above i.e. approaching policy influence as policy engagement campaigns.

This would entail: defining the policy interest of the union as a campaign message; defining the targets and other possible beneficiaries (as well as possible losers) from the formulation and implementation of the policy objectives in line with the union’s aims; formulation of a campaign communication strategy; fashioning out a campaign “dramaturgy”; committing specific resources to the policy engagement campaign and; carrying along membership in pursuit of policy influence.

5.0 In lieu of a conclusion
This paper has put in perspective the relationships between the state, the working class, state policies, policy influence and reforms. It identified the evolution of states as being characteristic of class antagonism and thus points at possible limits to influencing state policy in the interest of working people. This it did to avoid sowing seeds of illusions while also placing the ultimate goal of the working class self-emancipation in view, even as we tackle the much necessary struggle for reforms.

The paper further showed that despite these limitations, a lot could be done in terms of winning concessions for union members and the working class as a whole, here and now and that the spaces for this must not be handled with disdain. It stressed the fact that challenges that pose as obstacles to engaging state policy are numerous being both external and internal, but are not insurmountable. It posited key tools and skills required for overcoming these obstacles.

It is hoped that with the earlier group activity which accompanied the paper, you would be able to better situate the general views of this paper to the specific needs of your great union in its quest for broadened policy influence in Nigeria.

Thank you so much for listening.

16th August, 2011
Enugu

*being a paper presented at the NUPENG/FES 2-day workshop on state policy engagement for trade unionists, held on August 16-17, 2011 @ The Maybach Hotel & Resort, Enugu

Of minimum wages and deflected maximum rage

2011-07-27T07:44:00.000-07:00

The would-have been 3-day warning General Strike of the Nigeria Labour Congress in demanding an implementation of the new National Minimum Wage across board appears to have come and gone, ending as an anti-climax. Representatives of organised labour reached an agreement with those of the Federal Government led by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation and former Senate President, Pius Anyim, after an earlier marathon session with the National Governors Forum. As I write this at dawn after a sleepless night of coordination with the Joint Action Forum Secretary, Comrade Arymson, the details of the agreement are just becoming clearer. Yet, as scores of activists and Nigerian workers across the country who through calls and text messages with which they have bombarded us and rightly so over the last couple of hours can see, a lot of questions rise from the aftermath of where we now are. These questions include, in my view, but as well go far beyond the particular matter of the calling off of the “warning strike”.

What exactly is a “minimum wage”? Why the hue and cry over a minimum wage at this point in time in the country? What is the significance of the calling off of the strike and how this was done? It might be crucial to put the broader picture of the relationship between the wage system and modern industrial society in perspective, to aptly grasp the responses to these questions.

Wages as a rule, including the juiciest, cannot be just. By wages, I do not include “salaries” of representatives of capital, who as chief executive officers, directors, managers and the coterie of elected or appointed public “ministers” and “servants” also “earn” some form of monthly remuneration, in tons of naira. The wages of a worker represent his enslavement to those who control not only his labour but the product of the labour of workers past; the owners of capital. As the motto of Nigeria Labour Congress reads; “labour creates wealth”. But this wealth is appropriated by capitalists who own the means with which the labourer works to create this wealth. Since s/he has no means of production and must eat, pay; house rents, transport fares, electricity and sundry bills, in short, since s/he must live, s/he is left with no option but to earn a livelihood, that is seek for work to earn wages which represent a mere fraction of the worth of what her/his labour generates, from the employers.

With the generalisation of capitalist production in the 19th Century Europe, the exploitation of wage slaves, which basically is what we workers are, went with such brazenness that workers could see they had no choice but to combine and with their collective union strength demand and fight for the amelioration of this horrendous reality of their (working) lives. Trade unions emerged in disregard of the law, to champion their struggles. Better wages was a cardinal part of these struggles.

Social reformers and ideologies of different hues as well arose to demand, for some; fairer wages and more decent conditions. Others realised that capitalism which is the bedrock of the wage system cannot be a basis for resolving the fundamentally exploitative nature of the wage system. Not surprisingly, most of the social reformers who called for “fairer wages” were representatives of capital. Indeed quite a number of them were very wealthy man with factories who feared that with the extent of bare-faced exploitation and oppression which the workers faced, they might be pushed to the wall of revolt and considered such palliatives as they proposed necessary to dampen such possible social tsunami as could overthrow their order that such mass anger could generate.

It was such spirit and in response to the struggle of workers that a minimum wage was introduced for the first time in 1894 New Zealand as a baseline of remuneration to protect the least paid of workers who were considered the hungriest and thus the most likely candidates for being the angriest. After the Great Depression and the manipulative designs of Mr. Keynes to introduce reforms from above towards arresting revolution from below as mass unemployment, hunger and homelessness drove millions of workers onto the streets in defiance and rage, quite a number of countries in the West introduced the minimum wage. The post-War arrangement of a “class compromise” during what would be known as the “Golden Age” of capitalism lasted till the late 1960s. During this period, many more countries including some like Nigeria that had just won “flag independence” introduced and with time, institutionalised minimum wages. By 2006, according to the ILO, over 90% of all countries on the planet had some form of minimum wage or the other, on hourly, weekly or monthly basis of remuneration for workers.

In Nigeria, the history of struggle for minimum wage started as a struggle for enhanced “cost of living allowance” otherwise known as COLA. The first salvo of workers for this was in 1942, under the aegis of the civil service workers federation and was later taken up by the first Trade Union Congress which was formed in November 1942. The climax of the struggle for COLA was the historic 1945 General Strike led by the indomitable Michael Imoudu, Labour Leader Number 1. The workers won after a long drawn strike that lasted for 44 days. In 1964, the second General Strike marked an implicit struggle for and beyond minimum wage, while the result of the Adebo Commission in 1971 could be considered as the first step by the Federal Government to institutionalise minimum wage in response to the struggles of Nigerian workers. But even after that, it always took mass mobilisation and, as in 1981 when Comrade Hassan Summonu as NLC President led the 3rd General Strike in the annals of the country’s history, general strikes. The unilaterally fixed minimum wage established by the General Abdulsalam-led junta as part of the efforts of reaction to enthrone a semblance of consensus in the country to adequately roll back the six-year June 12 democratic revolution had to be fought for on a state-by-state basis by the NLC in 1999 and a similar scenario happened after the increments by the Olusegun Obasanjo administration at the turn of the decade.

The current impasse (despite the agreement reached at about midnight) on a minimum wage started almost 3 years ago. It was clear beyond all reasonable doubt that the extant minimum wage of N7,500.00 was a take home pay that could not take anybody home and even beyond those earnig the minimum wage, inflation had rendered their subsistence remuneration useless. A series of rallies was conducted across the country and two years back. A minimum wage of N52,500.00 was demanded. It has to be considered that way back in the 1980s, Prof. Ibrahim Ayagi, who is by no stretch of imagination a friend of the workers had submitted a report to the effect that a family of two parents and four children needed at least N16,000.00 to survive in the country’s leading cities. And then the exchange rate was $1 to N2. With the current exchange rate of $1 to N150, that amounts to N120,000.00 without even factoring in the depletion of real wages by inflation. Even N52,000.00 then demanded amounts to just 43.3% of Ayagi’s proposed minimum wage almost a quarter of a century back!

Organised labour bent backwards still, during the process of negotiations to accept an N18,000.00 national minimum wage, last year. The state governments were involved throughout the process of this “collective bargaining”. Interestingly a number of states, including Abia that initially proposed N25,000.00 as against the N52,500.00 was then proposed by NLC & TUC were to turn around to say they cannot afford to pay N18,000.00 minimum wage! The National Assembly which passed a resolution that organised labour should be content with N32,000.00 instead of N52,000.00 and which eventually passed the National Minimum Wage Act stipulating N18,000.00 as baseline joined the chorus of capitalist voices demanding moderation of labour when it gave a 14-day strike ultimatum instead of demanding that the state governments pay at the very least that baseline sum.
The Presidency on its part made it clear that the Act in its view affects only the “junior staffers” on GL 01-07. This of course is talking tongue-in-cheek since with the public service reforms which it initiated some six years back most of the workers on those grade levels in the public sector have been laid off through the policies of “downsizing” and “monetisation” with their menial functions contracted out to facility managers!

This was the state of affairs even after the two trade union centres gave a 14-day ultimatum to the various governments in the federation to heed their own law. The enthusiasm for an impending strike was so high in the land as the Federal and state governments skirted at addressing the workers demands. In Oyo state the workers had commenced strike a day before the national strike. Instructions had been given by the aviation industry unions to their members to shut down the country’s airspace from midnight, while the road transport workers had equally been directed by NURTW to withdraw all commercial vehicles from the road and the oil workers were to ensure a cessation of petroleum products distribution for those three days of rage that never would be, at least for now.

Ten minutes to midnight leading national television stations showed labour leaders and governors coming out of a meeting and flashed the breaking news; an agreement had been reached and the strike had been called off. The news filtered out to workers like a rumour, many would not believe even when they heard as they woke up that the strike had been called off. At strategic parts of Lagos such as Yaba, Iyana-Ipaja and Onipanu, angry young protesters went ahead to burn tyres in a frantic effort to enforce the sit-at-home that was not to be. Billows of black smoke underscored the mood of rage and defiance that set in on not a few workers and youths in the land.

The job of “industrial relations” however is not, many would say, one of making a revolution. It is all about give and take, concessions and compromises within the Webbian prism of “collective bargaining”. Thus, since most of the demands of the trade unions, it would seem were acceded to, it was only apt, perhaps for the strike to have been called off.

Two flies in the ointment though stare us in the face. Organised labour represents not only members of the unions in the formal sector. It holds the respect and ascribed leadership of the entire working people and even many from the middle classes in its hands. Labour by its historic role and strategic position not only creates wealth. It is equally the social force that alone can led society to its qualitative transformation and the eradication of exploitation. The smashing of organised labour, largely due to its own vacillations in 1994 marked the beginning of the end of the upper hand for forces of change in the six years of democratic revolution around June 12, in the country. Even “industrial relations” as a theatre of unions’ contention for workers’ interests has its political moment. At the heart of labour relations is a contestation of power which the employers never forget for even a fraction of a second, not even when they feign with actual concessions.

The second might be how the strike was called off. It might have been more apt for an agreement in principle to have been followed by an emergency session of the National Executive Council of Congress that summoned the strike. This is about “mandate seeking” and “reporting back”, even in industrial relations and especially on an issue as dicey as this. That would also have allowed for at least a one day strike to adequately warn the state governors on the readiness of labour to prosecute a struggle if again this agreement turns out to be mere empty words.

We are headed towards tumultuous times as the world is being wracked by an organic crisis of capitalism in the wake of the Great Recession. Signs of the times are what we see flashes of in the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia, in the struggles for union rights in Ohio and New Jersey, in the tumultuous strikes that shook France, Portugal and Greece. This is not the time for organised labour to have a credibility deficit in the eyes of the working people and its allies on the Left of civil society. Issues regarding the minimum wage might just seem to have been resolved. The bursting out of simmering rage in the land however has only quite definitively, just been deflected at this hour.

Wednesday, 20th July, 2011

President Jonathan; whither a transformation agenda?

2011-06-03T06:46:00.001-07:00

The inauguration of Nigeria’s fourth, democratically-elected President, Dr Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, has come and gone and he now seems to be on the pathway of defining his place in the history of Nigeria. The 53-year old zoologist, it would appear, is not one to allow such mundane things as humble backgrounds to dampen the heights of such definition’s horizons. Born into a fishing community in Otueke, within Ogbia Local Government Area (where crude oil was first discovered in commercial quantities in Nigeria, at about the time of his birth), he has risen on the scripts of what many consider as “good luck”, inscribed for good measure as his name. Leaving the university to join the Peoples Democratic Party at its inception in 1998, he emerged as a humble, lacklustre deputy governor the following year, beginning the fairy tale of becoming governor by default, a humble Vice-President who once again by default became President on the death of an el-Cid of a President that Yar’Adua was, he is now axiomatically “his own man”, fit enough to “dream dreams and see visions”, for the good of Nigeria and Nigerians, as we could be wont to believe.

That vision, as President Jonathan has repeatedly stated, is not short of transformation. He made this clear time and again during his campaign even if in a manner similar to what James Brown described as talking loudly without really saying anything, since such statements were mainly couched in general and expansive terms. In his inauguration speech, a similar pattern was followed. He claimed that “the leadership we have pledged is decidedly transformative. The transformation will be achieved in all the critical sectors, by harnessing the creative energies of our people.” And, oh yes, he did point out the “critical sector” of power. In a country where hours of interrupted electricity supply is more of an anomaly, with concomitant consequences for industry, this could not have but been a welcome page in a book that seeks to re-write, indeed transform, our land. But when it comes to the “critical sector” of production, his horizons of “the Nigerian enterprise” are limited to making “Small & Medium Enterprise...thrive.” As he made his first appointment, being that of former Senate President, Anyim Pius Anyim as the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, the long playing album of “transformation” was put on the turntable once more, with Mr President celebrating Anyim as “part of a team of champions to drive our transformation agenda”.

It might be morning yet on the creation day of a new Nigeria, but we cannot but ask ourselves “how new, are such claims of founding Nigeria anew by those who rule us?” Related to this is the added question; “to what extent have such promises ever been consummated?” While President Goodluck upbraids cynics like us that might ask and seek answers to these questions, that, “cynicism and scepticism will not help our journey to greatness”, asking us to “believe in a new Nigeria” of his transformative dreams without conditions, ghosts of the past tend to haunt the future when they are not exorcised today. This is why the Yoruba say, while a child looks forward when s/he trips and falls, the matured elder looks backward (to note the obstacle that caused the fall).

Abubakar Tafawa Balewa described October 1, 1960 as “a wonderful day”, after he was sworn-in as Nigeria’s first chief executive. He was of the opinion that the de-colonization process had been “thorough” and asserted on that fateful day that “Nigeria now stands well built upon firm foundations”. In less than 6 years history proved him and Nigeria’s elite wrong, leaving the millions of masses to bear the short end of the stick of a ruling class’ fractious hegemony, marked by immiseration, deprival of liberties, disillusionment and a civil war that cost a million lives. Alhaji Shehu Shagari who was privileged to be the first “executive president” of the federation in 1979 after the military had foisted a pseudo-American presidential system on the polity equally promised to transform the country through “green revolution” and the provision of housing for all. When he was overthrown barely four years later, there was mass hunger in the land with rice and several other staple food being imported and more Nigerians were homeless than when he became president. Alas, we were not to know then that, we hadn’t seen nada yet!

The present “Fourth” Republic has been much more interesting with regards to carefully sown seeds of illusions of transformation. Obasanjo at his inauguration in 1999 rightly observed that “the citizens developed distrust in government, and because promises made for the improvement of the conditions of the people were not kept, all statements by the government met with cynicism”. He then boldly declared that his administration “shall not fail” in transforming the sorry situation of Nigeria. We now know better. Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, Jonathan’s former boss taking his own turn at inauguration in 2007 said; “over the past eight years, Nigerians have reached a national consensus in at least four areas: to deepen democracy and the rule of law; build an economy driven primarily by the private sector, not government; display zero tolerance for corruption in all its forms, and finally, restructure and staff government to ensure efficiency and good governance. I commit myself to these tasks.” This programme of a PDP-driven consensus of the ruling elites in the country could only at best, be partially fulfilled, as Yar’Adua stumbled from partial soundness of health to his last breath.
Jonathan’s agenda for transformation seems very much a rehash of his former boss’ programme, reflective of an elites “national consensus”, which naturally is aligned somewhat with expectations of the people, to be able to win and maintain hegemony. “Statesmanship, vision, capacity, and sacrifice to transform our nation” becomes the new improved definition of the “servant-leader”. “A robust private sector” still remains the major engine-room that is expected to drive the process of national industrialization, though it would involve an ill-defined “collaborative effort”.

As with Yar’Adua’s, Jonathan’s programme is rooted in the same neoliberal logic that guided Obasanjo and his NEEDS. Jobs emerged from liberalisation, privatisation & deregulation, even if a far cry from the 7million that NEEDS aspired to “create”. But these “jobs” where such as graduates selling well prepared akara, able-bodied men and women selling “recharge cards” & sachets of “pure water” and of course, an expansion of the contract industry of “engineer photographers” and such likes. Jonathan also consummated the tortuous journey in the direction of arguably “free, air & credible elections”, which began with Justice Uwais and ended with Professor Jega. But the “demonstration of craze” which went with it could only pour the same old wine of elites into the new skin of “credibility” & “integrity” woven with the instrumentality of quasi-free & pseudo-fair elections.

There is little basis for optimism that the result of Jonathan’s self-declared quest for transformation would be different from that of earlier presidents. This is not about his being a good or bad man, with good or ill luck. Men and women make history, but the possibilities and limits of what and how they make history are set by the historically established socio-economic structures and political culture they inherit, and the extent of their readiness or capability to overthrow such. Transformation is nothing short of and cannot be achieved except by revolution. It entails qualitative changes within the fabric and soul of society. These could be through a “passive revolution” from above, such as that of Getuilo Vargas in Brasil, General Pak in South Korea or Ataturk in Turkey or through the revolutionary rousing of the masses from below by an expanding critical mass of working people and youth as we recently witnessed in Tunisia and Egypt. There is a link between both forms of revolutions. Passive “revolutions” more often than not are carried out by modernizing elites in the society who try to divert the upsurge of “massquakes” from below, by addressing the material needs of the citizenry using the instrumentality of developmentalist states.

Every single one of the late-industrialising countries that are today considered as “Newly Industrialised Countries” passed through some passive revolution or the other, at the very least. With massive state intervention, they built steel industries, and manufacturing bases for their economies. In Jonathan’s vision, power is stressed but only tangentially related to industrialisation. Constant power though, does not necessarily translate into an industrialisation programme. Before 2002, Ivory Coast had one of the most reliable power supply in Africa, but it still remained an agrarian country. Any programme for socio-economic transformation which prioritises “small & medium scale enterprises” over a state-driven heavy industry/manufacturing programme is nothing but a colourless dream.

The problem is however much bigger than Jonathan and by extension his predecessors. The structural problem in Nigeria can be easily gleaned in our relations with the Western champions of imperialism. Our elites have always been the most pliant of tools for the agenda of Europe & the United States of North America, in Africa. They have come to worship the devil of neoliberalism more than its Luciferan priests in those Bretton Woods cathedrals of Mammon, clinging to the illusions that with their faithfulness to the big Satan, we would somehow be transformed and become part of the G20, by 2020. This exactly is the creed of Goodluck Jonathan thus far. A rude awakening awaits not a few Nigerians that have come to have some faith in Jonathan and what he is somewhat deemed to represent, even if for no cogent reason beyond the most mundane such as: “he has good luck”, he is from the south south”, or “he is a Christian”. Such disillusionment might very well open the doors, or have it forced open, for revolutionary pressures from below that could initiate a mass based & popular transformation agenda that could genuinely further the socio-economic development of Nigeria and foster the self-emancipation of the mass of its citizenry.

Prof Adebayo Williams aptly grasped the situation at hand thus; “While we await the arrival of the Nigerian critical mass such as we have seen in Tunisia and Egypt, we can have some fun. The problem, if we must repeat, is not Goodluck Jonathan...He is part of a discrete historical process of which he is barely conscious; a minor actor in a great historical drama”. His transformation agenda similarly is a minor farcical expression of a dazed gaze into the horizons. But such a situation cannot last for four years, if it lasts a year. The question of transformation will still be so put in the unfolding period, and the main enquirer will not be Goodluck or his so far lucky band of buccaneering elites.

The troubling question of the 2011 budget

2011-06-03T06:41:00.001-07:00

It would appear that Nigerians are set for the inauguration of President Goodluck Jonathan, as I write this piece. A lot of expectations might be borne by manner, but not a few citizens of our great country have gotten used to the disillusionment that is certain to follow faith in our politicians as night follows day. While the political euphoria of inauguration hangs in the air, a very economic germane question remains very much unresolved thus far. We are heading into the middle of the fiscal year, but, wither the annual budget?

It borders on absurdity for the government of a country that claims it aims at becoming one of the twenty leading economies in the world in eight and a half years time to run its economy without a clear-cut budget for five months. It is a reflection of the absolute lack of a sense of planning on the part of our rulers, under any condition that, the appropriation bill, if at all passed by the 6th National Assembly, would have been done only during its twilight. This is however just a tip of the iceberg. The particular conditions that have led to this impasse reek of sleaze, aggrandisement and utter disdain for the citizenry. The National Assembly bears the bulk of blame for this shameful development. It green and red chambers have been anything but honourable or distinguished in the ways and manners they have carried themselves on the 2011 budget and related matters.

The executive arm of government had presented an appropriation bill of N4.226 trillion to the National Assembly. Being a petroleum-driven economy, this amount was largely expected to be funded with receipts from the sales of crude oil in the world market. $65 was projected as the benchmark price with the estimated sales of 2.3 million barrels per day (bpd). Our very wonderful legislators would have none of such nonsense. That amount was rather too little in their view, so they jacked it up by N747 billion, raising the tune of expenditure that the bill is supposed to make legal to N5 trillion. The legislators (I insist on recognising them as such, and not as legislooters, which some of my more sarcastic friends have taken to addressing them, because...even looting requires legislating!), were clever by half. Haven jacked up expenditure they had little choice but to adjust the pivot of expected expenditure, i.e. crude oil prices benchmark, upwards. At a benchmark projection of $75 per barrel, the increase in expenditure would have been taken care of, just like magic!

Interestingly, the legislators or “legislooters” –you could actually make your pick- were anything but altruistic in this inflation of the figures in the 2011 budget. They are such busy people that the executive had put aside a whooping N111 billion to cover their recurrent expenditure. But even that was not enough, since they are not just “big (wo)men”, but very, very big VIPs. This was raised to the meagre amount of N232 billion. If you thought that was all, you would be very wrong. The executive had proposed N1.16 trillion to cover capital expenditure, the National Assembly VIPs jacked this up to N1.7 trillion by including “constituency projects”.

The foregoing had led to a series of talks between the executive and leaders of the legislature. The Minister of Finance, Olusegun Aganga had described the budget as then re-prepared by the National Assembly as being “impracticable”. Talks seemed to be reaching some tentative conclusions which both sides could live with, even if Nigerians would only exist, suffering & smiling as has been their fate, while the economy is torn to smithereens by the greed of an infinitesimally few number of men and women. I am quite certain that within the two days before Jonathan is sworn-in as President on May 29, for the first time, the matter of the budget would have been resolved somehow or the other, but definitely not the question behind it which such “resolutions” would only underscore.

In the pathway of such on-going talks, it came to the fore that not less than N200 billion had been further loaded on the 2011 budget after the joint session of the House of Representatives & the Senate had harmonized it. This is not just immoral to say the least; it is a criminal breach of both the standing orders of National Assembly’s chambers and the laws of the land, for all what these are worth. To expect anybody to be prosecuted for this would be to wait for Godiot or “till thine kingdom come”. It is part of a pattern of supposedly honourable impunity, distinguished thievery and “jagudujeraism” that has been the hallmark of the National Assembly throughout this Republic.

In recent times, the case of the N2.3 billion naira car scam which Speaker Dimeji Bankole can still be remembered by well-meaning Nigerians, though his colleagues waved it aside. He also made them to wave forgive him for taking a N10 billion loan in the name of the house. This was despite the fact that the House was never aware of this, while it was included in its budget for 2011 passed last week, and only came to the attention of members when Honourable Dino Melaye blew the whistle. Similarly his misuse of N9 billion capital budgets of the House of Representatives for the 2008/2009 financial year was treated as a matter of little significance by his colleagues despite the seriousness of the matter. Of course we now know better that the “carry go” mentality of the house members is not because they hold Bankole in any high respect or that they love the way he dobales, with his chest to the ground, seeking favours. Members like Dino Melaye have made us realise that a lot of money change hands to keep the legislooters pacified.

The situation is no better with the Senate even though it is less gregarious members that could give us inkling into its mechanisms as much as with the house. But the song for Mark to return reflects the fact that he has kept the boys & girls happy. In any case, to the best of the knowledge of Nigerians, the Senate leaders no less than those of the House of Representatives are culpable of holding Nigerians in contempt. They have also shown with the disregard for the chambers’ members that even within their coteries of thievery, they do not trust the boys (& girls) as the bill would have thus been signed by Goodluck Jonathan before it came out that there is much more than six after seven.

