Yele Sowore and the renewal of radical politics in Nigeria

On Friday, 20 September, the federal government  of Nigeria filed seven counts of treasonable felony and money laundering against Omoyele Sowore, publisher of Sahara Reporters, and National Chair of the African Action Congress. Four days later, the court granted him bail, with conditions which included his lawyers’ submission of his (Sowore’s) international passport to the court. The conditions were immediately met by the radical lawyer, Femi Falana.

But the state refused to release him, only to drag him to a more pliant court where horrendous bail conditions were set, including: a bail bond of $280,000; no public speaking, including to the press; restriction of his movement to Abuja, the federal capital territory. Olawale “Mandate” Adebayo, the 21-year old #RevolutionNow activist who was equally charged with him had his bail bond set at $140,000.

The lifelong activist was arrested on 3 August by the Department of State Services (DSS, the secret police). This was an attempt to truncate the flag-off of the #RevolutionNow campaign, with the first in a series of “Days of Rage” on 5 August. The state did not stop at this.

Its full repressive might was rolled out on Monday 5 August to stop the Day of Rage, called for by the Coalition for Revolution (CORE). Mass action was planned for 23 of the 36 states of the Nigerian federation, and in Abuja, the federal capital territory (FCT), as well as across several countries. But in every single state and the FCT, combined teams of the army, air force, anti-riot police (MOPOL), Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) and National Security and Civil Defense Corps (NSCDC) were deployed to stop any demonstration.

This, however, could not stop the envisaged #RevolutionNow actions, despite curtailing the wind in its sails. Action was taken in cities and towns across 14 states in the country. These were much smaller than envisaged as protesters had to play cat and mouse with the armed security personnel. But this did not prevent some 57 persons from being arrested with many more harassed, including Sariyu Akanmu, the 70-year old woman who joined the protest and was brutalised by police in the south-western town of Osogbo, and some journalists covering the demonstrations.

Demonstrations were also organised across the world as Nigerians protested in front of the country’s embassies and international organisations in Berlin (where they were joined by local radical activists), Geneva, Johannesburg, London, New York and Toronto.

More significant somewhat than the barely a thousand people in all, that took to he streets is how the campaign has renewed popular radical politics in mass consciousness, putting revolution back on the agenda of public discourse. The #RevolutionNow hashtag trended as number one on the Naija Twittersphere for days and not less than five million people searched for the meaning of the word “revolution” on 5 August. And since then, the discussions on the need for a revolution in Nigeria have become commonplace, as CORE continues mass mobilisation.

In an arguably surprising manner, the emergence of the Revolution Now! movement has split the radical left. Sowore and CORE activists have been described in several ways as being ill-prepared and toying with revolution. And there are even some who challenge his credentials as being a leftist not to talk of having the temerity to, in their view, seize leadership of what should be the birth right of supposedly genuine left elements to provide leadership for the popular masses.

This article aims to set the records straight on Sowore’s antecedence and put the development of AAC/CORE in perspective. These are very important for envisioning the possible trajectory of emancipatory politics unfolding, as a genie of renewed radicalisation of politics breaks out of the bottle of incipient neo-fascism in Nigeria.

Some lessons from Sowore’s activist beginnings

I must say beforehand that the view of this author on the early beginnings of Sowore as a radical students’ leader draws from a close relationship with him at that point in time. And I daresay that over the years, his consistency in the struggle, is one that I am indeed proud of. But more importantly, this account helps show that the dynamics of how several sections of the left relate with the movement coalescing around the initiative of Yele reflect a farcical rendition of an earlier drama of the absurd.

Thus, I do not here go into the labyrinth of Sowore’s role in the struggle against military dictatorship, some of which are clearly in the public domain. Nor, do I go into providing some less publicly accessible insight into several other roles he played in the 1990s, including as Chairman of the Lagos State Joint Campus Committee, in renewing radical unionism across tertiary institutions in the state, helping to reinstate several unions that had been banned for years.

Sowore secured admission into the prestigious University of Lagos (Unilag) in 1989. This was just months after the May anti-SAP revolts which climaxed on the Black Wednesday of May 31^st. While radical students at the University’s Akoka campus were able to mobilise students out for that massquake, the right-wing had consolidated its hold on the University of Lagos Students’ Union (ULSU).

Just a few weeks before the anti-SAP protest began one “Papa Chris” (who was later confirmed to have been an operative of the secret police) defeated Sylvester Odion-Akhaine, candidate of the united left in a keenly contested election for ULSU president. Left-wing students continued to put in efforts to mobilise students.