It is unlikely that the much respect for Nigerians would ever come into the hearts of our legislators for any reason whatsoever. It is equally unlikely that anything but self interest & aggrandisement would ever be their guiding principle, contrary to their oaths to put Nigeria first. What they say is different from what they do. They are like the preacher who asks the congregation to “practice what I preach and not what I do”. But even if steal they must, they fail to realise that a poorly functioning economy leaves less to be stolen. Or perhaps since oil money is always there, it makes little or no difference to them whether or not other economic players can properly plan their economic activities.

The nagging question of budget 2011 is the utter disdain that a self-serving legislature has for both the people of Nigeria and the economic development of our country. Deals between the legislature and its soul-mate, the executive, might result in a scaled down budget being assented to. The trust of Nigerians would however not be won by this. One can also not but conclude that the Nigerian economy could do much better if the national assembly really was that of the people, by the people & for the people.

Teacher don’t teach me nonsense; the Bretton woods chieftains, corruption & austerity

2011-05-18T04:58:00.000-07:00

It was the great Afrobeat maestro, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, or Abami Eda, for those that used to gyrate to the soul-lifting rhythm of his comprehensive show at the Africa Shrine, many years back, who sang that evergreen song; Teacher. He was of the opinion that government is the teacher of citizens, while “culture and tradition” are the teachers of government, but finally declared to the teacher that; “make you no teach me, I go know. Person you teach finish, yes, abi e don die o”. Looking closely at where most governments in the so-called Third World get their teachings from (and many countries in Europe are now getting similar lessons, in the “post-crisis” classes of the Great Recession), one cannot but see the rather surly faces of the two evil twins of Bretton Woods; the IMF & the World Bank.

The lessons they teach come in the high street language of neo-classical economics, but at their crux are diagnoses and prognosis that they claim are unfaultable. The main reasons why countries get themselves into economic predicaments, we are told, are poor judgments of the rulers and corruption. The way out of such quagmires, they insist, must always be paved with austerity measures. Many Nigerians that were of age during the Second Republic might not remember the fine details of the Shagari government’s Economic Stabilization Act of 1981, but they will surely remember the era of “austerity measures” it introduced. The masses groaned under its weight, enjoined to “tighten their belts”, while those in the corridors of power kept popping champagne. Indeed, during that austerity period, Chief Adisa Akinloye, National Chairman of the ruling National Party of Nigeria had champagne specially made for him with his name on the label, shipped in from France, to mark his hitting the billion naira mark. This was at a time when one naira could buy you two dollars!

The fangs of the IMF got sharper in the mid-1980s into the 1990s in Nigeria, and across the underdeveloped world. The colour of its bloodied talons was spelt as SAP. The Structural Adjustment Programme ruthlessly instituted austerity measures, structurally adjusting belt tightening into the lives of the immense majority of our populations, as its cardinal programme. Corruption had to be stamped out and the correct judgments made in steering the economy aright, we were told. The neoliberal order that the IMF & World Bank have since then become the chief priests of, was unrolled. A leaner state meant privatization with millions thrown to the throttling mercilessness of unemployment. Funding of social services were drastically cut, truncating the minimal access to quality healthcare and education that the further impoverished immense majority of the population used to have some access to.

The Bretton Woods Institutions would later agree that their SAP strategy was a failure, as if it was not at all obvious from the very beginning, when all right thinking persons in Nigeria and the other 30 odd countries that implemented it in Africa protested to no avail. The Poverty Reduction Strategy they came out with after this acceptance of failure, and which was domesticated as the so-called National Economic Empowerment & Development Strategy (NEEDS) in Nigeria, with its self-fooling National Poverty Eradication Production adjunct, is merely SAP in new garbs. The lessons our Bretton woods class teachers continue to teach us, or more aptly put; continue to teach our hapless rulers, leaving us no choice in the matter, remains the same.

These teachers though, do anything but practice what they teach. They are like the preacher who asks you to do what s/he says and not what s/he does. The recent Sofitel hotel incident in New York, where the Managing Director of the IMF, Dominique Strauss-Khan (DSK as he is fondly called by his supporters), is alleged to have forced a 32 years old Guinean maid to give him a “blow job” raises a lot of questions beyond sexual propriety. It challenges the self-acclaimed toga of teacher that the IMF and World Bank have donned since the end of the second European World War.

Now, one could argue that it is unfair to judge a man’s sense of judgment on economic matters by the extent of rudeness of his crotch and not be far from being right. The argument could be further stretched; the institution a man (or woman) heads should not be crucified on the cross of her/his indiscretions. This too would not be a wrong line of argumentation. It would however be naïve to believe that some extent of moral uprightness is not to be expected of those who come to equity, supposedly with clean hands. The (sexual part of the) issue here is not that he slept with or tried to sleep with the woman concerned. DSK’s dalliances are legendary as it were, without his having to sleep in police custody before now. He had publicly apologised to his wife over an affair with a Hungarian subordinate of his and IMF had merely considered that as a case of an error of judgment.

In the present case, he is being accused of sexual molestation and harassment, bordering on (attempted) rape. One can’t but muse at the metaphorical side of it all. DSK; a 62-year old French President-in-waiting, (attempts to) rape(s) an African maid, 30 years his junior in a $3,000.00 a night hotel in the United States of America. Very much like the rape of Africa by Europe which started with the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and which still continues till today, with IMF, World Bank & WTO holding Africa’s thighs wide open for the endless and brutal violation.

This actually brings me to a cause for concern beyond the quite clearly not unimportant sexual part of this sleazy drama of the absurd. While IMF requests, nay, demands belt-tightening on the part of Greece, Ireland, Portugal, etc –very much as it commands African and other underdeveloped countries- its chieftains live like kings and lords, in $3,000.00 per night hotels! Why wouldn’t a DSK as IMF’s king of kings see himself as being above the laws and moralities of mere mortals?

Perhaps the morale of this sickening play at being god gone awry, is that there are really different standards for different classes of persons in this woe betided world we live in? Perhaps the distinguished state officials of Greece, Portugal, Ireland and Iceland would normally live in such affluence as “rightly” befits their status, in New York, Paris, London, Athens, Lisbon & Dublin? Have we not seen how the high and mighty in Nigeria lives despite all the hue and cry of austerity, poverty, unemployment and grinding destitution of the masses? The teachers be they government that teach us belt-tightening classes or the Bretton Woods Institutions that teach them what to teach us merely teach us nonsense.

It would also be a fairytale to imagine that the questionable character and corrupt practices we now see in a DSK is a localized reality in the Bretton Woods Institutions. A few years back, the World Bank Group Staff Association was forced to accept the fact that the “conduct” of Paul Wolfowitz, who was then the Bank’s President, had “compromised the integrity and effectiveness of the World Bank Group”. This was after “the Wolf” as that hawkish disciple of the free market and gun-boat diplomacy is often called, had transferred his girlfriend, one Shaha Riza to a high-paying job, saddled with defining good governance for developing countries. He had not stopped at that, he had ensured that the belle got arbitrarily fixed, mouth wateringly padded pay rises on the job, at the expense of the World Bank. Of course, Paul Wolf’ was consumed by that scandal, as DSK is likely to be consumed by this seemingly strictly matter of the randy, scandal. But that was not without George W. Bush and other Project American (21st) Century hawks defending him to the hilt.

Not a few have risen to the defence of DSK, as well. Conspiracy theories of different sorts have been woven, centred on his strong likelihood of emerging as the French Socialist Party’s candidate at the next elections in that country and the equally strong probability of his trouncing Mr. Sarkozy if he does so emerge. For a few who confuse socialism with lowering interest rates to save the capitalists from recessions they inflict on the working masses, he represents an alternative to Sarkozy’s liberalism. All these, to me care mere lyrics of a song called balderdash.

The travails of DSK are not only self-inflicted, even if he through this self-flagellation he plays into the hands of his opponents in France. Sexual harassment is not just a matter of sexuality, it is one of power relations, and is a very serious matter, especially when this borders on rape, oral, carnal or anal. Beyond the more lewd forms of DSK’s sexual dispositions, two major lessons we can learn from him, as with “the Wolf”, include the fact that they are no less corrupt than the Third World politicians and; while they teach austerity, they are anything but austere in taking care of themselves, their families and concubines.

It is time to demand, at the very minimum, that the global financial architecture be radically restructured. The hold of the US and Europe on the World Bank & IMF needs to be brought to an end. While Third World countries have been mute in demanding this, Angela Merkel, for example has taken the pre-emptive measure of stating clearly that the time is not yet ripe for countries outside Europe to take the seat of the IMF’s headmaster. This continued Eurocentric imperialism of globalisation must be resisted. But in doing this, we should have no illusion that a black African or yellow Asian President of the World Bank or Managing Director of the IMF would better the lot of the billions of poor working people in the world than a black president of America has been. A programme for radically restructuring the institutions of global governance must be part of a broader agenda at bringing a new, better world to birth. This would include fighting for democracy from below, wherein the masses would be the Lords of their fate.

The capitalist teachers of the world-neoliberal school have failed woefully in teaching us anything but nonsense. The prisoners of starvation, wretched of the earth and captive students of their doctrines now need to go beyond questioning these teachers’ curricular to establishing many more Tahrir Square colleges.

Osama’s murder; an anti-climax

2011-05-16T15:24:00.000-07:00

The murder of Osama bin Laden by the United States government at Abbottabad in Pakistan on May 2 was a drab farce, after the tragedy of 9/11 and its aftermath (and coming in the wake of the Arab awakening it does seem rather placid). The US government in its self-imposed position as the world policeman invaded the territory of Pakistan to kill Osama within what Barack Obama described as the longest 40minutes of his life. An unarmed bin Laden, as the US reported, was shot dead for putting up resistance. With what, whence he was unarmed? Your guess is as good as mine. But just perhaps the Uncle Sam realised an Osama bin Laden’s trial could bring much more embarrassment for it than the justice it took to him. The farce was not over with the murder. After Islamic rites for the dead, the corpse of the bearded Sheik of terror was bundled with a huge stone and “buried” in the North Sea to become food for fish.

This is the American story about Osama’s death. The Iranian state declared it has information to the effect that Osama was dead years back. A number of writers have also tried to perpetuate that myth hinged on renal failure he is said to have suffered from for years, while his sons demanded evidence of their father’s death. All such talk could be said to have been put to rest with the official statement by al-Qaeda on May 6, confirming the success of Operation Geronimo (as the American military establishment christened those 40minutes and related days before it). Eleven days after that, not less than 74 police recruits were killed by twin bomb blasts that have been declared as the first act of al-Qaeda retaliation, in the Charsadda district of Islamabad, the Pakistani capital.

Oppressors the world over maintain their continued domination of the lives and minds of people through some extent of social amnesia. Uncle Sam will want us to remember, but what it wants us to remember is that which numbs deeper remembrances. The sheer daredevilry of the attacks on the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, that fateful day in 2011, with the loss of some 3,000 persons in what would eventually become Ground Zero, is considered the limits of what we are to remember about Osama bin Laden. This of course is tied in with the earlier terror attacks on US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and that on one of its ships off the coast of Yemen. We are also made to remember that al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula and in Iraq have continued this evil, supposedly prepared and stirred by bin Laden, just as some of his disciples’ unleashed bloody mayhem in London on 7/7/2005.

We do remember all these, and unequivocally condemn such terroristic disposition. But our memory and consideration of the present cannot end with these flashes of the past “glory” of Osama and his like, which a few still (hope to) live. We cannot but remember that Osama bin Laden’s ascendancy was with the support of the United States and Britain, in Afghanistan. The Frankenstein that was murdered in Pakistan, Osama bin Laden, was very much a creation of the United States and its Western allies. They had supported the al-mujahedeen in their battles against the Soviet puppet-government in Afghanistan and created such movie hero characters like Rambo out of it.

It was however not just through such direct ties that the West created its own nemesis of some sort. The embers of faith in the destructive pathway of terror have been fired by much more than stinger guns and rocket launchers. Disillusionment, discontent and anger are some of the elements that have led, not a few pairs of feet, to the training camps in Afghanistan, Sudan, Somalia & Yemen. The unjust system which America has been the major guarantor of since the Second World War and the arrogant imperial posture of the American state in world affairs have earned it quite a fair share of enemies. Indeed, the origins of Osama’s turning the sights of his guns towards the states of the West lies in anger that filled him (and many Saudis) in 1992 with the influx of yankee soldiers into Saudi Arabia after Saddam’s ill-fated annexation of Kuwait. He would also strengthen his hand and anti-Western convictions in Bosnia Herzegovina, another theatre of imperialist intervention at the end of the last century.

The arrogant and disdainful jaunt of yankee imperialism has been well flavoured with the brash use of state terrorism. In several third world countries, the assassinations of serving heads of states have been traced to the doorsteps of the United States government. Soldiers and secret police officers were trained in Latin America during the 1960s/70s on how to use torture to prise out information from individuals and how to use mass terror to cow restive populations. Operation Condor was one of the means for these evil training on terror by the United States. By the end of the 1970s when its “dirty war” was wound down, tens of thousands of Argentines, Brazilians, Chileans, Mexicans, etc had been killed or simply “disappeared”, many of these after the most gruesome of murders.

1979 marked a turning point, for the whole world in different ways, and for Osama bin Laden in the trajectory of what would be his life which ended as America’s Public Enemy Number One. The victory of Margaret Thatcher in Britain (and Ronald Reagan in the US, the year after) signalled the coming to an end of the days of belief in the West as much as in the East, despite the Cold War, that, the state should play a key role in the provision of employment and social services and the building of infrastructure. In the “developing world”, such states were known as developmental states, while in the advanced capitalist countries, these were welfare states. In the Middle-East, oil-flushed monarchies had created quasi-welfare states, reducing the citizenry’s general poverty, while their Emirs and Kings lived in stupendously ostentatious splendour. America’s continued propping up of the Zionist state of Israel, which kept (and still keeps) Palestinians in a state of thrall was for many young men and women the most painful sore to live with.

As the neoliberal counter-revolution took its lunge towards global spread through Thatcherism and Reaganomics, two key moments took place in the Islamic world. The revolution of working people in Iran which had passed through some three tumultuous years ended as an Islamic revolution, establishing a radical theocratic. This radicalised several youths, the second moment would provide an outlet for many of them to fight for the banner of Islam. The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. Along with the Afghans who have been known since the time of Alexander the Great to be fierce, die-hard fighters, hundreds, indeed, thousands of Arab jihadists flocked in to face the invading Red Army of what was known as the “Soviet Union”, with the full support of the United States, the United Kingdom and a number of other Western countries through what was called Operation Cyclone. That same year, Osama bin Laden finished his studies at the University. He needed very little prompting by his mentor, Abdullah Assam to join the jihadist fray in Afghanistan. The genie had been let out of the bottle.

The genie however was not Osama bin Laden. He merely gives it a face, one of many faces, even if this is a very ugly and mangled one. The genie is the countering-spirit of what has swept through the world from the 1980s, bearing the banner of neoliberal globalization. The emergence of an Osama and similarly minded (would-be) terrorists reflect deeper contradictions. The general state of deprivation and despair in the world as the triumph of individualism is crooned by the neoliberals creates the atmosphere for aspiring messiahs & martyrs, who can relate the situation of the masses to the devilishness of the Western kaffirs and are ready to lay their lives down for what they consider as remedy of the situation. The failed attempt in Afghanistan represented part of the death throes of the “USSR”, and the gradual erosion of the Cold War era’s bi-polar world. In the uni-polar world of pax Americana, and with rising discontent all over the world, where fundamentalists could not only find theocratic states to inspire them, but also where bases for training already existed from an earlier war, 9/11 had been a disaster waiting to happen, in the period of lull in the masses self-activity that the opening of the Century was just trying to shake itself from.

The Zapatistas tried to shake up the world and the return of mass action against oppression in 1994. Their cries would be taken up again in 1999 by workers, youths, trade unions, ngos and Left groups that took over the streets in Seattle. But the world has probably never gone through such heady and glorious hours and days as those this present spring of revolutionary awakening in the Middle East and North Africa, have brought, for almost a century. The mass actions of millions of people have swept off longstanding dictators like Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak while battles still rage for the soul of Libya and the Arab revolution continues its contentions in Syria & Yemen, while it seems, for now, to have been snuffed out by Saudi Arabia &c. in Bahrain. In none of all these was al-Qaeda and its cohorts to be seen anywhere near! The dark hours of the individual terrorist in the shadows have been shown for what they are; empty moments.

The murder of Osama bin Laden after the blossoming of the Arab spring cannot but be an anti-climax. It is equally very unlikely though, that this act would reduce the spread of terror; while America’s imperialist hegemony still subsists.

Nigeria: a new beginning towards the same ends?

2011-05-11T08:28:00.000-07:00

Introduction

The 2011 general elections in Nigeria have come and gone, leaving a lot of questions behind, the answers to which will shape the emerging future of the country. The elections were staggered, with those for the National Assembly held on April 9, the presidential ballot, which not surprisingly was the most contentious, held on April 16 and polls for governors and states houses of assembly held on April 26. The general elections have been declared as the freest and fairest in the history of the country since Independence in 1960 by the mainstream national and international media and elections observer groups. This is despite sharp bursts of violence, the bloodiest of which were in the immediate aftermath of the presidential elections, in several states in the northern parts of the country. In the wake of these, more than 500 persons lay dead and some 60,000 were displaced. There had been, bomb blasts and associated rampages during the national assembly polls as well with no less than 35 killed and 169 arrested. The state-level elections also witnessed quite a spate of violence and elections in four Local Government Areas of Imo state in the South East zone had to be re-run on May 6.

The orgy of violence associated with the presidential elections, in no less than five of the northern states has been more lambasted than aptly grasped, partly due to the arguable success and credibility of the elections as a whole (when compared to earlier general elections in the country). It took 3days dusk to dawn curfews in 3 of those states and 24-hour curfews in the states of Kaduna and Bauchi for some semblance of calm to be restored. Curfews are still in place in most of these places, albeit now from 9.00pm to 6.00am. President Goodluck Jonathan of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party was declared winner in the presidential election, with some 22million votes to 12million by his closest rival, General Muhammad Buhari, a former military head of state, by the Independent National Electoral Commission. Even before the official results were returned, billows of smoke rose sky high, and in the wake of the results release, lava of wanton anger swept through the streets with scorching frenzy. The palaces of the most revered of Emirs in the north such as the iconic Ado Bayero in Kano and his counterpart in Zaria were torched, and their royal majesties forced to seek refuge in the army barracks. The Sultan of Sokoto, the symbol of the much vaunted Caliphate of “the North” power bloc was equally humiliated by the rampaging wretched of the earth, in the north, and he scampered for safety in the barracks likewise, while the family house of Vice-President Namani Sambo was torched in Zaria. The motorcade of General Muhammad Buhari, whose cause the rioters were apparently championing, was not spared either. Three of his vehicles were smashed to smithereens.

It is pertinent for working people and supporters of democracy from below and the cause of workers’ self-emancipation to understand the significance of these historic elections and its immediate aftermath. It is arguably true that, except for the June 12, 1993 elections which were annulled, leading to a six-year democratic revolution in the country, elections have never been this “free, fair and credible”. It is also a noteworthy fact that President Jonathan, who became president by default when Umaru Musa Yar’Adua died last May, would be the first person from the southern minorities’ nationalities of the turbulent Niger delta to be elected president.

These truth and fact do however conceal much more than what they reveal. The Nigerian state, a contraption of the British colonial masters has wobbled and fumbled for half a century of its nominal independence as the different sections of the parasitic ruling class which steers it, bereft of any mainstay in production have waged time and again, “do or die” struggles for control of the state. This is for the simple reason of the most absurd form of “primitive accumulation” (or more properly put: primitive looting), of the collective wealth of the nation. Elections have thus, not surprisingly been theatres of “war”. Primordial sentiments of “tribe”, ethnicity, regional affiliation and religion have been whipped up to mobilize masses behind the self-serving agendas of these elites.

Perennial instability with such national reality is to be expected, and general elections tend to serve as the trigger which explodes instability into wanton crises. In 1966 and 1983 the military had to step in as the country imploded on the heels of general elections to save the rule of the ruling class as a whole. The democratic revolution of June 12 and the changing global atmosphere against blatant military dictatorship put paid to the continued possibility of the military as the ruling class stabilizing factor. This led the civilian elites to arrive at some form of “power sharing” formula for rotating access to the juicy entrails of the milk cow state, between its sections from the northern and southern parts of the country. Alas, Yar’Adua’s death set the stage for the collapse of this arrangement, leaving a ticking time bomb that is not yet defused, despite the back patting that these elections have earned.

In the beginning: a wobbling giant and its three legs
The place to start for a thorough understanding of the present dilemma of Nigeria is from the very beginning. The British colonial overlords created Nigeria out of the motley of some 250 nationalities and ethnic groups of different sizes through a process of plunder, trickery vagabondage and amalgamations from the late 19th century to 1914. This was with the intent of sourcing raw materials for its expanding industries and creating what would be the largest national market in Africa, for its commodities. The colonialists ensured as much as possible, through law and practice, that local manufacturing was constricted, where it was allowed at all, to avoid “native” competition in the supposedly liberal market. This went along with the constriction of possible roles for educated “natives” in the colonial state. They found allies in the local ruling class of chiefs and kings, perfecting the art of “indirect rule” through which they granted limited powers to these representatives of tradition, in exchange for the native authorities’ bridling of popular opposition to colonial enslavement.

British colonialism was part of the wave of imperialism that constituted “the black man’s burden” in the period before the two world wars. With British imperialism, capitalism, dependent as it was, took roots in Nigeria, and with this a working class emerged, comprising: clerks, messengers and other subaltern staff for the colonial administration; stevedores in the docks; turners and fitters in the railways; teachers in missionary and later public schools and so on and so forth. A crop of professionals such as lawyers, journalists, priests, engineers and other educated petite elites similarly sprang up. They were dissatisfied with their double second class position in society, despite their education. Racism in the public service and professional circles put them niches below their white colleagues and the chiefs’ authority mocked their learning. They thus demanded representation in governance, while accommodating the logic of continued colonial domination. They became the first nationalists, in the country’s anti-colonial struggles, concentrated largely in Lagos and major cities in the south. Their first fruit and which emboldened their horizon was the 1922 Sir Hugh Clifford constitution, which established a Legislative Council (whose functions were more advisory, really) with room for elected non-official representatives (though their elections were limited to Lagos and Calabar)

The 1930s and 1940s were tumultuous times in the world. Their echoes fired nationalist passions in Nigeria. Movements and nationalist parties of emerging elites were formed and demands for some form of self-governance got more strident. It would however take the coming in of the working class into the anti-colonial struggle for a decisive turn to be arrived at. From the late 1930s to the end of World War II, expanding demands of a British capitalism at war had resulted in a six fold growth of the working class and it had come to play a key role in the nationalist movement of the 1940s. Its first General Strike, which lasted for 44 days across the length and breadth of the country, was for improved Cost of Living Allowance. The dynamics of these economic demands feeding into and standing astride the fears of the colonial masters, as a political contestation, is a graphic example of how the economic and the political merge in mass strikes, demonstrating the might of the working class.

The new atmosphere of greater urge for liberty which the 1945 General Strike established was a major contributory factor to the colonial state’s enacting the Richards constitution a year later. The constitution granted more democratic rights to Nigerians; the Legislative Council now had pan-Nigerian “powers” and regional councils to advise the Lieutenant Governors were also established. This chalice of “self-government” for the emerging multi-national state was laced with a poison which still permeates every single pore of the body of Nigeria’s polity as run by indigenous elites, today. This poison which carried both the prejudice of the British about the composition of Nigeria and its intent of foisting a contraption as state that would perpetuate a balance of power amongst the elites that the British could play on even from London, was; the regionalization of the country’s polity.

The sentiments of Britons had always been that there are only three nationalities in Nigeria being: “the Hausa in the Northern Region, the Ibo in the Eastern Region and the Yoruba in the Western Region”, with the minorities being merely “related tribes” . This was rolled into the Richards constitution which created three regions, along the lines of these sentiments. At the time, this was roundly condemned by most progressive nationalists, with Nnamdi Azikiwe describing this as “Pakistanization” of Nigeria. This “Pakistanization” was not jut from the British’s looking backwards at its prejudices; it also entailed its looking forward towards a strategy of containment. The pan-Nigerian character of the brewing nationalist struggle became splintered by the nascent elites of the three majority ethnic groups along regional lines.

This ethno-regional splintering of the elite-nationalists’ camps was furthered by the subsequent Macpherson constitution of 1951. It granted greater autonomy to the regions, including on fiscal issues and in 1954 primary budgetary responsibility was transferred to the regions such that governments therein could appropriate resources through taxes and the sales of commodities and dispense patrimony through contracts, licenses & outright theft from the public till. Such earlier movements that aspired to a pan-Nigerian vision as the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC) became associated with an ethno-regional nationalist bloc , the Action Group came to represent the emerging Yoruba elites of the Western Region and the Northern Peoples Conference spoke for the conservative elites of “the North”, even as a radical grouping of the nationalists in that region, the Northern Elements Progressive Union which built a strong following amongst the poor talakawas, challenged it there.

Contestations and negotiations between the elites of these three power blocs would mark the fate of Nigeria’s national politics ever since then. The elites of the minority “related tribes” were doomed it would seem, to play second fiddle by the colonialists and their inheritors. The cry of representatives of the southern minorities led to the establishment of the “Willink Commission for Inquiry into the Fears of the Minorities and the Means for Allaying Them” in 1956. But its term of reference ruled out any possibility of territorial amendment of the tripod of regional blocs, making its deliberations merely a lot of hot air .

It was not only the minorities that would be marginalized by the colonialists and whose marginalization would continue in post-colonial Nigeria. A witch hunt of radical expressions of the labour movement was also systematically pursued. Bitter propaganda against communist influence in the working class was conducted by the British official press and newspapers from the stable of Nnamdi Azikiwe who had just the decade before been shot to his greatest heights by the mass strike led by such “communists” and their likes. Suspected socialists were as well denied employment in both the public service and private sector, while known “Lefties” like Wahab Goodluck were denied the right to represent workers in negotiations and trade unions were infiltrated to smash radical influence . This situation partly explains the weakness of the labour movement to play any decisive role in what would be the beginning of post-colonial Nigeria, despite the fact that in 1950, a united front of organized labour, market traders and the rump of NDP, with the then Nigeria Labour Congress had cleared 18 of the 24 seats into the Legislative Council in Lagos. Barely a decade into Independence, General Yakubu Gowon would follow the same path of attacks on independent political organization of the working class as activists of the Socialist Workers and Farmers Party formed in 1963 would be hounded, the party smashed and possession of communist literature decreed a crime against the state.

Nigeria, a giant with clay feet has wobbled through the labyrinth of chaos and tenuous order, spasms of violence and a civil war that wiped out a million lives, military dictatorships and mass disillusionment with spates of civil rule. Its people cling on to hope even in the face of hopelessness. Billions of dollars that could arguably have been used to further development and improve the prevailing conditions of life in the country have vanished into private pockets. Ethno-regional sentiments become instruments of blood-soaked intra-class negotiations; “lacking a material base, the indigenous elites resort(ed) to the manipulation of primordial loyalties – religion, ethnicity, and region” . Corruption, which is “the principal method by which the Nigerian indigenous capitalist class has attempted to accumulate the large sums of monetary capital needed to establish itself as both an economic and political class” becomes the straw man of Nigeria’s bane and the excuse for more corruption in the name of anti-corruption.

The trail of elections in Nigeria, probably more than any other sphere of national life best captures and reflects this tale of woes, intermingled with hope that has been the fate of a Nigeria where elite politics has found safety valves in its primordial cleavages which have been ideologically accentuated. It also points at just how such limits of manipulation might be ruptured and the dammed avalanche of mass discontent unleashed.

A trail of elections and shattered expectations
General elections in Nigeria have hardly ever been free and fair. The fractious nature of the hegemony of its elites and the state’s gross legitimacy deficits have engendered this situation and as well reinforced it. Conducting and institutionalizing credible elections have thus come to occupy a central position in the view of many, including organized labour and progressives as the way forward to transforming the Nigerian state, and building a united and peaceful nation “that works for the people”.

It might be necessary to look more closely at the place of elections in relation to democracy and emancipation to better grasp its place as ideology. Free, fair and credible elections have generally come to be seen as the main hallmark of liberal democracy, which is supposed to approximate equality of all citizens, within the framework of a supposedly impartial rule of law. Interestingly though, in ancient Athens, the classical democracy of antiquity, leaders were not elected, but drawn from lots. Elections were seen as open to the manipulation of more powerful and/or charismatic contenders for leadership. There is no gainsaying that the elective principle in itself could be very important for building democracy and greater equality from below, at trade unions shop floors and neighbourhood associations for example. In the broader society ridden by class divisions between the rich and the poor though; “Elections broadly conceived, refer to the process of elite selection by the mass of the population in any given political system” .

Such an “elite selection” process or the institutionalization of liberal democracy requires some level of coherence between the elites contending for selection, which the tripodal regionalization of the country had sacrificed for the farce of wazobia “federalism”. “The nature and character of the state affect in a significant sense, the electoral process and its outcome… where a state is weak and consequently exhibits traits of failure, elections are likely to be assailed by numerous problems that may threaten the entire election and its outcome” . The nature of the Nigerian state that had emerged on the basis of foisted wazobia chauvinism rooted in patrimony as the surest avenue to stupendous wealth and benefaction had two contradictory elements; no regional group of elites was strong enough to dominate the centre and set agenda for national development, but; government in a region had the resources to foster its own coterie of support whilst marginalizing the elites of the “related tribes” in it, which the majoritarian parties in other regions warmly courted. The state was thus characterized by strong centrifugal forces that weakened it with a written-in state of perpetual instability.

This dilemma of the nascent Nigerian state did not show itself in the first federal elections held in 1954. The three dominant parties formed a unity government; Independence was not yet visible, even if it hung in the air. Things changed in 1959 when elections to usher in a post-colonial Nigeria were held. And as Udogu noted: “the elections of 1959 served as a prologue to the political turmoil that has been the bane of Nigerian politics for over four decades” . Sixteen parties contested, but the locus of power resided in the midst of the big three. NPC formed a coalition government with NCNC, while AG became the official face of the opposition.

“The first term of the coalition government, 1960-64 was full of political crises, instability and loss of confidence between the coalition parties” . By the time elections came up, it had broken, but it was not over ideological differences or principles. Rather, “the breakdown of the NPC/NCNC coalition was as a result of disagreement over resource allocation, appointments, the sharing of spoils and other benefits of office” . Meanwhile, the opposition AG split, with its NNDP splinter group forming the Nigeria National Alliance with the NPC. AG, NCNC, NEPU & the radicalized United Middle Belt Congress then formed an opposition coalition, the United Progressives Grand Alliance. Socialist Workers and Farmers Party the largest party formation of the far left in Nigeria’s history, counting its membership in tens of thousands and publishing a bi-weekly paper, Advance, had called for the UPGA united front, but was largely ignored by the bourgeois parties in the alliance, (it had won 1% of the votes in the Eastern Region in the period). The Labour Party, which had emerged from a split in SWAFP within its first year hardly fared any better in the First Republic. The direct impact of the working class on the First Republic’s elections was thus very limited, despite its rising influence spurred by the 1964 general strike. It remained at the margins as the different elite groups and coalitions battled for the national polity’s dominance. But, “no single group or coalition could dominate the national political and economic system” ; throwing the First Republic into spasms of crisis and wanton violence, that paved the way for its collapse when khaki boys took over the formal reins of power in 1966.

It was thirteen years later that the military conducted general elections. The American presidential system replaced Westminster “parliamentarism” in the 2nd Republic, in an attempt of the ruling class to overcome its fragmented hegemony. Matters only got worse with the credibility of civilian rulers falling to its nadir by the time the Republic was truncated.

The ghosts of the First Republic’s parties lined the pavilion of the Second as farcical apparitions. The National Party of Nigeria, which captured power at the centre and in most of the northern states approximated the NPC, Nigeria Peoples Party, was not exactly NCNC, but it seemed its shadow. The Unity Party of Nigeria and, to a lesser extent, the People’s Redemption Party alone were near-unblemished incarnations of the AG and NEPU of the First Republic, respectively. As with ghosts, the life they lived hitherto was relived albeit devoid of any redeeming ethos of a soul. NPP joined NPN as junior partner in a coalition; this collapsed, and it then joined UPN, PRP & GNPP to form an UPGA now re-christened Progressive Parties’ Alliance.

It was not only the elite parties that re-emerged in the Second Republic as ghosts of the First’s. The parties of the Left lived as ghosts politically and legally, in the course of the Second Republic. With the gradual lifting of the ban on politics by the military, an All-Nigeria Socialist Conference was held in Zaria, in 1977. In its wake, two socialist parties were formed. The Socialist Working People’s Party, representing the rump of what had been SWAFP and Socialist Workers, Farmers and Youths Party (later to become the Socialist Workers Party), which was formed around Ola Oni, one of the key figures in the First Republic’s Labour Party that had split from SWAFP. Neither was registered, by the military. SWAFP was hamstrung not just by the issue of legality. Its leading lights such as Wahab Goodluck and Ibidapo Fatogun two of the finest trade unionists in the country’s history who used to have the pro-Moscow National Trade Union Congress as a base had earlier been banned from trade unionism for life by the military junta and the merger of trade unions across the ideological divide to form the Nigeria Labour Congress in 1978 had also further de-limited the possibilities of a trade union centre’s unequivocal support for a socialist party. The apparition of a political scene that the Second Republic happened to be, was thus, even much more than was the case in the First Republic, left to the shenanigans of the befuddled bourgeois politicians.

It is important to note that while a lot seemed to be the same within the skulls of Nigeria’s elites, the global situation in 1979 was quite different from that of 1960 when the enthusiasm of Independence could nestle in the legitimacy of state intervention in the economy, with the Keynesian Welfare Nation State in the West, State “Socialism” in the East and developmentalist states laying the basis for industrialization in underdeveloped countries from South Korea to Brazil and Egypt to India. The 2nd Republic was born with Thatcher, Reagan & the neoliberal “counter-revolution” they represented. The slight current urging industrialization amongst the elites was literally wiped out. As with the economy so with the politics; the rawness of the influence and power of money became nauseating.

The degree of rigging in 1979 made that of the First Republic seem pale. Tai Solarin, the reputed radical educationist and social-democratic columnist, described Shagari’s election as “the stolen presidency” and predicted that: “If this government lasts for four years, the NPN will have been firmly planted as Government Party everywhere, and the UPN, GNPP, the NPP and PRP will have been drained to annihilation, both in membership- it is already starting – and in morale.”

The 1983 elections followed the macabre logic of the 1964/65 elections which had glided the 1st Republic to its demise. “Landslide victories” were declared subsequent to elections in which murder, arson, rigging, intimidation and falsification of results were carried out without the slightest compunction. Post-elections violence was like fire during the harmattan season. In Ondo state, within what was the Western region in the First Republic, it led to the reversal of the NPN “victory” of Akin Omoboriowo as Governor against his erstwhile boss and then serving UPN governor, Chief Adekunle Ajasin. The logic of ‘64/’65 in ’83 could however not be reversed. On the last day of the year, the soja boys rolled in the tanks. The voice of one Sani Abacha declared the abrupt end of the 2nd Republic to the world. General Muhammad Buhari would emerge by the end of the day as the junta’s designated head of state. Babangida was to overthrow him 20months later in a palace coup, institute a diarchy as part of a “hidden agenda” but was forced to “step aside” in the heat of the 1993 presidential elections and its annulment.

There was no doubt before now that the “freest and fairest” election in Nigeria’s history was that of June 12, 1993. Many still belief, and probably not wrongly, that it remains much fairer ad freer than the recent general elections. While the contest was between Bashorun MKO Abiola, of the Social Democratic Party and Alhaji Bashir Tofa of the National Republican Party, for many Nigerians, the main issue was voting out the military from power. MKO obviously won, the Babangida junta annulled the election and a six-year democratic revolution which ended with the democratic victory of the counter-revolution, erupted.

The military exited from Aso Rock on May 29, 1999, but on its own terms. One of these was the conduct of what, to many analysts, was till then the most rigged elections in Nigeria, on the wings of which General Olusegun Obasanjo, a former military dictator was returned as president. Onuoha has argued that “the reason for the major rigging was to ensure that the party had an absolute majority in order to avoid a coalition and consequent weak take-off of a new government, which was part of the crises of the transition governments of 1959 and 1979”.

The “Fourth” Republic has obviously broken the jinx of civilian regimes collapsing when they try to consolidate. The 2003, elections did not herald its curtains and in 2007, with elections which have been described by some as they most fraudulent ever in the world, the ruling class in Nigeria made history; a civilian government handed over to another, as Obasanjo handed the keys of Aso Rock to Yar’Adua, with an ambulance. There are several factors which made this jinx-breaking a possibility. Internationally, the wave of democratic revolutions from 1989 through the ‘90s, that swept away maximalist rulers, juntas and one-party states, makes the atmosphere less encouraging for would-be coup plotters in the barracks. Nationally, paradoxical as it may seem, the much vilified Peoples Democratic Party, which has been in power for the past 12years and is set for another 4years at the centre is the bulwark, reactionary as it might be, of the ruling elites in Nigeria against its self-destruct instincts and the livid anger of a distraught people.

NPN in the 2nd Republic represented the attempt at bridging the regional nature of elites’ parties in the country. It was really their first serious attempt at building a national party. PDP took over from and was the fruition of the seeds of NPN. Of course, seeking to build a national party does not equate to having any serious programmatic agenda for the transformation of the country. PDP is as much a fruition of NPN as a self-serving behemoth of corruption, “kleptocracy” and clueless national leadership as it is its fruition in building a pan-Nigerian partisan platform, in which to a reasonable extent the centrifugal contention over allocation of resources amongst the elites could somewhat be attenuated with mind-boggling flushes of money.

The zoning principle was central to maintaining honour amongst thieves within the partisan monstrosity which controlled the central government and 28 out of the 36 states. Its point of departure had been reached in secret, according to some of the elites in “the North”. Before Obasanjo was handed power in 1999, a secret pact had been reached. The northern elites were ready to concede “power shift” to “the South”, provided it would return by 2007. It did with Yar’Adua, but with his death and Goodluck Jonathan who had been his vice stepping into the office, the flow of horse-trading was truncated. It was probably the only way a politician from the minorities of the Niger delta could have gotten the keys to Aso rock.

The 2011 elections: a new beginning or an old ending?

Umaru Musa Yar;Adua became president under a pall of illegitimacy in 2007. The general elections that year had been such an obvious charade that he could not but acknowledge this and during his inauguration, promise amends. It was not just the legitimacy of his government that was at stake, the maturity of the entire ruling class in the country was called to question by the brigandage that was the first civilian-to-civilian transition in its history, even as General Muhammad Buhari, who had for the second time lost, did for the second time as well, head for the courts.

Yar’Adua formed a government of national unity, forging a “united front” of the shameless “political class”. It included the All Nigeria People’s Party, the platform Buhari had contested on. To assuage the sensibilities of Nigerians and thus re-constitute the ruling class’ rather fractious hegemony, electoral reforms was included as a key element of Yar’Adua’s seven point agenda and within three months of the administration, the Justice Mohammed Uwais-led Electoral Reforms Commission of 22 Nigerians, distinguished in their different walks of life was constituted.

In December 2008, the Supreme Court, by a decision of four Justices to three, upheld Yar’Adua’s elections, while the Uwais committee submitted its report. In January 2009, I argued that: “these two political and judicial events in December have much more than a symbolic relationship, bearing on elections. While the Supreme Court’s ruling settles the past electorally for Yar’Adua and Nigerians, the Electoral Reforms Committee’s report present recommendations to ensure, hopefully, that a Hobbessian state of elections would only be something in the political history of Nigeria, marking a period of immaturity of the country’s political elites.” It would seem the projections into the future then has been both validated and at the same time, challenged by the ongoing reality of the 2011 elections.

It can hardly be doubted that the present elections have such transparency as only the June 12 elections could have laid claim to. The modified open-secret ballot as proposed by the Uwais committee was utilised and votes were counted at each Polling Unit, and publicly declared there. This was central to the credibility and aura of freeness and fairness that the elections now are adorned with. The Uwais committee’s report contained several other relatively progressive proposals which were not adopted by the Federal Government. This included the manner of appointment of the INEC Chair; the presidency was still to unilaterally determine this, more or less.

As the tenure of Maurice Iwu, the gangster-umpire who conducted the 2007 elections general elections (including those for governor, a quarter of which were upturned by the courts), drew to an end by June 2010, he scampered around to have his services retained for an encore. The death of Yar’Adua on May 5 thrust Goodluck Jonathan, his vice, forward. To consolidate on his fragile hold on power, his choice of INEC Chair was of the greatest import. There were few persons that could have been as welcomed by Nigerians, particularly organized labour and the civil society movement as Professor Attahiru Jega, Vice-Chancellor of Bayero University Kano a former Leftist president of the university teachers’ union, civil society activists and member of the Uwais committee.

He has deservedly won accolades for his commendable conduct of the 2011 elections thus far. Nigerians had borne the costs of what AlJazeera described as the most expensive elections ever in Africa, but not a few feel that he has lived up to the high expectations of the citizenry, despite a false start on April 2 (when the National Assembly polls earlier scheduled for that day had to be postponed, on the same day); at least at the polling units. Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), whose Buhari/Bakare ticket that was supposed to have dragged President Jonathan into a run-off lost out equally agree that the elections, seem on the face of it, free and fair. It alleges though that rigging was built into the excel spreadsheet package used for collation in its strongholds of Katsina and Kano states while in states within the South East an South South, it challenges the 90% plus votes garnered by the PDP. It filed its petitions against the elections on Sunday May 8.

CPC was formed last year around the personality of General Muhammad Buhari. Projecting an ascetic figure of discipline and order, straightforwardness and frugality, a large number of opposition elements, in the south of the country, many of whom had not been active in partisan elite politics flocked to him as an alternative to the dozen years of the PDP locusts. He was also deemed to have a following amongst the talakawas, or sans culottes in the north. Action Congress of Nigeria, a shadowy claimant to the heritage of the Yoruba west was next of what could have amounted to any significant force of opposition. There was much posturing about the ACN and CPC forging an alliance to challenge the PDP before the general elections commenced, to no avail. After the National Assembly elections made it clear except to the most optimistic that the PDP might be bloodied but was far from being brought down, attempts at forging the alliance were renewed and subsequently failed again. It is doubtful though that even such an alliance would have held water, as combining the CPC & ACN votes against PDP’s still gives Jonathan a victory margin of 8million votes.

CPC has however been fingered by many as being directly or indirectly responsible for the mayhem that rocked the northern parts of the country. This is largely due to General Buhari’s statements during the elections that this time around he would not be going to the courts as he did in 2003 and 2007 (spending 50 months, cumulatively) and rather asking his supporters to defend their votes. Some PDP governors in states within the southern parts had further helped to raise the myth of a persecuted Buhari when they refused to allow his scheduled campaigns to hold in their states’ capitals.

The anger of the lumpen mass does however go deeper than Buhari and CPC. The official unemployment rate nationally stands at 19.7%. The figures in the northern parts double this. While northern elites have always been in the corridors of power, holding its central reins for the better part of the 50years of Independence, they have failed woefully to develop infrastructure, or raise the level of education of the children of the masses in the same “north” which they have used to bargain for such access to power. Not a few of them, such as General T. Y. Danjuma a former army boss and Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, the current central bank chief have lamented this in recent times. Drug addiction is rampant amongst the lumpen youths, in major cities in the north, particularly Kano. And what they get “high” on are such cheapies as glue, gum, petrol and even faeces. For a significant number of these, as with the broader talakawas, General Buhari represented a symbol of “change” and their spontaneous violence at his loss was a cry of desperation with machetes, clubs and blood.

The blood of young men and women, graduates who as Youth Corpers were used as polling officers by NEC was spilt without mercy by the rampaging lumpen. Some were forced out of police stations and beaten to death, while others were burnt alive inside Corpers’ lodges. The face book updates of at least one of them before these grisly incidents, reveals that CPC supporters had tried to force underage voters on him, and not without success, confirming the fact that rigging at the polls had not been a preserve of PDP.

To limit the view of violence in the elections to the northern parts, would however present a wrong and inadequate picture. There was none of the six geo-political zones of the country where there were no echoes of violence during the polls. Akwa Ibom and Imo states were quite bloody flashpoints in the South South and South East, for example. The major difference with the northern parts was not just one of the extents of destruction in the wake of violent clashes. The confrontations there, unlike in the northern states where they were associated with the presidential polls, took place during the national assembly and gubernatorial/states houses of assembly elections, where the contending candidates were locals. A related difference is that violence in the southern states seems to have been initiated by unpopular serving governors/legislators and their ruling parties, before and in the process of elections, to intimidate voters, while challenging partisans resisted.

The 2011 elections are very significant in the annals of the country, for several reasons, of which the nature of violence, particularly in the northern parts was one. The national assembly elections threw up surprises, while also confirming the people’s tiredness with PDP. It maintains a drastically reduced majority in parliament, but could not help the fall of a number of its big wigs. The PDP lost five states, while winning one. ACN made the most inroads, winning two more states and Lagos (it had earlier claimed 3 states through the law courts as haven being rigged by the PDP in 2007 and elections were not held in these).

Three possibilities co-existing presently as nascent trends are visible on the horizon. In the first scenario; PDP would definitely constitute some form of a government of national unity on May 29. CPC, unlike ANPP in 2007, has made it clear it would not to be part of such a government. ACN has adopted a similar posture, even if its adversarial rhetoric could largely remain posturing. PDP would however be set to play the historic role of at last giving the ruling elites some form of élan, even if merely an assumed one. By 2015 and possibly subsequently, elections while they might have some warts on the nose and close to the scrotum would hold and be considered more or less credible. Intra-class electoral coherence would have thus been institutionalized and the broader class struggle would take hold of other moments in the national life for its fiercest orgies

The second scenario would see the PDP’s defeat and a fratricidal falling out of the class it represents, in its victory. The centrifugal pull which still exists could be aggravated by the aftermath of the elections, with the expansion of the coasts of its opposition. It is unlikely, for now, that such could lead to a split of the country or its being restructured on a confederation basis. The wind of this possibility would however blow with a lot of carnage and deepening of ethno-regional sentiments, across the divide.

The earth-shaking significance of the actions of protesters who stormed the palatial covens of revered custodians of culture tinged through and through with the vestiges of feudalism and the authority of religion, bears the germ of the third possibility. Their acts, which the regime finds very worrisome as President Jonathan admitted and which was echoed by James Campbell, a former US ambassador to Nigeria , were something hitherto inconceivable. The momentum of this hour it initially seemed could lead this profanity to even greater wantonness which would make the subsisting order quake with fear. But this is rather unlikely, in the immediate instance, with the present swagger of law and order across the land, strutting in its dark gown of curfews. This hour will pass, but its boldness would give the fire next time such bravado that the moon and stars of the caliph and emirs it strikes at now might seem too near earth, and it will rise to claim heaven itself; challenging the very rule of the elites that have broken down the hopes of the common man and woman, in the north, more than anywhere else in the land.

The Labour movement and the unfolding situation
The pertinent question to ask now, with our quest for democracy from below, that is truly emancipatory, might be; “whither the labour movement, in all these?”

Its different strands took different pathways in the build up to the general elections, from the margins. The Labour Party endorsed Goodluck Jonathan’s bid for the presidency and was the first party to congratulate him after the presidential elections; the trade union movement was nonpartisan, playing the role of elections observation, while; a number of the left sects were/are trying to form an independent socialist party.

These different pathways reveal deeper cleavages that have taken shape over the last two decades. In 1989, Nigeria Labour Congress had formed the Nigeria Labour Party, when the General Babangida administration initiated the political transition to the diarchy that was the Third Republic. Of the 13 political parties formed then, representatives of the junta had noted that only the NLP and the Republican Party formed by Local Government Council Chairmen (then on zero-party basis) had genuine national spread and appeal. Babangida was however to ban all the parties and set up two parastatal-like parties; the National Republican Party (that was “a little to the right” as the junta put it) and the Social Democratic Party (being “a little to the left”). While the socialist left mobilised nationally for the NLP, it was largely shut out of its inauguration by the trade union bureaucracy which then threw in its lot with the SDP, after the ban, without as much of a whimper.

In the heat of revolutionary pressures that shook the country after the annulment of the June 12, 1993 elections won by MKO Abiola, the SDP candidate, the Babangida government and the Interim National Government contraption it handed over the reins of state to in a hurry where both kicked out by general strikes and mass protests within the spate of 82 days.

The subsequent military junta of Abacha proscribed NLC and the virulent oil workers unions and banned all forms of partisan politics, the following year. Despite this, two Left parties where established that year; Democratic Alternative and National Conscience Party. Both have not made any significant showing in the current republic (and the leadership of NCP supported Buhari during the last elections, even though the party had a presidential candidate!) The republic had opened in 1999, with only three parties registered by the out-going military; PDP, ANPP & AD (the precursor, in a sense, of ACN), allowed to contest elections. DA & NCP amongst others took the Federal Government to court and in 2002 won the opening up of the partisan political space, which now has 63 registered parties.