But in the wake of the defeat, the two radical left organisations on campus collapsed, with no meeting held for over two and a half years. These were the Marxist-Leninist Study Group (MLSG) and the Trotskyist Socialist Youths League (SYL). This was the context in which Yele, burning with a fire of struggle from an early age entered into the students’ movement.

His first taste of students’ activism was in 1990 when the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) called for demonstrations across the country to protest the IMF conditionality for courses in Nigerian universities to be rationalised. Despite opposition by the ULSU leadership, radical students, including PYMN leaders that were on campus mobilised with leaflets circulated in all the halls and faculties. And Unilag students, including Sowore, joined their colleagues in different schools to protest on the streets.

Attempts to mobilise Unilag students for a national NANS action were not so successful. The NANS Senate meeting (bringing together all students’ unions together in-between the annual Convention) held on 24 April 1991 resolved to organise an Academic Reforms (ACAREF) campaign. 26 May was fixed as ultimatum for national action. NANS leaders fanned out to several campuses, particularly in the southern parts of the country.

In Unilag, the NANS Zone D Coordinator tried to organise a rally. They were thwarted by Papa Chris who led police from the university’s security post to disperse the gathered students at “Freedom Square”. Sowore was one of the students who tried to resist this, but to no avail. And thus, this time, Unilag students did not join the protest movement.

But the darkest hour is often that before dawn. Shortly after, the left reclaimed leadership of ULSU as Segun Mayegun was elected president. Sowore also emerged as Chairman of the Henry Carr Hall. This was no mean task for Sowore as a second-year student. Traditionally, though not as a rule, hall chairmen were usually in their third or fourth year, by which time they were more likely to have gained the needed political traction.

This author relocated to Unilag in October 1991, after an academic and political stint at the University of Ilorin, where we had formed the May 31^st Movement in the aftermath of Black Wednesday. One of my immediate tasks was to unite the left organisations towards rebuilding lasting socialist influence in the union and on campuses in the environs of Unilag. Towards this, I organised the first meetings of SYL and MLSG since the beginning of 1989 on 6 and 10 December 1991 respectively. Whilst walking together with Mayegun immediately after the MLSG meeting, I pointed out the need for the movement to start building a credible left candidacy for the next elections.

He informed me that one Omoyele Sowore appeared to be interested. He went further to say that the comrade is a fighter for sure but was not clear on Marxist-Leninist ideology and also would be difficult to put under control. I had my own misgivings on Mayegun’s grasp of Marxist theory, despite his background in philosophy and had come to realise that by control was meant more of carrying out dictates of some wisemen and not organisational discipline in the real sense of it. The description of this Sowore that I had heard a bit about but never met as a fighter was however music to my ears.

The following day I went to Henry Carr Hall and had a discussion with him. I was impressed by his down-to-earth appreciation of the need to build a strong union and his readiness to provide leadership for this, with all his heart. He expressed his disdain for the “talk, talk” and unhelpful intrigues of Marxists as he put it (some of the leaders of the PYMN lived in Henry Carr at the time and he had engaged them in series of discussions). On this, I disagreed with him that experience with a few Marxists could not provide the final word on Marxist theory and practice.

There was however more than just a pinch of salt in his characterisation of the propensity to intrigues of comrades on the left in general and at that time in Unilag in particular. For example, we had to abandon the M31M project of unifying and building a non-sectarian socialist movement in Unilag when leaders of the hitherto comatose organisations burst in to seize control i.e. the then Labour Militant for SYL and the PYMN for MLSG.

We washed our hands off both groups (and that marked their death) and decided to form an M31M organisation. The earlier intention was to name this League of Progressives for Emancipation (LoPE). But our two staff advisers were of the view that the name of the organisation should reflect the Pan-Africanist aspect of our politics.

Professor Akin Ibidapo-Obe suggested Araba (the silk-cotton tree’s name in Yoruba) while Professor TDP Bah, the Guinean revolutionary exile suggested the name League of Black Nationalists (LBN). We accepted the suggestion of Bah. And Sowore became a founding member of the LBN. This was in January 1992

The ULSU elections were scheduled to take place at the end of May. Segun Mayegun and orthodox Marxists (most of whom had already graduated) took a stand against a Sowore candidacy. Meanwhile, the right-wing had emerged in a new dimension, around a powerful evangelical movement. The need for a united ticket was thus pressing. But the orthodox Marxists stuck to their guns of not backing Sowore.

The candidate presented was equally a genuine radical fighter. Comrade Gboyega “Baggies” Otunuga was Chairman of Mariere Hall, the legendary Baluba kingdom which housed the official room of the ULSU President. And to his credit, Baggies who has also been a supporter of the ongoing #RevolutionNow campaign went ahead to be a fearless trade unionist.