NLC which marked its “new beginning” in 1999 as well, wasted no time in setting its agenda for the future. One of its set tasks was the formation of a political party. Its political policy declared that such a party could not but be socialist. After three conferences which witnessed the enthusiastic involvement of the revolutionary Left, the constitution and (socialist) programme of what was to have been the Working People’s Party, were drafted in 2002. That same year though, the trade union bureaucracy took the winds from the sails of the efforts towards forming the WPP. In its place the Party for Social Democracy was formed. This was in an attempt to bring in “patriotic” middle class elements, as explicitly stated and to keep out “extremist” Leftists as implicitly acknowledged. Fulltime officers in the NLC (but not its affiliates) were also barred from playing prominent roles in the party.

On one hand, most Leftists outside the trade unions, felt, and still strongly feel betrayed by that action. On the other hand, Left elements within the NLC came to see themselves as not being part of the party. The seeds of yawning gaps between the trade union movement and the labour party on one hand and between the PSD(LP) and the revolutionary left on the other were thus sown at its very inception. After intense debates within the party, carried out as well openly the party’s nomenclature was changed from Party for Social Democracy to Labour Party, at its First Convention on February 28, 2004.

The party’s stronghold is Ondo state where Dr. Olusgeun Mimiko, a social-democrat of the Awoist traditions since his university days is governor . While many on the Left are ready to concede a general progressive nature to his politics, not a few of the other candidates that have contested on the party’s platform, in 2007 & 2011, have been adjudged as representing neoliberal interests, contrary to the expected left(-tending) orientation of a (social-democratic) labour party. More importantly, the party, it would seem, has placed more currency on winning such rich candidates than in mobilising for membership within the working class.

These considerations had led Left elements in the party to form the Campaign for a Mass Based Labour Party (CMB-LP), a few years back. By the time the 2011 elections would come though, the CMB-LP had fizzled out. In what could be, at least partly, grasped as an act of desperation, some other left elements last year formed a non-electoralist party; Socialist Working People’s Party . There are also ongoing discussions amongst a plethora of sects on the Left –which include those constituting the SWPP, as it were- to form a broader revolutionary socialist party. It is quite possible that one of the presently registered Left parties could serve as its organisational template.

With the simmering cauldron of mass discontent meshed with great expectations which the 2011 elections’ flashpoints give an inkling of, events in the coming period would require partisan leadership with programmes radically different from what the dominant parties in the country today have to offer. This makes the efforts at building a partisan revolutionary alternative something that can not be waved aside. Such efforts would however have to go beyond the present sectarian boxes of the Left. It would have to be rooted in the struggles of the mass of Nigeria’s working people.

The working class has never been as strong in Nigeria as it has been in the present Republic. It has time and again, brought the system to temporary shutdowns with 9 general strikes in 12 years. In 2004, in the heat of one of such general strikes, the president Olusegun Obasanjo had described organised labour as posing the threat of being an alternative government. While the dust of elections might now be clearing, massive working class struggles seem to be looming. The first major one would most likely be struggle for the implementation of the new minimum wage of N18, 000.00. Such economic demands with the flush of confidence that a seemingly new political beginning for the nation is going through could have greater political significance beyond the ghoulish rising of lumpen anger that followed the presidential elections.

Nigeria’s hour of decision could very well be before 2015, when the next general elections would hold. Considering the touchstone place of elections in the vane of the wind and whirlwinds that have marked the country’s history, the most decisive battles ahead just might likely be still hinged on the manifestations of deeper contradictions in the rampage of electoral masquerades. The law courts upturning almost a third of the gubernatorial elections held in 2007 laid a basis for staggered elections and the pathway to 2015 is strewn with elections in different states that could serve as triggers for contentions beyond these states. The country’s elites, with their grandstanding and horse-trading would have much more to contend with than in the days gone by, with the tremors that will shake the heights of their citadels from the foundations, when massquakes erupt from below. Organised labour’s prime place in these forthcoming tremors cannot be overemphasized. The diffused strands of its organisational, political and ideological facets, much more than the might or cunning of bourgeois elites, might be the undoing of the extent such moment of tremors would reach. It could be hoped though, that, it is “morning yet on creation day”. Challenges being confronted by the Labour Political Commissions of both the NLC and (especially) TUC, might serve to bridge the chasms that presently de-limit the labour movement’s active leadership of the struggle for revolutionary-democracy in the country.

In lieu of a conclusion
The general elections in Nigeria definitely signal the evolution of new dimensions of our national polity. This could be in a manner of continuity, and most likely would be so, in the immediate instance. The general elections might have come and gone, but the shocking waves in their aftermath might not have wholly subsided. With armed intervention by the police, army and state security services, law and order seem enthroned in the troubled parts of the country, but the anger and discontent of millions is still quite palpable.

Many Nigerians are happy that at least for once, (relatively) free, fair and credible elections have been held. They are ready to try out President Jonathan. But it is unlikely the PDP regime at the centre will be much different from what it has been this past dozen years. The expectations that now run high in those ready to accept him, or at least take the progress that has been made, warts and all, as something to be defended, is likely to be shattered in no distant time. This is despite the fact that amongst the elites (and even a broad spectrum of the masses)e who wanted (a) change, not a few are eager to start engaging with this contrived new beginning, including by going to court, as the CPC has done

The gubernatorial and states houses of assembly elections results have equally shown that there would most likely be greater demands on authorities at the sub-national levels as there now exists a basis for believing that the people’s votes would be counted and would count in enthroning those saddled with the tasks of governance. Be that as it may, thus far we can say, while a lot seems to have changed in elections in Nigeria, a lot still remain very much the same. The finery of changes seems to merely mask a new beginning to the same ends of a parasitic elite’s ostentatious existence at the expense of the immense majority of the population.

It is however unlikely that a population: whose immiseration deepens with the pangs of jobless growth; which is beaten hollow by rising costs of living, while real wages decline and; that lives in the vice-like grip of increasing insecurity, but which has now come to feel a texture of hope and envision possibilities beyond the normal run of our national reality, will be ready to live on the promises of mere good luck and a receding “better future”. The present relative credibility that the elites have won for their dominance of the polity represents attempts at consolidating the kwashiorkored form of liberal democracy that cannot but be the lot of a rentier neo-colonial capitalist state. Illusions being sown in some quarters that the country is a “semidemocracy” (whatever that means!) that is gradually moving towards true democracy that could safeguard the welfare of the masses and enthrone equality, are mere pies in the sky.

The unfolding period will unfurl with much confusion and in a zigzag manner. Primordial befuddlement will serve as stumbling blocks, for awhile. But, the de-mystification of the blue-blooded guardians of the grand old “North” power bloc is a precursor to the falling off of the wool from the eyes of Niger delta activists and those in the southern zones who might today look up to Goodluck Jonathan as a messiah of their own. This new beginning is for the elites is an assumed new route to the same ends of the continued subjugation of the immense majority of the population, but the wind they have sown in dredging this new path for their old road’s way, cannot but be reaped as an abundance of whirlwinds that will upturn their sails.

Abuja
May, 2011

References
Anifowoshe, R., (2003): “Theoretical Perspectives on Elections” in Anifowoshe, R. & Babawale, T., (eds): General Elections and Democratic Consolidation in Nigeria, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Lagos

Aye, B., (2003): “May Day: Socialism and the Working Class” in The Guardian, May 1, p. 16

Azikiwe, N. (1961): Zik: A Selection from the Speeches of Nnamdi Azikiwe, Cambridge University Press, London

Babawale, Tunde (2003): “The 2003 Elections and democratic Consolidation in Nigeria” in Anifowoshe, R. & Babawale, T., (eds) General Elections and Democratic consolidation in Nigeria, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Lagos

Ihonvbere, J. O., (1994): Nigeria. The Politics of Adjustment and Democracy, New Transaction publ., Brunswick/London

Iyayi, F., (May 1986): ‘The Primitive Accumulation of Capital in a Neo-Colony: the Nigerian Case’, Review of African Political Economy, 13 (35), pp. 27-39

Lewis, P. (2007): Growing Apart: Oil, Politics, and Economic Change in Indonesia and Nigeria, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbour, MI

Onuoha, B., (2003): “A comparative Analysis of General Elections in Nigeria” In Anifowoshe, R. & Babawale, T., (Eds) General Elections and Democratic Consolidation in Nigeria, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Lagos

Sklar, R. L., (1983): Nigerian Political Parties: Power in an Emergent African Nation, Africa World Press, 2004 edn.

Suberu, R. T., (2001): Federalism and Ethnic Conflict in Nigeria, US Inst. Of Peace Press

Udogu, E. I., (2005): Nigeria in the Twenty-First Century: Strategies for Political Stability and Peaceful Coexistence, Africa World Press

Trade unionism, human rights & the organising of workers in the informal economy

2011-05-06T11:43:00.000-07:00

Introduction
It is very easy to forget nowadays that the earliest trade unions were actually combinations of workers who had skills in some trade or the other, but whom were then sucked into informal labour relations by the employers who had big machines and factories. These workers had no contracts of employment, worked for up to 18hours in some cases in the mines and factories and were exploited to their bone marrows. They then came together towards the end of the 18th century and at the beginning of the 19th century, in Britain, to form what was then called “trade clubs”, which had to be secret so that they would not be arrested or even killed by thugs loyal to the employers.

The same situation occurred although in a different context, with the origins of trade unionism and trade unions in Nigeria. It has been established that the first trade union in Nigeria was the Mechanics Mutual Aid and Improvement Association, existed 29 years before the Nigeria Civil Service Union which many today regard as the first trade union in the country. And also in 1897, the first recorded strike action in Nigeria was organised by daily paid workers of the Public Works Department in Lagos, which they won. This was the first recorded demonstration of trade unionism in the country and it was by workers in informal work relations.

Today, however, some unenlightened trade unionists do not consider “informal workers organisations” as trade unions. These include both trade unionists in the formal sector and those in the informal economy as well. The reasons for this misplaced view can be best understood only by appreciating the history of trade unionism in the country. More importantly, such understanding will be crucial for us to strategise on how to build the power of workers in informal work relations and foster the ongoing rebirth of trade unionism in the informal sector.

This paper thus: presents an insight into the origins trade unionism and trades union organising; situates this within perspectives and views on human rights, workers rights and trade union rights &; considers the present state of trade union organising in the informal economy analysing the external and internal problems and prospects that confront unions and activists in the informal economy.

Origins of trade unionism and trades union organising
Trade unionism has always preceded the organising of trades unions. It is then subsequently developed by trade unions where and when they actually continue organising. Trade unions are basically the combinations of workers to fight for better: “wages and other material remuneration; working conditions; job security; working time and; respect and dignity” . Trade unionism is however that driving passion of workers to have these things that a trade union could help them to fight for. We can see that the desire to combine comes before the combination itself and continues with organising. It comes from workers realising that as individuals they are weak against the powers which the employer, big business and the state/governments have to exploit, control and oppress them.

Trade unions emerged with the early development of modern industrial society which is capitalism. The earliest trade unions where formed by workers who suffered in the hands of the early capitalists, at the beginning of the nineteenth century in Britain.

These early workers who formed union combinations were guild masters, journey men . With the introduction of large scale production using machineries and factories, there was no way they could continue with their various trades such as carpentry, blacksmithing, fitting and joining, weaving and spinning etc, and compete favourably with the much cheaper products that come off the factory line. They thus became wage-slaves, selling their labour power to the capitalists who owned the factories. But their employment relations were still largely informal, as very few of them –and these were largely the supervisors and foremen- had contracts of employment. They however still remembered when they were the masters of their trades as guild masters or even where they were journeymen, how they could have hoped to one day be guild masters. The use of “trade” as the adjective for their “clubs” and later “unions” itself showed their craftsmanship origins.

As with today’s informal sector workers’ unions, these early trade unions were not recognised by the employers or governments. They won their recognition only through struggle. A number of them were jailed, some were sent on exile and still a number were killed like mere criminals for fighting for their rights as human beings in the workplace. To prevent workers from combining to form trade unions, the British government had passed legislation known as the “anti-combination laws” late in the eighteenth century. These were not repealed until 1824. And it was only then that trade unions became legal entities for the first time.

As trade unions grew in strength and their recognition by governments and employers became stronger, it was easier for them to negotiate the formalisation of their members’ employment relations within factories and the corporate world. Step by step, workers rights became recognised as part of human rights, and trade union rights could be invoked using the laws that had been passed based on the strength of unions. The continued relevance of trades unions however remained in their organising.

As was the case on the global level, starting in Britain, the earliest trade unions in Nigeria organised workers in the informal sector. These were the mechanics who established the Mechanics Mutual Aid and Improvement Association in 1883. The earliest unions in the formal sector were however formed in the civil service. This was unlike the situation in those countries that first became capitalist in Europe where the earliest unions were in the private sector, comprising informal workers who then got their employment relations formalised through struggle. The reason for this situation in Nigeria is the nature of capitalism that comes through colonialism as against that which emerged “naturally” in Europe.

In European countries, work relations in the civil service had been formalised for a longer time. Indeed the roots of the civil service go back to the middle age of European civilisation where a core of men, often from the ranks of lower and middle-level “gentlemen”, such as knights, were dedicated to the service of the crown as clerks, administrators and managers of the finances of the king or queen. This group of men (and later women) had to be kept happy and relatively contented with employment security.

In the colonies, for a long time the British and other colonialists did not allow much large-scale production to prevent competition with British and other western goods. But they needed clerks and messengers, porters and carriers and as the colonial state built harbours and railways, they needed manual, semi-skilled and even skilled labour to work for the colonial governments. Thus, not surprisingly, apart from the informal economy, the bulk of working people in the urban areas especially, where in the public service. These workers felt the pangs of exploitation by their foreign bosses and this also went with discrimination based on their skin colour. The spirit of trade unionism spread amongst them and they became the first group of workers in the formal sector to form trade unions.

Human rights, workers rights and trade union rights
Taking a close look at the origins of trades unions and trade unionism, we see that what workers fought for and still are fighting for is our human rights. Modern industrial society has raised the level of exploitation of human beings beyond anything that could have been conceived of some five hundred years ago, when the dominant relations between human beings were based on land and agriculture. But it has also raised the level of universally accepted values of human dignity and rights beyond what could have been thought of before the era of capitalism. The acceptance of these values and concepts such as human rights and democracy was won through the struggle of workers and cannot be divorced from the individual rights of workers as citizens and workers and the collective rights of trade unions as combinations of workers.

In the ages where society was ruled by kings, queens and nobles, in Africa, Asia and Europe, the king was like a god. His word was law; he could order ordinary people to be whipped publicly or even killed. A good example in the old Oyo Empire for example was that the Alaafin, who was the leading king, was often addressed as iku baba, yeye, which was an appellation showing that he had the powers to kill anybody’s father or mother, just like that. It was the same thing in Europe where King Louis XVI of France said that “I am the state”.

It was not only that the social and economic system dominated by the kings and nobilities was oppressive politically in such manner as described here. It also economically tied the individual working person, who tilled the land to the apron strings of their lords and masters. They either worked on the farms of their lords or they worked on their own lands but had to pay in cash or kind, some form of isakole to the local lord (e.g. bale) or king.

Such a political and economic system as this, generally known as feudalism, was not compatible with the growth and development of capitalism. With the accumulation of wealth through European merchants that bought and sold commodities across the world hundreds of years ago, industry grew and a class of industrialist moneybags emerged. They needed some form of government that could guarantee their investment. They could not allow the working people to be tied by some traditions of royalty or nobility to lords who were far away from the means used to produce the wealth of society (which used to be land but was becoming more and more embedded in machines and factories). The best form of government for capitalism to thrive is that of democracy.

This was the basis of the revolutions in Europe during the late 18th century and into the 19th century in which monarchies were abolished and republics established. Democracy naturally implies rights for citizens which the government could not arbitrarily disregard, just like that. Such human rights as they would come to be called were also in the interest of the working class, or at least should have been. This is because the workers being even more vulnerable to the domination of the powers that be in government needed the protection that comes with equality before the law as well as human dignity and liberty which democracy heralded. But in the early period of democracy and “the rights of man”, the rich owners of capital after using the working people to bring down feudal governments through revolutions, made sure that they limited the human rights that had been won through the power of the masses to themselves. This was done by giving the right to vote in elections only to men that had some particular level of wealth or income. This was the case even in Nigeria during the elections into the Legislative Council in Lagos under the Clifford constitution of 1922.

In Europe during the 1840s, workers who were organised around a Charter of people’s rights which included the right for everyone irrespective of their income to have the right to vote, mobilised public opinion for what is called universal franchise. This is the right for everybody to be able to vote and be voted for. These workers were known as Chartists due to the Charter, which was what bound them. The Chartists were thus the first set of workers to point at the direct linkages between democratic rights, human rights and workers rights. In Nigeria as well, workers in the 1940s were at the fore front of the struggles for human rights and the democratic right of franchise i.e. to be able to vote. The 1945 General Strike mobilized public opinion against colonialism and the limited right of Nigerians even within their own country to determine their destiny. Their actions along with those of other nationalists paved the way for Independence, 15 years later.

Human rights are not limited to the right of franchise. The idea that there are rights peculiar to human beings in general have always existed somehow amongst human beings in different places, despite the domination of a few people who considered themselves as the owners of the land, as kings or lords or as slave masters. But in the period before capitalism, it was not every body that was fully considered to be “human”. Slaves for example in ancient Athens which first practiced democracy where not seen by the freeborn citizens as being part of society. A similar sense of seeing the poor as “sub-human beings” is what we showed with how the kings and lords saw and treated the peasants that were there serfs. Due to all these, no government in the ancient or feudal days could say that “all human beings are born equal”. But with the revolutions that the capitalists had to wage against for democracy they declared that human rights are the rights of all human beings, echoing the words of peasants that had raised similar cries against their kings. One of the first leading politicians to first say this clearly was Thomas Jefferson who wrote the American Declaration of Independence, but even he, as well as virtually all his colleagues who signed the declaration that all men have equal rights as human beings had black slaves. This was in 1776. It was not only black slaves that did not share in these advertised human rights for all. Workers and women would not be properly recognised as human beings with human rights until last century.

It would take the chaos, instability and disaster of two world wars before human rights for workers and then universally were in a way, institutionalised internationally.

The demand for workers rights as human rights had grown greatly during the 19th century. As we noted earlier, this was when trade unions became full-fledged combinations of workers and eventually, through struggle, became recognised as such by government and employers. This was also the century of the expansion of industry. Railways where built, hastening production as commodities could be moved at more rapid pace across terrains that were hardly passable before. Factories expanded, the employment relations of workers in these factories became more and more formalised and the earlier “trade clubs” themselves took on more formal labour union shape. Craft unions became challenged by the concept and practice of industrial unionism, which sought to bind all workers in the now more formalised industries, organising on a more sectoral basis than the craft basis that is more characteristic with informal work situations even if not limited to these. Radical views, including socialist ideas that the modern slavery which had become what workers existence amounted to, must be brought to a halt.

Meanwhile, the expansion of trade and commerce also brought sharp competition between the capitalists of the different major industrial countries as they battled for control of natural resources, colonies and shares of the world market. These intense competitions led to what is considered as the First World War, in 1913-1919. At the end of the war, the agitation of workers for a better world was recognised and accepted to some extent by the European and American governments that had waged the war, and who were then trying to establish peace and stability, two important ingredients for continued business as usual. This was partly because they were scared that if they did not minimally recognise these rights, workers in their countries might be inspired by the Great October Socialist Revolution which had just taken place two years before then in Russia. The result of this compromise was the formation of the International Labour Organisation. It was formed along with what then was the League of Nations; the forerunner of the United Nations Organisation. The ILO in its declaration placed workers rights squarely as comprising a critical part of human rights in general. It demanded decent work, called for less hardship on workers and fairness of wages. It also had provisions which promoted the rights of the working woman to equal pay for work of equal value with men and sought to provide some defense against child labour on behalf of children from poor working homes.

The ILO is the only organisation amongst the different agencies of the League of Nations which survived the League after it collapsed with World War II. It automatically became an agency of the United Nations when the UNO was formed as World War II was ending. It is also the only tripartite agency of the United Nations. But government representatives hold 50%, representatives of big business employers hold 25% and those of the workers only 25%. Since most times the positions of governments and employers are alike, in defense of the interest of capitalism, this is more like 75% to the capitalists and only 25% for the workers. But despite this, a lot has been won through the ILO, even if a lot more still remains that could have been done by workers for themselves in a world based primarily on workers international cooperation.

Based on the views of human rights which have evolved largely in the 20th century, and workers rights which the ILO has played a key role in promoting, the ILO has been able to set norms and formulate conventions and recommendations by which countries across the world could be held to account with regards to workers rights and working conditions. Trade unions at the national and international levels have also played very significant roles in ensuring that these International Labour Standards as they are called are used to defend trade union rights and advance workers interests.

The Second World War placed a mirror of horror before humankind. The powers that be, after the war, could not legitimately continue to rule the world without addressing the big question of “human rights” on a global scale. In 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was proclaimed declaring rights and freedoms such as those of expression, movement, conscience & association as the “property” of every human being. It also declared that every nation had the right to self-determination, even though for another ten to twenty years, many countries in Africa would still be under direct colonial rule. The provisions of this UDHR as it is abbreviated was however invoked by many nationalists seeking self-government for their peoples and by many labour rights activists seeking to win or uphold freedoms for workers in different countries.

The UDHR has been further deepened by: the International Convention on Civic and Political Rights (ICCPR) &; the International Convention on Social and Economic Rights (ICSER). The ICCPR in its formulation seeks to protect the political citizenship rights of all human beings, including workers, to participate freely in the affairs of their countries and human society as a whole, while the ICSER is projected as guaranteeing employment and basic social and economic needs of human beings as rights. All these are good and should be defended. Indeed, informal workers just as workers in the formal sector over the years would do very well to invoke the details of all these fine conventions of the UNO as well as the more workers-specific ones of the ILO in their campaigns and negotiations with governments. Indeed, most of the key components of these basic conventions on human rights have been incorporated into the constitution of most countries, including Nigeria as well as in regional conventions such as the African Charter of People’s Rights.

We must however not have illusions that the mere fact that these human rights conventions exist means that they will be respected by governments. Actually, while most governments give these rights with one hand, they try to take them away with the other hand, through some form of ouster clause or the other. A good example in Nigeria is Chapter 2 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999, which deals with the guiding principles of state. Employment as a right is there, health for all, education for all, etc are “guaranteed”, but all these are not justiciable, meaning that they are only things that the government can (claim to) aspire to do, but you cannot take the government to court for not doing them or insist that they guarantee such social and economic rights in truth and in deed and not merely on sheets of paper!

The secret to being able to actually win what has been formally conceded to us as our rights and to even deepen the freedoms we could have, as we struggle for our self-emancipation is by building our power as a mass combination in society. The secret to this, as the experiences of trades unions in general has shown is by, organising! organising!! & organising!!!

Organising in the informal economy; problems and prospects
Trade union organising is the process of bringing working people together and thus building workers power with which they can win benefits, defend their won rights and promote their interests. While trade unionism is the spirit of the trade union body, trade union organising is its blood and limb which gives the union life and movement. From what we have seen thus far, organising in the informal economy is not new. However, there are now both new and old challenges to be overcome. Between 1883 and 1912 virtually all trade unions in the country organised informal workers. From 1912 or more properly put, since 1938 when the trade union ordinance was passed till the passage of DN 31 of 1973 and subsequently the re-organisation of the trade union movement’s structure by the military in 1976, the generally accepted categorisation of “trade unions” was broad enough to include unions of informal workers, including self-employed working people in the informal economy. After this, with the supposed “Industrial” nature of unions, informal economy workers were legally disbarred as trade unions .

We must note though that, even though today informal workers unions are not recognised by law, and consequently do not get registered by the registrar of trade unions, trade union rights are hardly ever won as legal rights before in the first instance. It is when you are powerful as a social force of working people that the governments will realise they have no choice but to give you legal recognition as unions. And thus power will be built by deepening your traditional methods of organising which have worked as well as by introducing what might be new organising methods that have been successful in other lands, for example.

There are two major ways of organising workers in the informal economy. One is where trade unions in the formal sector take up the challenge of organising workers in the informal economy within their sector. Examples in Nigeria include the efforts by the Textiles and Garment workers union at Aba tor organise tailors and the Construction union’s organising of masons and carpenters in Ondo and Warri. In these two instances the formal sector union either encouraged the formation of associations of the informal workers or wooed existing associations with the members of these associations becoming associate members of the formal sector unions. The second way is trough the independent self-organising of workers in the informal sector, which is the form championed by most of the leading unions in FIWON. Both methods are not necessarily exclusive. It is however important to stress that s/he who wears the shoe knows where it pinches most. This is also why the formal sector unions that have organised in the informal economy do so through stimulated self-organising of informal workers. The most important fact to note is that building the power of informal economy workers and their trade unions is part and parcel of the broader process of building workers power as a whole in society.

This brings us to the possible levels of organising informal economy workers. Except for a few unions in the sector such as NATA with national spread, informal sector unions are exist within specific localities. This is nothing strange, even unions in the formal sector used to be highly localised during the days of “house unionism” which is also when the lines between unions in the formal sector and the informal economy were blurred. There is however a challenge for consolidating these different unions into either national unions or federations of unions .

There consolidation of informal workers and their trade unions into broader combinations that will deepen their powers can also not be limited to just the national level in this age of globalisation. The forces which working people generally confront particularly in the present era, represented by big business and the capitalist bosses operate internationally and indeed, globally. Workers have thus always tried to forge international solidarity, starting from 1864 when the First International Association of Working men, was formed. Today there are several international associations and unions of workers, covering diverse sectors. Some of these are specifically for informal and they include the International Alliance of Street Vendors, known as Streetnet, formed in 1995 & Homenet, which organises domestic workers. The two have formed a network known as WIEGO which while addressing informal economy workers questions in general has specific interest in the situation of women in the informal economy. This is very important as women make up a very large number of the proportion of informal economy workers.

It is not only to those international alliances specifically for workers in the informal economy that you can affiliate and relate. Several global union federations (GUFs) in several sectors also work closely with informal economy workers. For example the International Metalworkers Federation (IMF) is a GUF that some of the FIWON affiliates such as NATA, NWA & the Fitters Union could affiliate to. The tailoring unions could be part of the International Textiles Garment & Leather Workers Federation (ITGLWF), those in agriculture could have relations with the International Union of Foodworkers (IUF), masons could be part of the Building Workers International (BWI) and the International Chemical Energy and Mineworkers Federation (ICEM) could also provide an international platform for some other FIWON affiliates as well . The Public Service International which organises mainly workers in the public sector could as well have relations with workers in the informal economy that render public services such as waste disposal.

The essence of both national and international solidarity of workers in the informal economy as well as the formal sector is that unity gives strength; indeed the whole point of trade unionist combination is solidarity forever. This is why in organising, FIWON and its affiliates need to build on these as well as invoke the provisions of existing human rights covenants.

Organising informal workers however include both external and internal aspects as Dan Gallin of the Global Labour Institute rightly stated ten years ago. The external aspects include building solidarity with other workers nationally and with other workers in the informal economy and even beyond the informal economy, globally.

The external aspects of trade union organising in the informal economy as well includes the following:

Use of International Labour Standards; informal workers unions need to know and utilise the provisions of international labour standards for organising and campaign. Some key standards include the Home Work Convention (No 177) & Recommendation 84. This was won through the intense lobbying of a number of informal workers organisations and international alliances with the active support of some unions in the formal sector. Along with the use of international labour standards such as these, informal workers unions have to be familiar with other trade union, workers and human rights conventions and laws with which they could legitimate their struggle for better working conditions, dignity and respect;

Fight for social protection and services: a major problem of informal workers all over the world is the limited level of social protection and services they enjoy, where they even enjoy any at all. Informal workers trade unions have to engage with the relevant national, state and local authorities to broaden the scope of social protection available to their members demanding these as of rights. This is crucial for building membership strength as many members join unions because of the benefits they can derive from them. It will as well deepen workers power as a whole by expanding equality, liberty and justice even within the oppressive capitalist system. The informal workers unions as well can within their own limits through cooperative efforts gradually build on the available social protection for their members and thus as well build their power as a social force;

The internal aspects that informal economy trade unions have to engage with in organising include:

Developing organising strategies: while there are some general principles of organising which have impact on organising strategies, the informal economy is very heterogeneous and the particular strategies that could be effective in a particular sector might not be so effective in another. It is the same thing somewhat in the formal sector, which is less heterogeneous, as well. FIWON should be able to identify the peculiarities that different sectors in the informal economy face, learning from the comrades in these sectors themselves. General elements of organising strategies should however include forging alliances with other social groups in the communities where the informal workers work and live and being part of broader coalitions of workers and civil society such as the Labour Civil Society Coalition, for example;

Cooperatives: cooperatives or mutual aid is very, very important in the trade union movement generally, but even more so in the informal economy. Informal economy unions should build on their knowledge from former and current cooperative practices. They could also learn from the efforts of others in different countries. In this sense, FIWON could endeavour to be part of or liaise with the International Cooperatives Alliance to learn and draw from best practices across the world;

Coordination; Coordination can not be overemphasised. Solidarity and organisation of the informal economy unions have to be coordinated at several levels. This is where FIWON could be of central value. FIWON however cannot afford to be a strictly national platform. There would, I strongly believe, be plans for state and local structures of FIWON, if such do not exist now. But beyond that there should be coordination between different unions in the same sectors as well as between these and FIWON. Specific cadres have to be saddled with the tasks of maintaining such a living network of coordination. These though must maintain a process of mandate-seeking and reporting-back to their different unions at all levels;

Education and training; knowledge they say is power. FIWON and its affiliates have to develop and implement popular education programmes and plans. These plans and programmes have to be such that they are cheap, regular, consistent and broad. Education has to go with training. While education provides increasing knowledge, training equips comrades with skills and is should thus be tied to problem-solving. The trainers of FIWON would have to know the nature of work that the affiliates’ members do and bring in people who know these and can help them do it better as well. Thus for education and training to successfully be internal aspects of trade union organising, they should be: political i.e. building the power of informal economy workers as part of the working class; professional i.e. developing their workmanship and; social i.e. helping them to themselves expand their social protection scope while still engaging with governments for this;

Representation; representation is both internal and external for trade union organising in the informal economy. Internally this means that there should internal democracy so that those who speak for informal economy workers actually represent. They should emerge through deliberations and elections. Externally, the issue of who to negotiate with is a crucial one for informal economy workers. Who are the leaders of informal economy workers to make their representations to? The fact of the matter is that while employers might exist as singular managements, the process of wealth creation is a social one involving classes. The classes of the rich bosses and the classes of working people who have little or no property. Governments are like executive committees of the ruling classes of property owners and so informal workers unions must be able to identify state authorities at local, state and federal levels that they can negotiate with on behalf of their members. FIWON should draw from best practices across the world while taking note of the peculiarities in Nigeria to draw up possible mechanisms for disputes resolution, mediation and conciliation. It should where necessary as well not shy away from arbitration and litigation to bring its members plight to the limelight and win further legal rights by testing the existing provisions of the law on human and workers rights.

Conclusion
This paper has examined the origins and development of trades unions and trade unionism, showing that the earliest trades unions necessarily organised informal workers. As the unions got stronger and the wealth generated by the capitalist system expanded needing further institutionalising of the process of accumulating social wealth, employment in what became the formal sector became formalised and with this the growth of unions as formal sector combinations of workers.

The paper further showed that despite this, trade unionism never ceased in the informal economy, even though the law tries to narrow down trade unionism to the strict relationship between employers and employees in the formal sector. It then went on to show how informal workers unions could forge a new beginning building on what presently it is, towards becoming a major social force to reckon with.

The place of rights in human society was as well x-rayed. Human rights, it pointed out were the offspring of workers fighting against oppression and exploitation insisting on their humanity as society developed. The paper while noting the limitations of these rights in reality also highlights their possibilities along with the more specific human rights that are workers and trade union rights.

The paper stresses the need for workers to unite. In as much as informal economy workers have to build their unions and develop their strength, the working class irrespective of the sector that its different segments are in are bound by their exploitation and marginalisation in capitalist society. We thus must unite, organise and together win more benefits today, while we fight for a better world which with workers power we will win, enthroning social justice and equality.

Thank you for listening.

References
Aye, B., 2011, “Trade unions and the informal economy; a critical analysis of informal workers organizing and the building of workers’ power”, being a paper presented at the 6th International Labour & Economic Relations Association, Africa Region Congress, held on 24th – 28th January, at the
University of Lagos, Akoka

Aye, B., 2010, “Trade unionism and trades unions; an introductory perspective”, being a paper presented at the PENGASSAN 1-day Industrial Relations held on June 5, at Novotel Hotel, Port Harcourt

Gallin, D., 2001, “Propositions on trade unions and informal economy in Times of globalisation” in Antipode, pp. 531 - 549

Labour and the spring of revolution in the MENA region

2011-05-06T11:32:00.000-07:00

The revolutionary upheavals in the Middle East & North Africa (MENA) region these past few months confirm the truism that there are times in history when three months could seem like thirty years. The wind of “massquakes” in the region: swept dictators in Tunisia and Egypt out of power within weeks of protests and strikes; shattered the myth of Gaddafi’s invincibility, while he stubbornly holds on to the shell of power, taking the country down the brinks of civil war; forced wide-ranging reforms in Saudi Arabia in an attempt to starve it off and; shakes Bahrain, Yemen, and Syria to their foundations with simmering echoes in Algeria, Jordan and Morocco. “Revolution” which had come to be seen as a thing of the past with the marketed triumph of neoliberal capitalism has now come to hold the attention of the world, inspiring millions across the globe.

The (ongoing) revolutions in each of these countries have emerged from the concrete realities of their socio-economic and political conditions. Thus there are certain distinctive elements in each. But, as is generally agreed, a wide range of similarities can be perceived in these region-wide spread of angst and people’s power. Many commentators, have seen the most determinant of these as being the use of the new (“social networking”) media. They have been described as “face book revolutions”, “twitter revolutions” & “bloggers’ revolutions”, for example. They have also been presented as “leaderless”, spontaneous revolts of youths against “sit-tight” dictatorships in a region filled with monarchies and effectively, “life presidents”. These perspectives present partial snapshots of a more dynamic and deep-seated reality. The “Arab awakening” and the patterns it has taken emerge from class struggles, within the MENA countries, and as well reflect the rising rage of disposed working classes in all continents of the world, in the aftershock of the Great Recession.

In understanding these patterns, at one end we see successful revolutionary climaxes in Tunisia and Egypt where despite incorporation of the formal trade unions, robust working class struggles had been waged in the past ten years. At the other end is Libya, where a totalitarian, anti-imperialist pretender of a police regime had virtually strangled life out of the working class and eroded any real spaces for a civil society’s spirit, with the contention of revolution and counterrevolution exploding into a civil war. The situations in the other MENA countries fall into a spectrum between these two scenes of the first act of revolution and counter-revolution in the region.

The regional conflagration as is generally known was sparked off in December, by the self-immolation of Said Mohammed Bouazizi, a 26-year old graduate in Tunis. He was a fruit vendor, despite his level of education, whose wares were seized by state authorities. In burning himself, he became a living rejection of the desperation and hopelessness of a generation of Tunisians, nay, youths across the world who have been pulverized by the relentless assault of rampaging capitalism which in the last few decades of its neoliberal restructuring have turned millions into a marginal mass of rejects eking out some form of existence in the shadows of what life could be. The protests that followed his Golgotha marked the beginning of what would be the January 14 revolution, with the 24-year presidency of Ben Ali brought crashing down.

The trade union confederation in Tunisia, the UGTT, and particularly some of the radical federations and trade unions within its ranks played key roles in mobilizing for the Tunisian revolution. Working class and youth activists in the communities organized people’s committees which took over local governance and self-defence. They were at the barricades chanting the downfall of Ben Ali and they downed tools as Tunisia was racked by a wave of strikes.

In the wake of the Tunisian revolution, the regimes across the region fell over each other with bribes of concessions to the people as the wind of revolt spread. It was however in Egypt that the reign of a dictator would also be brought crashing down and this in 18days! In Egypt much more than in Tunisia, the myth of a leaderless “face book revolution” is nurtured. But here, more than in any other place in “the Arab world”, the working class leadership of the revolution is very palpable.

The April6 Youth Movement, as many people now know, turned the political opportunity of January 25 (a public holiday in Egypt to honour police officers) into the beginning of 18 days that shook the world. The roots of this movement are themselves steeped in working class struggles as it was established to mobilize public support for the April 6 strike of workers in the militant city of Malhalla, in 2008. To jumpstart the revolutionary movement in January, its young activists started their mobilization from the poor working class quarters in Cairo. As millions took over Tahrir Square security had to be organized as well as feeding, toilet and even music. These necessitated leadership. As with every revolution, newer and newer layers of leaders sprung up as the revolutionary moment’s steam gave wind to the sail of struggle; throwing up slogans and chants, inspiring, and giving direction to the pent up anger, passions and yearnings of the mass. In the neighbourhoods as well, committees were set up which coordinated municipal functions and armed detachments of ordinary people to defend the revolution against the rampaging counter-revolutionary hordes unleashed by the regime.

New media was of great importance in this hour, no doubt. It served as a virtual notice board for Tahrir Square to millions of Egyptians and billions across the world. It is important though to point out an often overlooked fact. To every generation in modern society, its “new media” and enhanced transportation, engender greater possibilities of communication for mobilization. The printing press was no less revolutionary five hundred years back as twitter is now. Thomas Carlyle said it aided “disbanding hired armies” and “creating a new democratic world”. Quickened means of sending letters and newspapers also gave speed to the feet of the French revolution through the correspondence committees. But perhaps Marx and Engels in 1847 best captured the fact that forging of solidarity is “helped on by the improved means of communication that are created by modern industry, and that place the workers of different localities in contact with one another. It was just this contact that was needed to centralise the numerous local struggles...into one national struggle”.

This is not to discountenance the importance of social networking media, but to stress that they merely help living human beings waging real and not simply virtual struggles. Facebook and Twitter on their own did not and could not have made any revolution. The Daily Star, a leading Lebanese paper aptly captured this reality in its editorial just after the Tunisian Revolution: “Egypt’s Internet based campaign for political change, the country’s most critical voice, has failed to filter down from the chattering middle classes to the poor on the street”.

This statement of The Daily Star points towards the importance of classes in two ways. First, it is when the message for change, through whatever media, takes hold of the souls, minds and actions of the mass of the lower classes, the workers, the toilers, who create society’s wealth, that revolutionary political change can be a reality. This is a correct position which most revolutions from 1789 have confirmed (of course there have been “passive revolutions” from the top, but these have arisen more often than not, as reaction to stalemate the self-emancipatory struggles of the labouring masses from below).

Second, is that the internet is a preserve of “the chattering middle classes”. This is only partially true. The changing development of capital has resulted in the changing nature and heterogeneity of the working class. The 21st Century working class is not reducible to the blue collared industrial worker. Along with the new middle class of self-employed lawyers, doctors, contractors, etc, -a number of which come from working class families- the working class today comprises as well of well-trained nurses, teachers, engineers, academics, etc, who are no less wage-slaves than the rugged, hard knuckled, factory worker. These constitute a large number of internet users.

The working class is burdened with providing leadership for revolutions from below in modern industrial society for several reasons. The first is its crucial place in the process of production; “labour creates wealth”. It is hardly accidental that the two countries where revolutions in the MENA region have reached climaxes are those with the most powerful working class movements, particularly Egypt. It is also hardly surprising that in both Tunisia and Egypt, the final moments that spelt doom for the dictatorships where those in which the working class rose to its full stature, donning its awesome gown of the general strike.

This however does not suppose that the working class alone can carry out revolution, even in the advanced capitalist countries where it constitutes the majority of the population. A revolution entails class alliances-in-action; indeed it entails the vast majority of the middle classes crossing over to the standpoint of the working class i.e. a standpoint of the sans-culottes, having nothing to lose (as he who is down needs fear no fall) and having everything to win from struggle.

In normal times, the ideas of the ruling classes are dominant. Even amongst the middle classes and individual workers, the urge to “make money” and have a good life like the rich are intermingled with their hatred of the oppression of the wealthy. But it is simply “commonsense” to believe during such long periods of lull that things can not be different for society. Individuals thus try to rather make the little or big differences they can make with their individual lives. The wealthy classes thus rule on the strength of their hegemony over society, as Gramsci argues, with coercion helming its borders.

AbdelRahman al-Rashed of the Tunisian Ash-Sharq al-Awsat newspaper noted on the eve of the revolution in that country that: “much of what prevents protest and civil disobedience is simply the psychological barrier.” This is the barrier instituted by such hegemony of the ruling class. Leon Trotsky in The History of the Russian Revolution had equally stressed the breaking through of the psychological barrier as one of the very first tasks of any revolution.
More and more people are inspired to rise up and fight when the first sparks of rebellion become beacons of the possibilities of revolt. It is thus in the nature of revolutions that its first phase more often than not is spontaneous, as was Bouazizi’s self-immolation. The embers from such self-generated fires could however then die, with the aroused masses rage fizzled out through reaction’s reforms or its counter-revolutionary repressions. For it to take up continued life at the critical juncture between its beginnings and the blossoming of its fruition, it has to be fired up by being consciously stoked, rising to its crescendo as the spirits of the possibilities of self-emancipation it has liberated possess the souls of tens and hundreds of thousands, and indeed, millions as we saw when Tahrir Square became the heart of Egypt’s body.

This presupposes the existence before the revolution of counter-hegemonic spaces claimed by –often small “forces”- of ideas, embodied in men, women, youths, who posit radical ideas to the status quo, within and beyond the working class. There was a plethora of such in both Tunisia and Egypt. Despite the repressive regime in place, which incorporated the official trade union structures, in Tunisia, there were federations critical of the official UGTT and a host of Left groups and in Egypt, several independent trade unions (which formed the Egyptian Trade Union Federation, in the heat of the revolution) and a diverse array of revolutionary socialists, radical and more liberal organizations filled in this role of the “organic intellectual”.

The situations in Yemen, Bahrain, Syria and Libya were quite different. The working class was not only much weaker in these countries (though in each it still rose up to fight!); counter-hegemonic spaces in civil society had literally been strangulated. In Syria and particularly Libya, pantomime “socialist” regimes, with anti-imperialist sloganeering had not only claimed being the state but as well mirrored themselves falsely as being civil society. Independent unions or federations outside the official incorporated union structures were not allowed.

The situation in these countries as well reflect a critical element of revolutionary periods: revolution and counter-revolution are Siamese twins, one of which is fated to consume the other. Counter-revolutions do not only emerge as repressive monsters or with more benign parliamentary faces after the revolution. They fight it as it lives, bury it if it dies or still keep fighting against it after victory, as Egyptians have come to realize with recent unpopular laws and the brazen jailing of a blogger, for criticism of the military.

The working class faces the greatest ire of counterrevolution’s reaction. In Tunisia, attempts have been made to curtail strikes after the revolution. In Egypt, the military passed laws seeking to ban strikes and as ITUC has protested: “The Bahraini authorities seem to be intent on destroying the country’s trade union movement as a central part of a campaign of revenge against those who took part in peaceful demonstrations and strike actions”.

This is one very important reason for grasping the internationalist dimensions of revolutionary struggles for the working class. The voices of workers across the world must rail against attacks on the revolution. The ITUC for example has spoken out against the reaction in virtually every country sucked up in the pulsation of revolution in the region. Several other trade unions in Africa, including COSATU & NLC, and even beyond the continent have equally condemned attacks on the Arab working people in the strongest terms.

Labour internationalism however is never just one way; in defense of the forces of revolution. The struggles in Tunisia and Egypt have equally inspired workers awakening in Wisconsin and Ohio for example.

Indeed, the revolutionary struggles in the MENA region can hardly be understood except as part of the international rising of the working class in the wake of the Great Recession. It is one in spirit with the massive wave of anti-austerity strikes and demonstrations in Greece, France, Italy, Ireland and several other European countries late last year, the momentous anti-cuts protest by workers and youths on March 26 in the UK is its kindred and it will sire more glorious moments of rage, action, defeats and victories, as it has been sired by the gallantry and quest of working people over the generations for another possible world beyond capitalism’s drudgery and obsolescence.

We must note though, as Marx and Engels pointed out in the Communist Manifesto: “now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of their battles lie, not in the immediate results, but in the ever expanding union of the workers”. The revolutions in MENA, have come, and are still in the making. They will however pass, but their significance will not. A new world will be born, albeit not now; though its herald is sung. Bleeding from the scars of the Stalinist parody of “socialism”, the working class in the advanced capitalist world still hesitate at embracing the sharpest sword with which to pursue its self-emancipation. But its younger elements are being forced by concrete brick walls they run into to ask questions that will lead back to the ideas that spurred October 1917.

The expansion of democratic spaces being won today in North Africa and the Middle East represents progress for labour and indeed the ocean of humanity across the globe. They are part of the first act in the unfolding drama of re-writing human history; moving from the monotony of necessity to the emancipatory vigour of real liberty. The second decade of the 21st Century is being written in blood from the Nile and its environs. Battles lie ahead worldwide, beyond what we can now envisage. New and newer media will feature in those struggles and revolutions, but they will be fought and won by living men, women and youths, claiming their self-emancipation, as this century births a new and just world. That new world, will salute the memories of Tahrir Square and Said Bouazizi.

France: the fire this time!

2011-04-24T12:52:00.000-07:00

The dust seems to have settled on the prolonged “pension reform revolt”. On Wednesday October 27, the new Pension Act which increased the retirement age from 60 to 62 years was passed into law by the French government. This occurred despite a groundswell of general strikes and mass protests which showed the discontent of the immense majority of people in France with the pension reform in particular and the age of austerity sweeping through France, as with the rest of Europe and indeed the world, in general.
This article captures some of the highlights of this pitched class struggle in France and draws possible lessons for an unfolding future as workers and trade unions across Europe and the world as a whole, square up to the challenges of a period of anti-working-class attacks in the garb of “austerity”. These would include: the impact of changing forms of work relations on how the struggle unfolded; the nature of solidarity which buoyed the movement; the evolving strategies of workers/unions; and, the –often unconstitutional- manner of state/employer attacks on workers in the course of the struggle and in the baleful victory of the State apparatuses against the people, overcoming, as such, the revolt.
At the peak of the strike, more than half of French industries were shut down as raw materials and fuel for production were cut off by the strike movement. The number of workers on strike was barely up to one third of the French labour force, concentrated in the densely unionised “old heavy industries” such as: iron and steel; railway; auto-manufacturing; transport; energy &; power. They also encompassed white collar workers in the formal sector such as: teachers; medical and health workers &; staffers of banks. The reason for this is not far fetched. The impact of neoliberal globalisation on the French economy, as with all national economies in the developed and developing world –even if to different degrees- is the expansion of the informalisation of labour relations. There have been a growing number of workers in enterprises that employ less than 50 persons where trade union organising is much more difficult, and in many cases barely existent. The informalisation of labour relations extends also into the formal sector, with a marked increase of atypical workers such as temporary contract staff and “casuals”, a large number of who are immigrants. Going almost at pace with informalisation is the tertiarisation of the economy, with the tertiary sector of services tending to employ more workers, on the whole, than the secondary sector of manufactures. In this sector, as well, casualisation is very salient, marking a merging of the processes of informalisation and tertiarisation. Workers in supermarket chains, shopping malls, telemarketing and other commercial, services and telecommunication “industries”, tend to be less unionised for various obvious reasons, which include the precarity of their jobs. They were thus part of the strike movement in the broad sense, but were constrained from participating in the general strikes, per se.
The French government often tried to seize on this fact in the public discourse that raged in the course of the strike movement, seeking to portray the strike movement as one of a minority within the population. This playing the ostrich was however shown for what it was by the massive support of French people for the struggle. Independent polls showed that for 17 consecutive days, over 70% of the French populace was in full support of the strike actions, including its radical but peaceful ways of bringing the economy to a halt. This reality was demonstrated on the streets as for days on end, millions of working people and youths marched on the streets, protesting alongside the striking workers, with more than 3.5million people marching on September 10, described as the great “10/10” protest.
The struggle unfurled solidarity between striking workers across different sectors of the French economy, and between these and non-striking workers in France, as well as across the international working class movement for the French workers’ stand. In most major cities of France, including Paris, Marseilles, Perpignan and Rennes, on a daily basis, striking workers convened as “General Meetings of all striking workers”, for action; blocking highways, shutting down tax offices and organising demonstrations. In some of these cities, led by striking garbage collectors, the workers gathered piled up refuse and dumped these in front of the houses of leading business people and government functionaries in their localities and in several university towns, striking cafeteria workers made free meals available for students, who were very active in the strike movement.
Donations from working people that could not join the strike were collected all over France, adding up to considerable amounts as strike funds, to support the workers in action. A number of non-striking supporters also aided with transporting strikers to picket lines, making food available and generally cheering them along.
Solidarity for the striking workers went beyond the French shores. From several countries in Europe, Africa, North America, Asia and Latin America, messages of solidarity were sent by trade unions and trade union federations to the French workers and trade unions. But, perhaps the most significant act of international working class solidarity during the struggle was that of the Belgian trade unions. The blocking of fuel depots in France by workers in the energy sector who played a prominent role in the struggle, hit the French economy very hard, bringing transportation as well as industry to a near standstill as car owners could not get gasoline to buy. French gas stations eventually resorted to routing supplies through central Belgian depots in Feluy and Tertre. Belgian trade unions organised around Federation Generale Belge du Travail (FGBT) promptly organised the blocking of these fuel depots in solidarity with their French comrades.
In the course of massive (strike) movements of the working class, as in the recent fires of struggle that rocked France, the creativity of workers comes to the fore along with solidarity and bold actions. There were several of such brilliant improvisations during the “pension reform revolt”. The General Assemblies of all striking workers has been referred to above. They were not only inter-sectoral in dozens of cities and towns across France, they equally linked worker activists from unions affiliated to different trade union federations together, in many cases, for the first time ever. Strategies adopted in practice as well included joint work with other components of the labour movement outside the trade unions. Students and youth activists from radical and pro-worker parties such as the New Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA) and “the Left Party” were active in mobilising support for the strikes and at their barricades. The strike movement targeted the production process, bringing it to its knees. It however ensured that the consumption process, particularly for the rich was as well hampered, particularly with the cut of fuel supplies. But perhaps the most novel of tactics which emerged during the days of revolt was that of “rolling strikes”. In France, every day of strike by a worker is a day for which no wage is paid by the bosses. The long drawn struggle took its toll on the workers, though their spirits were not dampened. To maintain these high spirits though, at some point in time, some workers were allowed to work for some days while others were on strike, after which they would down their tools and some of those on strike days earlier would go temporarily back to work!
The French ruling class and state struck back ruthlessly at the strikers, throwing away even respect for the Constitution of the Republic. The first major reaction of the Sarkozy government against the strike movement was to increase police powers and invoke the “minimal service” law which aimed at restricting the right to strike.
The popular onslaught of the strike movement on French capitalism did not however relent despite these repressive steps taken. The next action adopted was the draconian enactment of a “state of emergency” decree! Subsequent to this, on Friday October 22, in a step unprecedented in the recent history of labour relations in France, striking oil workers at the Grandpuits refinery were arrested by police officers of the paramilitary force and forced back to work! This sparked a wave of anger and indignation across the country. A Judge declared the action unconstitutional, but the State went on with it over the weekend, anyway. And five days after, despite the resounding refusal of the pension reform in general and the increase of pensionable age, by the working people in France, the French state passed the iniquitous reform into law.
The fire this time in France seems to have been smothered by ruthless state reaction. Nonetheless, its embers still smoulder. The age of austerity sweeping through Europe which had earlier ignited popular protests and strike movements in Europe, including the historic pan-European General Strike point towards stiffer struggles ahead. The relations that have been built between rank and file worker activists in this defeated revolt on pensions will go a long way towards buoying the steps of struggles that the French labour movement will have to take when the sparks of attacks on workers rights and working conditions lead to eruptions of the fire next time.

as published in the Global Labour News Issue 001, Oct-Dec, 2010

Layoffs and fare hikes hit US public transport

2011-04-24T12:46:00.000-07:00

Poor commuters using the public transport system and workers delivering transit services, including light rail and bus drivers are facing hard times in the United States. But they are also beginning to organise and fight to ameliorate their conditions and the salvage the sector. This is in the wake of the sharp rise of fuel in 2008 and the simultaneous Great Recession.
The attendant difficulties of livelihood to the economic crisis and rising fuel prices have made the need for an efficient and affordable public transport system a palpable one for millions of Americans. The response of the American State and private transit agencies has however been to drastically reduce funding for the sector, laying off workers and cutting down on supply and services rendered, due to the low or near absence of any significant profit accruing for them. This is a classic case of putting capitalist greed over and above the needs of the teeming mass of the country’s population.
Over 80% of the transit agencies in the US are cutting their services and/or hiking the fares for most routes. In New York City, which has the largest transit system in the country, 2 subway routes and 34 bus lines have been phased out, while night owl services have been cut. Free fares for students, as well, are facing attacks. In San Francisco, the transit passes for the elderly, physically challenged and youth, which used to cost $5 per month, now goes for upwards of $20.
The present state of the transit system which has been laid bare, by the broader economic crisis which makes more people dependent on it due to declining employment levels and restructuring of priorities of domestic budgets, while at the same time, it is being attacked instead of funding for it being increased, has deeper roots. The soil of these roots is the priority given to the profit motive in the development of infrastructure within a neoliberal paradigm of development. The distribution of appropriated federal funding for transportation is a major root that reflects this suffocating soil. 82% of the funds generated from transport taxes are ploughed into the building and maintenance of highways and other roads, with just 18% left for the public transit system. This is not all. The statutory provisions for the use of public funding for mass transit stipulate that just 10% of such can be expended on the system’s actual operations. The bulk of 90% has to be expended on capital projects such as the expansion of light rail lines and the purchase of heavy equipment. This of course is an avenue for lucrative contracts for private contractors that build or supply these. And interestingly, as in the present situation, the expansion of light rail lines amount to nothing, when mass transit is most needed by working people impoverished by the economic crisis; rather than increase subway services for example, they are being cut since they are not so profitable!
The concentration of resources on the construction and maintenance of highways is not without cause. An efficient and cost-effective mass transit system poses a huge threat to the automobile and oil and gas industries, with their huge and massively influential conglomerates.
A well funded and promoted mass transit system, while not as profitable for the expansion of capital as the increase of markets for single-user gas guzzling automobiles, would also be a huge step forward towards reducing carbon emission. The neoliberal paradigm which has guided the US transport policy is, however, no more concerned in truth than in deed about environmental sustainability than it is about the livelihood of transport workers or the fate of millions of mass transit users.
Transport workers’ unions in the United States are not taking the present attacks on the public transit system kneeling down. As transit agencies in San Francisco contemplate cuts in the wages of workers in the sector and in New York, management gets set to sack at least 1,700 workers, and with similar situations being replicated across the US, public transit workers are rousing in response. In New York and Atlanta, Portland and San Francisco, Washington DC and several other cities, public transit workers unions such as the Transportation Workers Union, Amalgamated Transit Union and United Transportation Union, are beginning to seize the bull by the horns, fighting to save the jobs and wages of their members and in defence of the public transport system. They are calling for increased funding, affordable fares and the expansion, rather than the constriction of services. They are also forging ties with riders and linking their demands with broader political-economic issues, making concrete propositions on the way forward to revamp the public transit system.
Some of their propositions include: reducing the numbers of persons in management cadres, being the ones who take such huge chunks of emoluments; utilizing public funds which are presently being used to prosecute wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and for the bailouts of banks and other corporations such as General Motors, to shore up the public transit system &; instituting a progressive taxation system that would ensure that the rich who can better afford it, be made to pay for the collective good that an efficient and cost-effective public transport system is.
The battle ahead for the unions would be tough, but they seem ready for the long haul, fighting this just battle until the neoliberal rot in the United States public transport system is turned around. They have made their message clear at public hearings on mass transit in several states and they have also organized protest actions with the active support and participation of riders. Building such bridges between workers’ unions and working people as users of public services would be crucial not only for the battles in the United States public transit system. It is a strategy that the different pitched battles against neoliberalism and the placing of profits above people will have to adopt and adapt in several ways. Another world is indeed possible...and so is another public transit system in the United State of North America.

as published in Global Labour News Issue 001, Oct-Dec, 2010

Repression of African workers in Chinese firms

2011-04-24T12:41:00.000-07:00

Restiveness is spreading through Chinese firms across Africa, as cases of high handedness, and even the shootings of agitating workers assumes rampant proportions, especially in Zambia, where workers have been shot thrice in the last few months. This have led to some tensions in Afro-Chinese relations, even while the states, which rely more and more on Chinese capital, try to explain away this despicable acts. There seems to be a palpable need for the trade union movement on the African continent to take a position on such untenable highhandedness and violence in industrial relations. Examples abound that buttress this need.

Last year, in Mozambique, African workers were made to wear badges inscribed with the word escravo which means “slave” in Portuguese, by the China Henan International Cooperation Group (CHICO). The company eventually explained away the incident as one of mistranslation, but most of the workers that were affected, describing the work regime they suffered in CHICO’s operations, do not seem convinced. The use of these badges have however been stopped, after protests by the unions.

In Namibia, workers in Chinese firms have also raised their voices against the nature of inhuman way they are treated and over-worked against the extant labour laws of the country. The firms merely respond that they should learn to bear the hardships of today for the benefits of the future, since they (the firms) are injecting much needed investments. Probably because of this, the Namibian state seems to give a tacit support to the Chinese corporations by turning a blind eye.

In Niger, as well as in Zambia, workers in uranium pits run by the Chinese have to live close to these pits in shacks and do not have protective gear despite the radioactive dangers posed by their exposure. Demands for better living conditions and respect for occupational safety and health measures have been met by the Chinese employers with scorn and disdain. Barely two years ago, as well, some Kenyan communities had blocked the road construction works by a Chinese government supported civil engineering and construction firm. This was to further their demand for access to the only borehole in the vicinity during a period of severe drought, so that they and their livestock could have some water. The borehole was within the precinct of the company. Several communities in countries such as Mali, Senegal and Madagascar had equally had running battles with Chinese firms.

Earlier in the decade, some two hundred workers in a factory at Ikorodu, Nigeria had burnt to death when a fire burst out during the night shift simply because the Chinese employers had locked the doors of the workplace and gone home with as a labour control measure. Beyond the very important issue of occupational safety and health are also the employment policies of the Chinese firms in Africa. The foreign direct investment that come with Chinese economic interests have very limited impact on employment simply because these firms, often in violation of the expatriate quotas of most African countries, tend to bring in even unskilled Chinese to take up jobs that could be easily done by locals. This was what led the National Union of Mineworkers in South Africa to organise a protest earlier in February when the South African government granted the request for special visas by a Chinese firm in the mining sector for 50 unskilled Chinese.

Without any doubt though, despite this condemnable situation across Africa, the worst scenario of repression in recent times is being played out in Zambia. In 2006, 46 Zambians had been killed in a Chinese-owned explosives producing factory due to the neglect of occupational safety procedures. Some months ago, workers at the Collum coal mine owned by Xu Jianxue, a Chinese industrialist in the Zambian had demanded better working conditions from their Chinese employers. A manager of the firm shot into the crowd of protesters, injuring some of them. By the end of October, there was once again a dispute, this time around over wages. Chinese managers shot into the crowd of protesters again, seriously injuring 11 persons. In the third week of November, miners were once again shot at by Chinese managers in the same mine, wounding several workers.

Unions in the country, particularly the Gemstone and Allied Workers Union of Zambia have voiced their strong objection to this dastardly development, which is getting repetitive. The country’s labour minister, Austin Liato however, hardly seems convinced about the dangers such backward industrial relations practice and disregard for the lives of workers holds for workers and indeed for the long-term development of the country. He argues that: “we’re an economy in transition, and we can’t afford
to lose the cow that gives us milk today,” This line of argument, if one puts investments over and above the lives and security of citizens, could seem tenable, when it is realized that the Chinese pumped $1.2b into the Zambian economy, in the last year alone.

Mr. Liato further states, not exactly wrongly that: “we have bad employers that come from everywhere, including from Zambia”. This is not an unimportant point in itself, as the point should not be to raise an abstract Sino-phobia within industrial in Zambia and Africa as a whole. There really are “bad employers...from everywhere”, considering the antagonistic interests of workers for increasing profits and workers for better wages. But it is a statement of fact that a pattern of hyper-repression of workers and wanton disregarded, and indeed insulting of the sensibilities of workers and communities by Chinese firms can be established.

A study of Chinese firms’ activities in Africa, with focus on the industrial relations sphere was conducted by the African Labour Researchers Network (ALRN), a few years back. Similarly the Building Workers International (BWI) had commissioned Herbert Jauch of the Namibian workers’ research institute LaRRI to assess Chinese construction firms’ roles in West Africa. These two studies confirm the concrete reality of Chinese industrialists, managers and unskilled workers highhandedness against workers in Africa, including their frustrating of union presence in within their establishments, as much as they can.

It is also an indisputable fact that in recent times Chinese investment in Africa is quite significant, making states more pliant on such “mundane” issues as industrial relations. ITUC Africa and the different trade union federations in the country have to however assiduously work on intervention strategies to make the concerned firms respect the human rights and trade union rights of workers and their combinations, in line with international labour conventions and recommendations. This has to be expedited on before many more lives are unavoidably lost due to such condemnable acts as bear on the criminal, that we can see happening all over Africa, and especially in Zambia.

as published in the Global Labour News Issue 001, Oct-Dec, 2010

Trade unions and the informal economy; a critical analysis of informal workers organizing and the building of workers’ power

2011-02-03T10:31:00.000-08:00

Introduction
The proportion of the workforce in formal employment which had never been very significant in Nigeria has further declined in the past three decades, starting from the period of the Bretton Woods Institutions-inspired Structural Adjustment Programme, with consequent expansion of workers within orbits of informal labour and employment relations. This paper considers how informal workers have been and are being organized; situating this within the broader picture of the problems and prospects these pose for envisioning and broadening the capacities of workers in their struggle(s) for better working conditions and a better society.
The informal economy has been dominant in Nigeria since the late 19th century advent of capitalism and introduction of modern work forms in the country. The process of post-traditional urbanization which commenced from the beginning of the 20th century took on added steam in post-colonial Nigeria, particularly from the period of structural adjustment in the mid-1980s, leading to an ever-expanding urban informal economy. The bulk of workers in this vast swat of the country’s economy do however remain largely faceless and voiceless. Despite this, in several ways, informal work relations and social conditions have become major sites of contestations of power, at the micro- and macro- levels. This paper is concerned with examining how different modes of organising and organisation outside formal employment have been and/or could be contributory to this phenomenon and the building of the power of workers as a class in the country.
Representational authority and institutional power are considered as key variables in building workers’ power within social work relations and for negotiating economic (and political) reforms, in the broader economy and polity. Solidarity, binding workers across formal and informal, geographic or (industrial) sectoral boundaries is considered key in conceptualising such combinational power of different organisations of workers as the basis of capacity of workers’ power that could win and defend thorough-going reforms and possibly transformation of the politico-legal structure of the country. The: self-organizing dimensions of informal workers on craft/artisanship basis; (formal sector) trade union organized structures for informal workers organizing and; the more recent organizing of informal workers organizations as a “centre”, are considered as overlapping, partial dimensions of the nexus between organizing and the building of workers’ power within and beyond the informal economy.

Theoretical point of departure
The authoritative Women in Informal Economy Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO) network on its website describes theories on informality as being located in three clusters: dualist; structuralist and; il/legalist. Kate Meagher (2008), a leading scholar on informalization in Nigeria captures these as: traditional; neoliberal and structuralist. The legalist approach of De Soto and the illegalist views best expressed by Maloney, being the dominant neoliberal theories of informality innocuously limit the challenges of the formal sector-informal economy divide to the informal economy’s entrepreneurs’ avoidance of taxation and the red-tape of regulatory processes . This approach and its latent dualist crux would be critiqued as being inadequate, and utopian.
The structuralist theory which this paper utilizes on informality is however to be distinguished from the historical institutionalist structuralism of Kate Meagher (1993; 2005; 2008) for example, which leads to a location of the epicentre of informal economy combinations in extra-workplace social networks. This paper with its focus on organising and empowerment builds on established conceptual interstices across the domains of informality and movement theories, both of which it tries to bridge, with its historicist labour process-based structuralism, drawing from the perspective of Frundt (2005) where “structural theory focuses on class-based movements”. The empowerment of informal economy workers for decent work emerging from the process of organising and forms of organisation is engaged as part of the challenge to the establishment of the socioeconomic status quo by the excluded subaltern producers in informal employment relations.
The paper’s point of departure thus situates the informal economy as being largely constituted by the “industrial reserve army” of the working class and its expansion as emerging from the neoliberal strategy of formal sector “lean and mean” restructuring. Possible generating mechanisms for empowering organisational forms of informal economy workers’ organisations are sought in embedded political opportunity structures rooted in the working class resistance to neoliberal globalization’s attacks and the environmental contingencies which include the ILO Decent Work Agenda and the opening up of policy-formulation space by the state, albeit limitedly, with democratisation.

The concept of “marginality” developed by Quijano, is central to situating producers in the informal economy as workers who are marginal to the technical division of production , but by the same token play a key role in the social reproduction of the capitalist system. Organising informal economy workers thus serves not just to get a set of workers, albeit within the particularly distinguishing character of informality of employment relations, organised. It could amount to a process of safeguarding the improvement of working conditions and wages of workers as a whole, or at the very least contribute to such dynamics especially where and when it is part of a broader organizing drive for building workers organizations across the boundaries of sectors and tiers of work.
Specificities of industry and geography have to be taken into cognisance in analysing the impact of organising types. The historical evolution of workers organizations as part of a totality of the socio-economic development of a society which is influenced by and influences it is of cause central to appreciating why certain form(s) of informal organizational forms might be more predominant than another at particular points in time. The challenge of conventional wisdom which the on-going efforts at forming an “informal workers’ organisation” centre in Nigeria reflects has to be interrogated through the lens of national and global struggles of sections and segments of the working class for decent work and qualitative life. A dialectical assessment of conflicts and consensus, dialogue and confrontation would be instrumental to tracing the historicity of informal sector organising in Nigeria, for subsequent broader work on the subject.
In summation as its conceptual point of departure, using structuralist theory rooted in a historical materialist approach, this paper seeks to unveil the underlying class dynamics within the informal economy in its relation to the broader mechanisms of capitalist social reproduction and how within this, informal economy organisations of workers emerge and struggle for better working conditions and life. Possible propulsion or constraints that the forms of organisation and organising could engender would similarly be interrogated.

The changing world of work, and informalization
The National Development Plans of the 1960s/70s fashioned in the post-War Keynesian/Fordist order during which Import Substitution Strategy was in vogue for developing and less developing countries seeking to lift themselves by the bootstraps with trappings of developmental states saw to appreciable increases in formal sector employment as industrialization was given priority, even if the extent of such was limited.
Typical trade unions expanded, as the primary organs for the defense of workers rights and interests within both the industrial relations system and the broader polity. Neoliberal globalisation, which has, however supplanted this era of class compromise over the last three decades, has been marked by a restructuring of work processes involving the flexibilization of labour. This has resulted in the preponderance of informal employment relations and the expansion of a heterogeneous informal economy with increasing precarity of work and worker insecurity, particularly in the Global South, where it has contributed to a worsening of the crises of development Munck (2002).
The consequent decline in the quantity, quality and meaning of work engendered by this new “great transformation” and its attendant sharpening of inequality in society resulted in several moments of the Polanyian double movement’s second note of concern for safeguarding labour and indeed social cohesion against capital’s rampaging logic of a free market utopia. A first major moment of this was in 1998 – 1999 with the ILO’s Declaration of the Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, and launching of the Decent Work concept the following year Somavia (2007: 5).
The Decent Work concept initiated by the ILO in 1999 somewhat represents concerted efforts at counter-balancing the excessive trans-national power of (footloose) capital. It incorporates 4 strategic objectives: 1) the principles and rights at work; 2) the central focus on job creation as a political mandate; 3) social protection as an ethical mandate of the ILO which should be considered as part of a more complex vision of socio-economic protection, or in other words, the denominated “people’s security”, and; 4) tripartism and social dialogue . The 2002 International Conference’s report on Decent Work and the informal economy identified six key securities the lack or inadequacy of which amounts to decent work deficit, represented a major deepening of the Decent Work concept, particularly with respect to workers in informal labour relations. These are: labour market security; employment security; work security; job security; income security and; representational security . Representational security, being the protection of the collective voice of the worker, is critical to, envisioning the enthronement of the core social democratic objectives of the ILO, as stated above, and having the capacity to pursue it within the context of social dialogue.
At the heart of representational security are combinations: informal economy organisations of workers, representing their interests as workers at national, sub-national and enterprise levels. Concern for how forms of organisation empower workers’ within informal labour relations by strengthening their collective representational capacities, can not be overemphasized. Indeed it could be argued that a major reason for the greater deficits of the other five securities in the informal sector is to be found in the near total lack of the representational security of informal workers within the structures, processes and regimes of labour relations in the country. This undermines not only the power of informal workers and their unions but indeed working class power as a whole, especially with the depletion of the formal sector workforce, particularly those in the secondary sector.
The relationship between the informal economy and the world of work in its largely formal sector conception of the industrial relations system is not a simplistic one of merely the expansion of the former as a result of the restructuring and consequent depletion of the latter. The informal economy itself is being greatly transformed, and while it had always had diverse contours, the process of informalization itself being a key dynamic within the logic of neoliberal globalization, throws up even greater heterogeneity within the informal economy . This situation which is more visible in capitalist development in the periphery of the “globalization” train, though not limited to the “developing world”, has consequences on the range of possible forms of organizing informal workers.
Through a critical analysis of different forms of informal economy workers organisation, continuities and ruptures with categories of “workers” and “trades unions” could as well be distilled; sharpening theoretical conceptualization of the changing structure of the working class in general, in relation to the contemporary technical and social divisions of labour, building on a broad conceptualisation of the “working class” and a wider understanding of class struggles Bieler et al (2008: 1, 6 & 7) which interrogates the tensions between social reproduction and transformation. Possible best practice approaches to organising workers in the informal economy, particularly in Nigeria could thus be envisaged, while noting that these can not be cast in stone, and that these different forms overlap and are intertwined, reflecting the very heterogeneity and complexity of the informal economy. This paper can thus at best, present an introductory challenge towards a more detailed comparative study of such, due to the limitations of space and time, at this juncture.
A rigorous investigation of organisational forms and processes that facilitate or impede the empowerment of workers in informal relations in a developing country like Nigeria, where some three quarters of the population are in the informal economy, would contribute to theory and practices which privilege participatory and emancipatory developmental paths, moving beyond the one-size-fits-all approach that has thus far been dominant in the developmental debate of the (Post-)Washington Consensus periods.

Informality and organizing; a broad overview
It could be argued that there have been two broad waves of literature and praxis around the question of informality and organization. The first commenced in 1971, on the eve of the neoliberal counter-revolution. That year, in India, the Self-Employed Women’s Association branched out of the Textile Labour Association with the initial support of that union and Hart conducted his path-breaking studies for the ILO in Ghana which gave birth to the term “informal sector” as against the earlier traditional versus modern sector paradigm for understanding patterns of economic organisation in developing countries .
Discourse centred on interpreting the “urban informal sector” deepened in the decades of neoliberal globalization as shift to services in the metropoles and worsening under-industrialization at the fringes of the periphery put informality in a position of centrality within the global restructuring of work processes and the international division of labour. The socio-economic phenomenon of informality was severally conceptualised as: an irregular economy, Ferman and Ferman (1973); a subterranean economy, Gutmann (1977) and; an underground economy, Simon and Whitte 1(982). A common denominator of these interpretations was their view of the phenomenon of informality as being temporal, unregulated activities by enterprises on the margins of capitalist development which “would tend to be absorbed by the modern economy”, Beniria and Floro (2003: 3). Rooted in a dualist perspective that saw the challenge informality presented as just the creation of more jobs in the formal sector, concern for forms of informal economy organisation was hardly on the discursive radar.
Contestation with the dominant traditional view cropped up early in the 1980s . McChrohan and Smith (1986) further propositioned the informal economy as an interpretation, laying the basis for a re-conceptualization that would influence the adoption of this formulation which expanded the conception of informality beyond enterprises into the broad gamut of employment relations by the International Conference of Labour Statisticians in 1993. The new view of informality grasped the permanent nature of the phenomenon, realized its multifarious linkages with the formal sector and its own heterogeneity. Chen et al (2004) provide an excellent perspective on the evolution and differentiation of informality conceptions.
The dominance of the new view of informality which accepts its permanence and the seeping out of membership from trade unions grounded in the formal sector into the informal economy served to bring attention to bear on “informalization and the crisis of representation” according to Webster (2007). There have been different approaches propounded on how to address this identified crisis. The thrust of each of these has been largely hinged on the role it ascribes to the (subaltern) producers and service providers in the informal economy within the social relations of production.
Some authors, such as Gibson and Kelley (1994) aver that they are “neither capitalists nor workers but rather constitute a distinct social class”. Others disaggregate the producers into employers, own-account owners and workers while stressing the continuum these fall into as against quantum separations, Chen (op cit), while others assert that the concept of working class does need to be re-conceptualized to include even some self-employed category of producers in the informal economy . All the three perspectives do however seem to be in agreement that informal economy organisation would not only assure informal economy producers some extent of representational security, but would be in the overall collective interest of labour.
There are two broad means of thus organising the informal economy, generally and for our specific concern here, in Nigeria. These include producers in that “sector” being organised by a trade union or alternatively through independent self-organising as expatiated by Pam Sha (2007). Understanding how each of these two approaches could contribute to empowering informal economy producers and the working class and also the constraints they could confront provides a crucial thread for grasping the tensions and possibilities between informal workers organizing and the building of workers’ power.
Sanyal (1991) in stressing informal economy operators’ distrust of governments, parties and organised labour explicitly expresses the view that they should not join traditional unions, but set up their own structures. Pat Horn (2007) however shows that in recent times trade unions have taken up the challenge of organising in the informal economy as a defensive strategy in the face of declining membership. This does seem to be the case with the organising of garment workers by the textile and garment workers’ union in Nigeria. The textile sector that had provided employment for over 350,000 persons in the early 1980s had barely 100,000 wage workers by the late 1990s as Andrae and Beckman (1999: 68 - 69) point out while noting the strong working class identity of those thus thrown into the informal economy from the textile sector. They were to be the initial core of the successes of T&GWU organising in the informal economy.
The auto-repair sub-sector has a rich pedigree of self-organisation, expressing the second main form of organizing in the informal economy. In Nigeria, “the first evidence of a trade union was the Mechanics’ Mutual Aid Provident and Mutual Improvement Association, formed in July 1883” . The current incarnation of the mechanics union is the National Automobile Technicians’ Association (NATA). It was formed in 1962 and actually was considered as any other trade union until the re-structuring of unions, supposedly along industrial lines by the Federal Military Government in 1976-78 . It is now the driving force behind the newly established Federation of Informal Workers’ organizations of Nigeria .

Workers’ power, political opportunity and the organizing model
Men and women, as individuals and more especially as social classes and groups make history, but do so within contextual circumstances which are not of their making and which constrain or engender the forms and contents of their actions. All social actors, in being able to control or influence their system within which they act, do have some form or extent of power. Power is thus relational as well as associative with regards to social actors. The concern of this section, leading to the next is to identify linkages between workers’ power, conjunctures and opportunity structures and the forms of organization and organizing of informal workers in Nigeria. In doing this, we project to consider challenges that have to be prefigured in furthering the building of workers’ power through the deepening of informal workers organizing
There is today such sharp focus on informality that informal workers organizing would seem something novel. On the contrary as pointed out earlier with reference to Fashoyin, indeed, the first trade union in Nigeria, the Mechanics’ Mutual Aid Provident and Mutual Improvement Association, was a combination of workers in what we now describe as the informal economy. Similarly, the carpenters strike action was one of the earliest in the country. Further, as also pointed out earlier, the National Automobile Technicians association was formed in 1962, a decade and a half before the restructuring that gave birth to most of the present trade unions in the country. Several associations of artisans and other workers in the informal economy have as well been built in the last half a century of the country’s Independence, but mainly on localized basis. The bold step of a federative form of informal workers organization does however represent a new organizational form, which overlaps with the continued myriad of forms such as: the localized networks of informal workers/small-scale owners associations; informal workers organizing by the formal trade unions; pan-national independent informal workers association and; the affiliation of informal workers associations within trade union federations.
There are both practical-political and theoretical-ideological bases for this seeming newness of informal economy organizing. On one hand the impact of the re-ordering of work relations and its consequences on formal sector unionism which now rises to these challenges on the one has led the trade union movement back to its social movement organizing beginnings, albeit as with all new beginnings, with noticeable differences from its humble beginnings being in this case the trade clubs of the late 18th/early 19th centuries. In this case, such new elements of the return to the organizing model is the prime place it accords to mobilizing not just the trade union movement and the working class but diverse civil society organisations at local, national and transnational levels. On the other hand the overcoming of the ideological blinkers of “modern” versus “traditional” sectors with the theorization of the “informal sector” starting, so to speak, with Hart’s 1973 essay. This has allowed for more in-depth engagement with the characterization of the informal economy producers, as well as of informality within the formal sector.
The application of social movement theory has been focussed more on new social movements, situated in the broader civil society and which are more political than economic. While combinations of workers, no matter how non-partisan or strictly economistic are, or do have an element of the political in them at least in curtailing the unilateral power of employers or some institutions/authorities of the state or the other, unions, be they in the formal sector or informal economy are primarily economic concerned fundamentally with improving the welfare of their members in the production and distribution processes. The new social movements such as those for; environmental justice, gender equality and women rights, civil liberties and pro-democracy are concerned more with the strictly political sphere. The spotlight of analysis bridging organizational studies (OS) and social movement theory (SMT) has thus focussed more on, as McAdam and Scott (2005: 5) put it: “the importance of organizations and the organizing process” in relation to informal networks of activists.
This does leave gaps in the SMT in relation to furthering the development of workers power in general, which Frundt (Op cit) for example tries to bridge in application to transnational workers activism. Its application to the informal economy is however apt and needs more theoretical and empirical studies towards properly situating how organization and organizing of informal workers contributes to the forging of greater workers’ power.
A key element of the application of SMT to the forms of informal workers organization and the building of workers’ power can be gleaned from how changes in the ideology and institutional structures by such (more) powerful political actors as the state creates political opportunity structures for the emergence or development of “insurgent” platforms .
The seizing of these political opportunity structures and conjunctures by organizers of and in the informal economy has been greatly influenced by the presence of pre-existing political and organizational infrastructure even, where they have assumed new organizational forms. Where a synergetic forging of collective action frames with such infrastructure which in the case of Nigeria includes the efforts of some formal sector trade unions and the forging of labour-civil society networks, in organizing the informal economy producers, workers’ power is enhanced within society as a whole, to the benefit of working people in both the formal and informal sectors of economic activities.

Informal workers organization and organizing trends in Nigeria
The trajectory of the development of dependent capitalism in Nigeria made it inevitable that the earliest evidence of trade unionism would appear within informal labour relations and then the public service, before the formal industrial sector. Industrializing the country was never the intent of the British overlords after the cessation of the slave trade. The forms which legitimate trade then took with minimal administrative presence could not but have seen to the blossoming of artisans before a proletarian working class was born. Resistance being born by exploitation, combinations such as those of the mechanics, casual workers in the Public Works Department, carpenters on temporary or more permanent basis became the nucleus of the earliest expressions of trade unionism in the country.
The recognition of the Nigeria Civil Service Union, established in 1912, as the first trade union, reflects the bias against considering combinations of non-formal workers as trade unions. Such bias is entrenched by the conception of the “industrial relations system” being composed of 3-actors i.e. the state; workers/trade unions and; employers/employers association, which John Dunlop’s ground-breaking work instituted. Related to this is the prime place of “collective bargaining” as a, if not the, pivotal element within industrial relations practice, particularly as it relates to social dialogue. In the informal economy, where the worker might as well be the owner or an apprentice, how does collective bargaining take place? Can “consultation” be anything but a poor substitute to “collective agreements”? Between which actors could collective bargaining be deemed possible? How do “workers” in the informal economy and their organizations fit into the Dunlopian 3-actors characterization of the industrial relations system without clear cut employers and employers’ associations? Ultimately this leads back to questionable assertion of Gibson and Kelly (Op cit) that producers in the informal economy are “neither capitalists nor workers but rather constitute a distinct social class”.
It is instructive though that in the period between the Trade Union Ordinance and the 1976-78 restructuring of trade unions, a number of “house unions” were actually organizations of producers in the informal economy or casual/daily paid workers in informal labour relations. A good example once again is NATA which was affiliated to the Nigeria Trade Unions Council.
This was possible due to a number of reasons. But undoubtedly one of this was the political opportunity established with the Trade Union ordinance’s baseline of five members for the formation of a trade union and the independence of workers themselves to form their unions. The restructuring by the military in the mid-70s robbed associative workers outside the formal sector (and indeed some within it) of being deemed as being unions. Interestingly though, road transport workers, the bulk of who work within informal labour relations were however constituted as one of the unions established by the instrument of DN 22 of 1977. The political significance of road transport workers, as aptly demonstrated from the 2nd Republic, and the strategic place of road transport might explain this, especially when the incorporationist intent of the restructuring was had been made clear with the new labour policy that had preceded it.

Informal workers organizations from the 1980s took a number of forms (some continuous with forms before this period); all geared more at mutual-aid purposes than “collective bargaining”. These organizations particularly those of artisans had as their backbone, the guild system. Apprentices after tutelage would “graduate” or gain their “freedom” and then join the association properly, by first presenting gifts to the “master” and the association, after which s/he then starts attending the (usually) monthly meetings.
These associations set standards of workmanship and prices for their services. Examples are those of barbers, beauticians, tailors, automobile technicians and air conditioner /refrigerator technicians. The associations which are often locally based with networks between several locals, but which hardly extend beyond the state level, would wade in when a member has work-related problems with the authorities or a customer. Monies from the collective till could be used for such purpose. A number also operated cooperatives of some sort or the other, such that a member in need of money for work-related (and even possibly more personal) purposes could be borrowed from the association’s purse, possibly with an interest rate which is however low.
It could be argued and rightly so, that, such members saw themselves not as workers, but as (aspiring) property owners or entrepreneurs. Not surprisingly, during the reforms of the period of the Structural Adjustment Programme which the General Ibrahim Babangida regime introduced in 1986, at local levels, a lot of these associations collaborated with such institutions as the Peoples Bank towards winning credit access for members. The intent of the state was to build networks of “small and medium scale” entrepreneurs and “industrialists” and not to constitute informal economy producers as working class combinations.
SAP however laid the basis for endogenous challenge of the forms and directions of informal workers organizations. With the avalanche of retrenchments in the formal sector, workers hitherto within formal labour relations were thrown into the informal economy, in their hundreds of thousands. Nmadu (2008) reports that, in the textile industry alone, the workforce declined from 350,000 in the early 1980s to 100,000 by 1995 and by 2004 was a mere 50,000.
Amongst the new entrants to the informal economy were workers who had been active as members of the union while in formal employment. Andrae and Beckman (Op cit) for example note that such activists from the National Union of Textiles Garment and Tailoring Workers of Nigeria constituted an important element in the organizing of informal economy tailors by the union. Organizational bridges built by formal sector trade unions with the informal economy thus emerged as a new form of informal economy workers combination.
In a few instances, the formal sector union actually constitutes such informal economy union or does at least urge its establishment. A possible example of this is that of the National Union of Construction Civil Engineering Furniture and Wood Workers. In Ondo state, it played a key role in the establishment of masons and carpenters associations which have associative relations with it. Similar success was made in Warri by the union. NUCCEFWW occupies a particularly important place in understanding informal-formal workers relations. With the nature of the construction industry’s work being seasonal, its membership strength cannot but continually fluctuate, with declines during the rainy season when construction work go on at a much slower pace. In helping some of its members to establish informal workers organizations, it does help them to be able to tide through the rainy day as well.
The case of the textile industry earlier pointed out is slightly different. Its informal economy organizations comprise workers who had been in the industry but who do not return at any season as they have been retrenched and as well a large proportion of tailors who have never been in formal employment. These organizations of tailors are in a sense independent as well as localized. They are however at the same time units of the union, participating actively within structures of the union in their zones. The most successful efforts of the union have been in its Aba zone.
In both unions, the members in these organizations pay to the association, which pays a flat rate on behalf of each member to the union. Subscription is thus not as with the check-off system which in which a set percentage of each members remuneration is paid as subscription dues, based on the non-wage system predominant amongst them .
The Agricultural and Allied Employees’ Union of Nigeria is also a union with much opportunity for establishing such bridge organizations. It also has passed resolutions to the effect of doing this.
The expansion of informal work relations within the formal sector has led to the expansion of yet another form of organizing and organization of informal workers, represented most aptly by the Fitters Union and the Welders Association, both of which are relatively new combinations operating in both the informal economy and within the formal sector. The two unions affiliated directly to the Nigeria Labour Congress in 2007. They are also both affiliates of the newly formed FIWON. While they started as associations of owner-workers in the informal economy, the sub-contracting of the work their members do, particularly within the oil and gas industry has led to their having footholds in such formal sector establishments. The Welders Association has also challenged the management of the Calabar Free Trade Zone for the right to organize welders’ there, leading at a point in time to its activists arrest at the EPZ. While both aspire to being national unions though, there strongholds are still limited to the South-South parts of the country. There affiliation with NLC does however represent the undoing of the deed of DN 22 and 21’s strait-jacketing which the Trade Union (Amendment) Act 2005, unwittingly did. This reflects once again the creation of political opportunity for a change in the collective action frame of the working class, with institutional changes wrought by the state.
NATA is probably the most successful informal economy organization in the sense of being independent and having a pan-national membership base. It had intended to affiliate to the NLC, but for a number of reasons this did not work out. It then became the rallying force for the establishment of FIWON. The association is organized around a national secretariat based in Lagos with councils in all states of the federation and branches of these spread across the different localities with mechanics workshops. Its structures have been very active in NLC/TUC/LASCO struggles and in some states of the federation have been much more involved in building the Labour Party than NLC structures have been.

Problems and prospects for informal workers organizing and the building of workers’ power
The various forms of informal workers organization described as trends above, overlap in the present scenario in Nigeria. The question to ask at this point in the paper would not be which is most apt. The heterogeneity of both the informal economy and the evolution of organizing modes in different sections of the informal economy as a whole, make such a mute concern. The challenge one might say, is how the different rivulets of organizations could through organizing in the informal economy and between the informal economy and the formal sector, be brought together into an ocean of workers’ power. Such would entail amongst other things being able to win greater representative security for workers in the informal economy and pushing the decent work agenda within it as well.
FIWON would play a central role in this. A problem of representational security does however face FIWON itself. Since by the labour laws of the country its members can not be considered as constituting trade unions, it can not be registered by the Registrar of Trade Unions. The Corporate Affairs Commission which it has approached for registration has placed obstacles before it, including that of having to change its name. Intense organizing which place the issue of the welfare of the members of its affiliates at the front burner of public discourse would however to a great extent, with time, lead to overcoming such challenges and winning a voice for informal workers.

The Nigeria Labour Congress and its affiliate unions would as well have to redefine their relations with workers in the informal sector from a perspective that takes organizing the informal economy producers from a defensive point of view. A major step in this direction would be the bringing of FIWON as a body into the Labour Civil Society Coalition (LASCO) which is presently organized as a tripod comprising Nigeria Labour Congress, Trade Union Congress and the Joint Action Forum representing radical civil society.
The forging of international relations with similar informal economy organizations in other nations and those that are transnational such as Streetnet International would be of immense value for meeting the ends of building workers power, in organizing informal economy workers.
The contentious nature of employment relations which confront informal economy workers is a major problem that would have to be frontally challenged. Limiting the form of inter-collective relations which informal economy workers have with those in power to consultation might deepen representational security and in a sense consolidate workers power. It however still leaves it relatively hollow and with vast residual powers outside the hands of the workers concerned.
Christine Bonner (2006) drawing from experiences in various countries across Africa, Asia and Latin America presents a broad spectrum of how this major challenge could be confronted. These include: using labour law procedures; applying the law of natural justice; negotiating “private” dispute procedures; adapting common procedures for informal workers &; using the law to resolve disputes. Creative use of these means could greatly alter the forms and dynamics of labour relations in the informal economy, further the expansion of the decent work and greatly deepen workers power in the country. Through these social dialogue would be fostered and qualitative democratization promoted in the country.

Conclusion
The paper has tried to examine the relations between trade unions and the organizing of informal workers, utilizing an historical-structuralist theoretical framework, situated within the radical school of industrial relations. In doing this it considers how different forms of informal workers organization have emerged and their overlapping intersections. A broad overview of informality and organizing was presented towards putting these in proper perspectives. It then attempted to engage with possible problems and prospects in the pathways of efforts at organizing marginal workers within informal employment relations in the country.
In summation, it has to be stressed that in as much as informality does seem to have come to stay thus requiring its being of both theoretical and practical significance for labour and employment relations scholars and practitioners concerned with building workers power; workers in the informal economy can not play the central role. The mainstream base of working class power, the industrial proletariat, or workers within the core activities sphere of the formal sector, however, can not singularly wield workers’ power (particularly in peripheral countries like Nigeria) without informal workers, in the larger society. And even within the workplace, the industrial proletariat’s associative power would be greatly hampered, without organizing and building strong organizations of workers within informal labour and employment relations.
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Beyond the bomb blast and its melodramatic aftermath

2010-10-08T11:19:00.000-07:00

The October 1, bomb blast as Nigeria marked the golden jubilee of its flag independence seems to have thrown up more questions than answers. A series of statements had been issued before the blast signed by Jomo Gbomo, a pseudonym that had been used on several occasions as the voice of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, MEND. And subsequent to the bombing, MEND claimed responsibility.

The President of the Federation, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan immediately stated that the bombing was not orchestrated by MEND, while the Federal Government sought the prosecution of Mr. Henry Okah, who had been touted as the leader of MEND two years back, apprehended, tried and then released as part of a deal which granted general amnesty to “militants” in the Niger Delta, last year. Mr. Okah would later claim in an interview with Al-Jazeera that he had been asked by an associate of President Goodluck to retract the claim of MEND as being behind the bombing and rather lay the blame at the doorstep of elements from “the North” as a way of bolstering Goodluck’s chances at the forthcoming polls.

The plot however thickens still. Chief Raymond Dokpesi, owner of the highly influential AIT television and Raypower radio, who is Director-General of General Ibrahim Babangida’s campaign team for the presidential elections, has been arrested in the wake of the bomb blast. Adamu Chiroma and some 14 others speaking for “Northern Political Leaders” have also gone ahead to demand President Goodluck’s resignation on the strength of Henry Okah’s claims while several quarters allege that the Al-Jazeera interview was itself faked as Okah was in custody in South Africa and did not have the latitude to grant such interview. Other presidential aspirants from the North, including Governor Bukola Saraki, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and General Aliyu Gusau have however latched on to the reported Okah interview to insist on the complicity of Mr. President in the bomb blast.

Interestingly, several “ex-militants” from the Niger Delta including the likes of Chief Government Ekpemolo, a.k.a. Tompolo; Ateke Tom; Farah Dagogo; Alhaji Mujaheed Dokubo-Asari; Shoot at Sight; Busta Rhymes and Egberipapa, have risen up to condemn the bomb blast and implicitly stand on the side of President Goodluck to say that “the Niger Delta people are not in support of it”.

Meanwhile, “Cynthia Whyte” a pseudonym also identified over time as a voice the Joint Revolutionary Council, of militant groups in the Niger Delta (the largest network of which is MEND), has also spoken up on behalf of the later group that General Ibrahim Babangida had contacted it to carry out the bombing. “She” claims that after the JRC had refused to do that, Henry Okah was contacted and his group, a faction of MEND, carried out the dastardly act on behalf of General Babangida, with the intent of assassinating President Goodluck Jonathan, and other top brass of his administration.

The throwing of brickbats on this matter has gone on in tandem with a reduction of the criticism of the bomb blast to one of security breaches, by many Nigerians. The abominable act has been rightly condemned, albeit, for the wrong reasons. Coming up on the heels of the abduction of 15 primary school pupils in Aba and the turning of Aba and similar cities in the South East and South South regions into ghost towns due to the prevalence of kidnappings for ransom money, the break down of law and order and the collapse of the security of lives and property have been the main whipping boy of popular forces on the crisis at hand.

The matters that the bombing is still unveiling go far beyond that of insecurity.

On one hand we see clearly the dangerous limitations of armed struggle as the pathway for a peoples’ emancipation. The Niger Delta peoples, particularly the toiling workers, peasants, fishermen and women whose daily lives have become a nightmare despite, indeed because of the wealth their land holds, have been traumatized in the half a century of Nigeria’s flag independence. There have been several flashpoints of resistance to this oppressive order in the Delta of the Niger. From Isaac Adaka Boro’s 12 day revolution in February 1966, to the non-violent struggle of the Ogoni’s championed by the slain poet, Ken Saro-Wiwa, the pathway to the December 11, 1998 beginnings of the present fires in the Niger Delta have been strewn with anguish, blood, gallantry, and low-intensity warfare. MEND grew out of this miasma of oppression and resistance.

Where a force over and above the people, even one that claims to be, or even is indeed progressive, takes up the “vanguardist” gauntlet of armed struggle for the people, it reserves the right to cross over to the oppressors in the guise of negotiations over paid general amnesties or even worse still to itself become an oppressive force over the same people. Where it becomes successful it furthers the dampening of the confidence of the masses in their own abilities for self-emancipation, and shatters possibilities of mass-democratic organization and education for liberation. Besides, the nature of the urban guerrilla’s life is one that paves the way for splits and still more splits. MEND has of necessity existed as a network of cells and groups of guerrilla fighters otherwise dubbed “militants”. That there are cracks in the broad MEND framework on how to continue engagement is not new. While some of its forces took the offer of amnesty, some of its elements had on January 30 called off the unilateral ceasefire it had declared on October 28, 2009. Three months after that, it had struck in Warri, in much the same way as what might now be turning out to be its bombing hallmark: two near-simultaneous bomb blasts from parked cars.

The present exchanges of claims and counter-claims and charges of complicity only show how deep the cleavages have gone. The possible danger this portends even for the Niger Delta could be gleaned in the period that the militant “cults” held Port Harcourt hostage a few years back, turning the boisterous city with a robust night life into a ghost town from 6pm. A worse picture is that of the degeneration of Somalia into a state of statelessness with different patches of its jigsaw mosaic governed by different warlords.

In the immediate instance as well, the opening up of reaction which the use of vanguardist terror breeds can be seen in the ban on all forms of public demonstrations by the Federal Capital Territory Police Command. The offensive use of terror by an armed movement separated from the masses confounds both the state and the oppressed mass, legitimating the sharpening of the use of the state’s coercive forces against progressive civil society, as a whole.

On the other hand the recent development show the worrisome readiness of different sections of the ruling elite to play the politics of stroking away the fiddle while the nation burns; indeed a dastardly readiness to stoke those very fires. We might never really know where the truth lies, it is however not impossible from the recriminations being thrown here and there that some sections of the ruling elites had a hand in the bomb blast. That this form of “politics” could become a key move on the chessboard of the power play towards the 2011 elections is a pointer at the desperation with which the elections proper would be fought. We might be in for much more than “do or die” general elections in a few months from now.

It is obvious enough that for the various factions of the ruling class in Nigeria who are sharpening their knives for the kill of the 2011 elections, neither nation nor ethnic group really matters their creed is one and the same despite all pretensions: seizing power by any possible means. The nation could burn for all they care and people die; the prize is Aso rock, and more importantly; the access to mind-boggling resources that Aso Rock guarantees. They will play the ethno-regional card and invoke the devil of terror itself to stoke up the panic frenzy with which their desperate hunger for power could be quenched in the haze of uncertainty, hopelessness and a mass disoriented by disillusionment.

The challenge now for working people in Nigeria is the way forward. It can not be one of merely limiting our demands to security issues, nor can it come out of simply condemning the blast and those behind it. Definitely these are steps to be taken, but to limit ourselves to such would be to play into the hands of the very forces of retrogression that have kept our country in the continued state of underdevelopingness that has marked the better part of our 50years of formal independence. The challenge is for us to seize our fate in our hands.

That the country has sunken to these depths of depravation is a reflection of both the visionless ineptitude of its rulers and the bewildered discontentment of the masses. It points at our being at crossroads in the crises-ridden annals of Nigeria.

The cry of enough is enough should ring true for electoral malfeasance. It must as well ring true for the decadent military and civil rule of a handful who have fed fat on the wealth of the land while the masses starve and pine away. Elections in 2011 without the fundamental restructuring of the economy and body polity of Nigeria might just be a prolongation of the evil day. This is the time for a Sovereign National Conference of the working people across the length and breadth of Nigeria. The pathway to this social, as against mere electoral, transition would be through mass mobilization of the masses by the labour movement and radical civil society. Nigeria’s toiling masses must be awakened to the challenge of our self-emancipation from the shackles of exploitation and oppression which have been our lot for 50 years and indeed more. This is the time for us to rethink beyond the bomb blast, reflect beyond the macabre musical chairs of recrimination and bloody elites-politicking. This is the time for us to act and act with fervour and the determination of building another possible Nigeria and indeed winning a new world that will stamp out want and terror, oppression and marginalization.

Baba Aye, General Secretary of the Socialist Workers’ Movement is Deputy National Secretary of the Labour Party

From the Local to the Global Arena; the Informal Worker Question

2010-09-01T01:43:00.000-07:00

Introduction
The topic chosen as the theme of this historic Conference is very significant. It shows the growing concern of thinkers and practitioners with the workers in the informal economy and it shows that this situation is something that cuts across both the national and global arenas. It also points towards the fact that a lot of things remain unresolved about understanding the informal economy, particularly the working class component in it, with the phrase; “the informal worker question”.

What I will try to so with this paper is to put in perspective the following: different views on what the informal sector is; some insights into how workers in the informal sector have been/are being organised locally and globally’ policy challenges in addressing the informal worker question for government and other stakeholders; possible challenges for informal workers’ organisations and particularly the emerging Federation of Informal Workers’ Organisations of Nigeria (FIWON).

It is important to point out a few things here. Probably the most important is that this is not an academic paper. It is geared towards equipping informal workers with views and perspectives, while realizing that the greatest teacher of any worker might be real life. This however is not to say that this paper will not be concerned with theory. On one hand, I do think that to believe that informal workers or indeed any average worker for that matter can not understand theoretical issues is to look down on people, many of whom have deeper intelligence than we intellectuals who often argue that we need not include “theory” in our presentations, but just dwell on the “practical” tasks. The challenge rather in my own view is how we can break down the heavy jargons of theory into more digestible building bricks. On the other hand, the emancipation of the working class, across the formal and informal sectors division, can only be done by the workers themselves. If this is so, workers must be equipped with the deepest tools of thinking arranged in the simplest manner possible and then we will see that really, even a cook can run a state.

We shall however not limit ourselves to theory; indeed theory and practice are usually intertwined. The main theoretical section here will be the first one. We shall then look deeply at practical issues towards addressing the informal worker question.

Understanding the informal economy
The term “informal sector” or “informal economy”, gives us the idea immediately that there is a “formal sector” or “formal economy”. But, what is the dividing line and how did this come to be? Some people have argued that there has always been informal sector and that the form of production before the modern form of industrial production started was an informal economy. The matter might however not be as simple as that.

In the period before the industrial revolution started in England over two hundred years ago, there were various ways in which human beings went about organising the production of their basic needs. The most predominant one for a long time was what is usually called “feudalism”. This simply put was a society in which the dominant property in the process of production was land. There were the landowners who were lords, barons, earls, etc, all of which were titles for chiefs, called the nobility and kings. Then there were those that farmed these lands and paid tribute in the form of a good part of their produce to the landlords. These were known then as serfs.

There were also artisans in the towns in this period in the England and the rest of Europe. It is not our intention here to go into the history of that period. What we are concerned with is that virtually all forms of production then were “informal”. But until a formal sector was established in the factories and mines through the industrial revolution, where employers who workers without any property entered into contracts with capitalist who owned the factories, mines and machineries for working in these workplaces entered into formal contract, we could not talk of an informal sector, in the true sense of the word. What we had then was the division between the traditional sector and the modern, industrial sector.

The informal sector had actually existed from the very beginning of industrialization which created the modern, formal sector. The factories, mines and other workplaces had never been able to provide employment for the large number of people who trooped regularly from the villages in search of work in the cities. Slums and ghettos where thousands of workers and unemployed men and women lived had long been the sites of survivalist economic activities by these people which included a broad range of what is now characterized as the informal sector and even crime.

Informal work relations however existed even within the formal sector and dominated it, at this early period. All early workers were practically informal workers, even within formal enterprises. They had to wage intense struggles to become formal workers with recognition and rights before the law, by forming unions which themselves were initially illegal.

As workers in Europe formed unions, and trade union centres, with which they fought successfully for improvements in the working and living conditions; such social safety nets as unemployment benefit, employment exchange centres, universal access to healthcare and education all served to make the informal economy become more and more invisible in Western countries, especially as industrialization expanded and almost full employment was won in those countries, from the period after World War II to the late 1960s, known as the “Golden Age” of capitalism.

There have been two broad waves of deep discussions and practice around the informal worker question and organisation. The first commenced in 1971, just before the neoliberal attacks against working people and the popular sectors which has lasted till today, began. That year the Self-Employed Women’s Association branched out of the Textile Labour Association with the initial support of that union . That same year, Hart conducted some studies for the ILO in Ghana which gave birth to the term “informal sector” by showing that there were forms of employment and income opportunities that were not part of the formal sector but which also could not be considered as part of a traditional economy.

Several thinkers and policy-makers gave deep thought to trying to understand and interpret this “urban informal sector”, particularly over the last thirty years in which neoliberal globalization has led to drastic constriction of the formal sector in most countries and the extensive expansion of informal work relations. Most of the earlier academics who addressed the matter saw informality as something in passing, which was “invisible”. They described it as: an irregular economy ; a subterranean economy; an underground economy . A common feature of all these interpretations is their view of the informal economy as being, unregulated activities by enterprises on the margins of capitalist development which “would tend to be absorbed by the modern economy” .

This line of thinking is described as “dualist”. This is to say it sees the relationship between the formal and informal sectors as two opposites in which the more modern formal sector will eventually swallow the informal economy.

Major disagreements with the dominant traditional view emerged early in the 1980s . McChrohan and Smith (1986) further propositioned the informal economy as an interpretation, laying the basis for a rethinking which would influence the adoption of this perspective and the consequent expansion of the conception of informality beyond enterprises into the broad scope of employment relations by the International Conference of Labour Statisticians in 1993. The new view of informality grasped the permanent nature of the phenomenon, realized its many and diverse linkages with the formal sector and its own heterogeneity or broad mixture of types.

The rigorous analyses which were done with the new view of work informality which accepts the permanence of the urban informal sector and the loss of membership by trade unions grounded in the formal sector into the informal economy, due to restructuring and downsizing, served to bring attention to bear on “informalization and the crisis of representation” . This in the simplest term is about how the largest number of workers, particularly in developing countries, being in the informal economy, have little or no voice and power because of their lack of representation at the workplace, and in the broader society.

Some of the features of the “crisis of representation” of the urban informal sector relate to the understanding of the components of what comprise the informal economy. There are those who believe that producers in the informal economy are “neither capitalists nor workers but rather constitute a distinct social class” . Some as well stress the illegal dimensions of the informal economy noting the difficulty of legal voice for what they consider as an illegal sphere of economic activities.

The informal economy is does however cover a broad spectrum of class positions, including employers, self-employed/own-account workers, wage workers and even outsourced wage workers in the modern industrial economy. Martha Chen in figure 1 below puts this graphically.

Fig 1
Source: Chen, M. 2003

We thus see that there are workers as well as employers and the self-employed in the informal economy. Some other thinkers like Devan Pillay (2008) for example argue that even many self-employed persons in the informal economy could be categorized as workers. This is due not just to their low wages but equally due to their relationship in the broader society to the bug capitalists.

We might avoid going into the details of the correctness of this position for now due to space and time. It is however important to observe that a major challenge that the typical working class faces, particularly in societies like Nigeria where it is a relatively small proportion of the population, is how to bring consistently give leadership to and bring the bulk of working people to recognize its world view and standpoint, as being in the interests of their social and economic emancipation. Thus, organising the employers and self-employed persons within the informal economy under the banner of informal workers is a major step forward in building progressive working class politics that promotes a united front of struggle for the transformation of Nigeria into a better society.

The Urban Informal Sector: people’s practice and government policies
Human beings as individuals and groups in carrying out daily activities for their continued survival enter into economic practices involving relations with other persons and groups of persons. These practices lead us to thinking resulting in the formulation of social and economic theories. But theory also now affects our practices. The way we go about activities in the economic and other spheres of our human existence is influenced by one theory or the other even when we are not consciously aware of this. Governments also carry out practices which are determined by some theory or the other and which defend the interests of groups or classes of people that control that government or the state as a whole. The practices of governments are carried out through policies.

In this section we shall look at how the informal economic practices of working people have evolved in Nigeria over the years and the policy approaches that the Nigerian state through its different governments have brought to bear on the urban informal economy. We try to show the linkages in the two and how they relate to the development of theory and practice of informalization world-wide. Our main focus is on the urban informal sector, not because we consider the rural informal sector as being unimportant. On the contrary this is because the informal economy in the urban areas gives us a sharper picture of the non-agricultural informal economy. Since with the poor level of mechanization of our agricultural sector, a great deal of agricultural practices is subsistent, with informal family relations being probably dominant, it could blur the more impersonal dimensions of informality in the heart of the cities and towns.

The rate of urbanization in Nigeria is one of the highest in the world. At 5.5% per annum, the rate of expansion of the urban areas is almost double the rate of the country’s population growth as a whole, which is 2.9%. The proportion of Nigerians living in the cities and towns increased from 39% in 1985 to 43.5% at the beginning of the 21st Century. It is presently about half of the entire country’s population and is expected to be over two thirds within the next ten years . The number of urban centres in the country itself has expanded with the creation of new states and local governments from the three regions structure we had at independence.
Today, there are over seven cities with over 1million residents and more than five thousand towns which have between 20,000 and 500,000 residents. Due to the poor records keeping culture in Nigeria in general and the informal nature of the sector itself, information on the scope, structure and dimensions of the informal economy are inadequate. Generally though, it is estimated that while the proportion of the urban workforce in the informal economy immediately after independence in the 1960s was about 25%, it is today between 50% and 65%.

The history of development of the urban informal sector in Nigeria is a long one. There were cities in what later became know as Nigeria even before the arrival of the British colonialists. These included; Kano, Ile-Ife, Arochukwu, Zaria, Ibadan, Calabar, Abeokuta, Sokoto, Benin, Maiduguri, Oyo and Eko . These were seats of political power and religious authority, centres of trade and military bases. Crafts developed in these old urban areas like pottery and blacksmithing, carving and bronze-smelting. These flourished with agriculture and would make them sites of the new informal economy as the modern formal sector took its roots in their communities, re-ordering the lives of the peoples of these lands into the singular overall order of the a rudimentary capitalist economy. In these cities, we note extensive layers of informality, particularly in the crafts. Some of these are part of the tourism trade (such as in pottery, bronze materials and beads), and others part of the newer forms of the informal economy.

In general though, the spread of the urban informal sector could be traced to the growth and development of the early capitalist incursions of the British colonialists. As the railways and ports through which they siphoned off our mineral and agricultural resources grew and with these road networks and administrative centres where the colonial government’s resident and district officers ruled from; cities and towns grew along the ports, railway and road terminuses and administrative centres. In these cities and towns, wage labour took shape with clerks, potters, conductors, drivers, locomotive technicians on the pay roll of the colonial state and companies such as the Royal Niger Company and later the United African Company (UAC), PZ, Leventis Mandillas, Chellarams, etc.

The earliest informal economy activities in these cities and towns were the petty traders and small shop keepers who would sell foodstuffs, beers, cigarettes and other commodities to the workers in these firms, often on credit to collect payment at the end of the month when the workers got their wages.

The British did not favour this. They never conceived of cities as sites for industrialization. Indeed they never saw a need for the industrialization of the colony which they sought to bleed for their own country’s development. They were not concerned with jobs creation, seeing the employment of “natives” as being at best a necessary evil. Housing for these native wage workers was never planned. Housing was actually a tool for segregation with the Government Reserved Areas (GRAs) meant for the expatriate Europeans and at best a few cooks and gardeners in the boys’ quarters. For the Informal worker and the wage worker alike, home was in the slums around the mines and towns.

Independence came on October 1, 1960 and with it came hope for the millions of working people in the formal sector and urban informal economy, the rural farmer and the idealist youth. There however seemed to be some basis for such hope initially, even if such was slight. The earlier attempts at pursuing Import Substitution Industrialization as stated in the first two National Development Plans of 1962 – 1968 & 1970 – 1974, saw to an increase in the number and proportion of workers in formal employment.

In the 1960s and early 1970s, the informal economy was not perceived as a distinct sector by the Nigerian state. On one hand, it had the dualist view that a large number of those in informal work relations would be absorbed into the modern economy with its envisioned industrialization project. On the other hand it categorized some informal activities as being traditional craftsmanship or petty trading while some others it saw as being small-scale enterprises which could be considered as micro-units within the formal sector. However, many more Nigerians kept flocking in from the villages to the cities in search of better lives, compounding the problems of informality still.

In the mid-1970s, the government set up some bodies to address the informality question by way of increasing the level of productivity of activities in the informal economy. The two major ones where: the small Industrial Development Centres (IDCs) in several cities and; the Small-Scale Industry Credit Scheme (SSICS) which was meant to provide micro-credit and technical expertise to small-scale entrepreneurs. These were part of the drive at indigenization which the Gowon and later Muhammad/Obasanjo regimes pursued.

There was however little protection for the small-scale entrepreneurs against the influx of cheaper goods imported by foreign multinational companies and even larger, so-called indigenous firms. The consequence of this was that very little production took place in the informal economy. Informal sector practice was largely restricted to buying and selling, provision of services and transportation. The informal economy remained not just a means of survival for informal workers but as well the avenue for formal wage-workers to survive as they could buy cheap quality and lower-priced goods and services, often on credit from the petty trade, barbers, shoe shiners, etc on the streets.

The lives of workers in both the formal and informal sectors took a turn for the worse in the 1980s. The freeze on workers wages while the prices of commodities rose through the rooftops led to increased poverty. The government started selling “essential commodities” like foodstuffs such as imported rice which the retail seller in the informal sector used to supply workers. Many government functionaries like Umaru Dikko and Adisa Akinloye became billionaires overnight while workers in the formal and informal sectors alike grew closer to starvation and penury.

Matter got only got worse, particularly for the urban informal sector when the Shehu Shagari-led 2nd Republic administration was overthrown on December 31, 1983 by the Buhari/Idiagbon-led junta. Its War Against Indiscipline greatly targeted the urban informal sector. Kiosks where pulled down, shantytowns where many informal economy operators lived were destroyed and hawkers were continually harassed. Yet, no significant improvement in the lives of the citizens or economic development as a whole was recorded.

In 1985, when the Ibrahim Badamis Babangida junta came to power, many heaved sighs of relief. On the face of it, the IBB administration with the Structural Adjustment Programme it adopted from the IMF despite Nigerians rejection of IMF and its conditionalities seemed to have concern for the development of the informal economy. What with all the talk about building self-employment and the consequent retrenchment of tens of thousands of workers in the informal economy, it seemed that the urban informal sector would receive the attention it deserved. This was however not to be the real case despite the establishment of structures that on the face of it seemed geared to empower self-employed persons.

There were three basic ways that SAP affected the informal economy negatively. First, the costs of commodities that informal economy workers bought to sell or in-puts used for petty commodities produced increased with the devaluation of the naira. Second, at the same time the real wages of workers in the formal sector declined, making it more and more difficult to pass off the added costs to them in sales. And third, the retrenchments that went with SAP saw to large numbers of people that used to be wage-earners in the formal sector coming into the informal economy in search of means of survival.

The IBB government established structures that were supposedly meant to alleviate the conditions of informal workers and create more employment as well. These included the National Directorate of Employment (NDE), the Directorate for Food, Road and Rural Infrastructure (DFFRI), the People’s Bank and Community Banks. Billions of naira were committed to these white elephant projects with very little to show for these in terms of providing better life for Nigerians in general and informal workers in particular.

The National Directorate of Employment was established in 1987 to stem the rural-to-urban drift and improve youth employment. The National Open Apprenticeship Scheme, which was part of the NDE was supposed to train and place youths in gainful informal employment relations within the cities. Only a very tiny percentage of youths or even older informal workers benefited from both the NOAS and NDE in general. The programme was marred with corruption, diversion of funds meant for its programmes and nepotism.
The People’s Bank and Community banks were developed along the lines of the Asian micro-credit schemes’ model. Between 1990 and 1992, over 200 People’s and Community Banks were established. They had assets of close to one billion naira and depositors and savings to the tune of more than 640 million naira. Yet, all the loans and advances they issued were barely up to 150 million naira, despite all the noise made! Several studies also showed that just about 10% of informal workers understood the processes for benefitting from either the banks or employment directorates facilities.

The main beneficiaries of the monies pumped into these schemes were the top civil servants, military officers, their wives, children, members of their families and concubines. This of course was part of the broader “settlement” culture which Babangida’s junta helped to perfect in Nigeria as corruption became an untameable monster and the name of the game.

The state of government policies on informality over the last ten years as been guided by the principles of neo-liberalism which the advanced capitalist countries have dictated to the visionless governments of developing countries like Nigeria. Neo-liberalism entails three different components all of which worsen the fate of workers generally and place informal workers in particular in terrible situations. These are: privatization, deregulation and cuts in funding for social services. These have resulted in over 100,000 workers in public services retrenched; thousands of wage-workers in the organized private sector equally sacked; outsourcing and contract staffing (which are forms of informal employment relations with direct linkages of being exploited to the formal sector); less government involvement in the provision of social services such as education and health with these now being provided by the informal sector.

This government, we are told, has no business with the provision of employment, commodities or services, except for a few “core” services like administration of the state for which the “right-size” of employees is as minimal as possible. The market is supposed to be the alpha and omega in the allocation of resources and the economy is supposed to be private sector-driven.

The practical results of this policy thrust captured in the National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy (NEEDS) and the Vision 20: 2020 is that: the poverty rate has remained high; unemployment and underemployment remain the order of the day (“jobs” created include graduates selling recharge cards and “pure water”); crime and prostitution have taken over our streets; inequality have reached an all time high; life expectancy has decreased and; Nigeria still remains at the bottom of all indices of human development despite the huge human and natural resources it has.

The Federal Government has tried to court the support of some elements within the informal sector. Micro-credit schemes have been established but the interest rates on the loans they give go as high as 40% as against 17% for the formal sector. The national agency established for developing small and medium scale enterprises has not done any better than Babangida’s NDE. We can see that obviously the support that the present government has for some elements within the informal economy is not borne out of improving the conditions of life of the average informal worker. On the contrary as Obasanjo was said to have made clear at a summit for the informal sector it is geared at separating the informal workers’ collective from the organized labour’s might which in eight General Strikes and Mass Protests have shown that the way forward for the working class and the masses of Nigerians is through struggle for a better social order.

The way forward: challenges and prospects
The way forward for the informal worker and the working class as a whole in Nigeria and across the world is through solidarity and struggle. This has been demonstrated time and again both globally and locally. It is also clear from our collective experiences that to successfully struggle for a better society where the workers’ needs and not the greed of a few is the basis of economic development and social policy, we must give great attention to organization and organising. In this concluding section we look at the challenges and prospects that face us in these regards.

The informal economy had always in some manner or the other been organised. The forms of organisation have at times overlapped with ethnic, age-group, gender, or mutual aid societies of different types. These have been organisations that have not necessarily been strictly for informal sector operators but which they have been able to use for time immemorial, so to speak, to give themselves visibility and voice within the broader society.

There have also been strictly informal economy organisations, over the past hundred years and more, which have been very strong. Probably the best example of this is the market women association. Baker (1994) describes the Lagos market women association as “exhibiting an exceptionally high degree of internal solidarity”. The strength of market women associations could be said to go back to their roots in traditions where market women leaders known in the Yoruba South West for example as Iyalode or Iyalaje, played key roles within the political structures of public governance.

Informal economy organizations which see themselves as organizing informal economy workers constitute a relatively new development going back just about forty years back. Probably the most successful of this is the Self-Employed Women Association of India which was formed in 1972. It started as the women’s wing of the textile workers union in India until it the stood on its own feet and in a matter of years its membership grew from a few hundreds into millions. It was initially encouraged by the Textile Labour Association from which it branched out. But as it grew and became even more influential on its own account, the TLA became jealous and hostile.

There are also inspiring developments in organizing informal workers in Africa. Some of these include the experiences of the General Agricultural Workers Union (GAWU) of Ghana and the Ugandan Public Employees Union (UPEU). GAWU started organizing informal workers in 1979 when austerity measures in Ghana led to a reduction of its membership from 130,000 to barely 30,000. Today GAWU is again one of the largest unions in Ghana and over 70% of its members are informal workers. UPEU started later in the early 1990s when its membership declined from over 108,000 to just 700, due to public sector downsizing and restructuring. In less than eight years though it had over 17,000 members and most of these were informal workers .

A picture that emerges from the examples above is that of the two basic ways of organizing informal workers. These could be directly by informal workers organizations (which like SEWA might have started as a wing of a trade union, or might not), or it might be that informal workers are organized by a trade union. The two are not mutually exclusive approaches and indeed we find both approaches in Nigeria already.

It is interesting to note that the first trade union on record in Nigeria was in the informal economy. This was the Mechanics’ Mutual Aid Provident and Mutual Improvement Association, formed in July 1883 . The current National Automobile Technicians Association was formed in 1962, before more than three quarters of the unions in the formal sector today were formed. You also have several informal workers unions including those of the fitters, hairdressers and barbers, welders, masons, etc.

It should also be pointed out that while trade unions in Nigeria might not have been as successful as their colleagues in Ghana or Uganda for example, in organizing informal workers; there have been a number of steps forward. The National Union of Civil Engineering Construction Furniture and Wood Workers, has organized masons, and carpenters into associations which have affiliate membership to NUCECFWW itself. Agricultural and Allied Employees Union of Nigeria has also made attempts at organizing informal agricultural workers in the rural areas.

This diversity of approaches is one of the major strengths that a federation of informal workers would be building on in Nigeria. The emerging federation should try to build on the diverse experience that come with the diverse approaches in engaging with the challenges that will confront the move towards building the power of informal workers and indeed the working class as a whole in Nigeria.

Yet a major opportunity which could be utilized is the attention of the world on the informal worker. Over the last decade and a half, the International Labour Organization has passed several resolutions in defence of the informal worker and workers rights in general. Related to these are the rights of informal workers as citizens which must be used as defensive planks by informal workers.
We would have to address what the key challenges that have to be addressed in organizing informal workers could be. These include but are not limited to the following:

The legal framework: The law in most countries including Nigeria is not in the interest of the informal worker, basically because they are not registered. Informal workers must realize two things about the law. First, the law is basically formulated to defend the interests of the economically dominant classes in any society such as big employers and plantation farm owners. Second, concessions have to be made to marginalized classes such as workers only when they fight for their own emancipation or at least to change the unilateral power of the dominant classes and groups. The informal workers have been doubly marginalized; first as workers and then as workers at the margin of modern industrial society. Informal workers have to test the legal framework while looking beyond it to ensure that the legal framework is reformulated, recognizing them;

Developing new organizing strategies: Lessons learnt from different informal workers organizations in their endeavours should be harnessed together. More importantly the Collective Bargaining rights of the formal trade unions should be seen as part of organising strategies. Developing new organizing strategies for informal workers would include amongst other things identifying possible negotiating partners and how to set up formal, semi-formal or even informal but definitive structures and mechanisms of grievance-handling and disputes resolution. Such include between local government councils and vendors or hawkers for example;

Giving priority to women informal workers: Women constitute a significant proportion of informal workers in Nigeria as is the case also in most countries. Women however face several cultural and economic hindrances to their optimal participation in unionism. The informal workers unions must develop women-specific programmes as well as include women in general union programmes, particularly those involving education and leadership development. Women should be active both as members and as leaders. Meetings should also be fixed for times that women could participate actively;

Playing a leading role in civil society; Informal workers unions are critical components of civil society. Non-membership, non-governmental associations have tried to define civil society in a narrow manner. Informal workers unions along with unions in the formal sector have to re-define civil society and its goals to include struggle for the fullest economic, political and social democratic rights;

Challenging globalization: The economic dynamics that have resulted in the poverty of most people in the informal economy are part of what is called “globalization”. The informal worker question has to be tackled simultaneously at both the global and local levels. The federation and federating organizations will have to identify how globalization affects their members and build networks and alliances with social forces across the world that could have similar interests to change the situation of things. In these light such informal workers global network as; streetnet, homenet and “women in informal economy; globalizing, organizing” (WIEGO) are examples of global informal workers organizations;

Relating with formal sector unions; Workers all have a common bond of being exploited and marginalized in capitalist society. Workers are however also always in competition for the limited work available. More importantly, trade unions of workers become institutions with lives of their own and their leaders could feel threatened when they do not understand other newer workers organizations or feel they are growing more than the unions which they lead, as was the case in India. The federation will have to engage the two trade union federations, NLC & TUC, comradely in a manner of “let us build working class power together”.

Conclusion
This paper has tried to address the informal worker question across the local and global arenas. It considered perspectives for understanding the informal economy, looked into the practices of peoples and policies of governments on the urban informal sector and finally identified some of the key challenges that face organizations that would organize informal workers.

This paper has running through it the necessity for workers across the formal and informal divide to unite in principle and in practice. Indeed, the powers that be realize the powerful force that such unity of the working people would present. We must build our collective strength to win our own self-emancipation and build a better more equal and more just society.

On a final note, I thank the organizers of this historic occasion for the opportunity to present this paper.

Thank you.

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