The argument of the M31M/LBN was rather that we should build a strong team with Sowore who had thrown his hat into the ring much earlier as president, Baggies as secretary general and Samuel Babatunde Jegede (SBJ) as welfare secretary.

While the MLSG was dead, Mayegun’s position as ULSU president made most of the left-leaning activists on campus (i.e. virtually everyone outside the LBN) inclined to support his push for Baggies. He had also been elected as NANS president in January. And it was his role in this direction that would eventually tilt things in our direction.

On 11 May 1991, as NANS president, Mayegun declared a 2-day “national students strike” against the military government for 13 and 14 May, based on a standing resolution of the NANS Convention. Sowore distinguished himself on the field as ULSU activists led hundreds of youths into battle with the anti-riot police on major streets in the mainland for two days.

Not less than 7 persons were killed in those two days. The university was shut down and 48 student leaders expelled. After winning their reinstatement via the court and the school was reopened in October, there was renewed drive for a united ticket. Towards this, there was a meeting summoned which had 11 comrades to agree on a consensus.

Only 4 of these were from LBN. 7 were left-leaning activists aligned with the PYMN-backed ULSU presidency. Surprisingly we carried the day. As it later turned out, two persons (Nwachukwu C. and Jaye O.) from their side voted Sowore.

According to them, this was because there was no way with what they’d witnessed not only during the May action but in the period after when we rallied the struggle outside campus that they would vote otherwise and still be true. A third person Bimbo A. abstained. Like the other two she said she could not vote against her conscience. But being a close friend of Mayegun, she also could not bring herself to vote against his dictate.

Mayegun however insisted on Sowore not ever becoming president of ULSU. Rather than maximise the gains of the left with a single line up, he ensured that Baggies as well ran. SBJ then moved on to the slot of secretary general which he picked effortlessly, paving the way for Bola Ilori to become welfare secretary.

It was probably the most keenly contested ULSU elections for ages. We ran the election, which I was pleased to have coordinated under the slogan of Victor Hugo’s words “nothing can stop an idea whose time has come”. The rest as they say is now history. The elections marked the end of any significant influence of most left groups (which were already on the edge of oblivion anyway) in Unilag, with the M31M/LBN as the beacon of radical politics there for a generation until the smashing of the union in the first half of the 2000s.

But it is important to reiterate why this narrative is important to what is happening today. We find an “official” left that had gone more or less into limbo feeling peeved at some supposedly upstart activist daring to seize the time, and without the unction of their permission. They did not only fail to see that he merely represented the idea of struggle generated from the dynamics of its time in history. Those that would be honest with themselves and be true to the spirit of struggle they lay claim to would find their way to the movement representing such idea whose time has come, even if with reservations. And of those who choose to prefer curing scabies to leprosy, many would be consigned to the dustbin of history. 

SR, TIB, AAC & CORE; organising as against agonising

Sowore founded Sahara Reporters (SR) in 2006, just on the eve of the Global Recession. The New York-based online news agency which has been described as the Africa’s Wikileaks by the Daily Beast has become the acme of citizen journalism. It has published thousands of articles which include radical opinion pieces, and its trademark exposés of corruption in high places, impunity of governments and human rights abuses. Seen as marginal at its infancy, SR has become the place to go for critical information on Nigerian politics for even mainstream national and international media.

As a publisher of the sort of website that SR is, Sowore did have the sort of edge for providing leadership to alternative politics, like the pamphleteers of the French and American revolution. But just as pamphlets alone were not enough to trigger a mass movement in themselves, it was not just the nature and place of SR that helped to position Sowore as a symbol for igniting the renewal of radical mass politics in the country. The soil on which the spark it light could lead to a conflagration is the era of crises and revolts unfurled with by the generalised global crisis of capitalism which has lasted a decade now, as we pointed out elsewhere.

The #RevolutionNow movement is thus part and parcel of the Global Rise of the 99%. This rise, even as right-wing populism equally grows (after all, has revolution and counter-revolution not always been very much like Siamese twins, joined at the hip by history?), as had ups and downs, remerging after ebbs and seeking to understand not only its own mission as the bearer of social progress, but also the world which calls it forth.

In Nigeria, the spark for this initially inchoate rise of revolts took the concrete form of contradictions between the continued ostentatious lifestyle of the 1% whilst the immense majority of the population sank into the nadir of poverty and hopelessness. Its first phase was in January 2012, when a sharp hike in fuel pump price threw up 16 days of national rage. As we mentioned at the time, “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”, but it came up in the face of a “near collapse of radical alternative politics on any significant scale before the popular dam of rage burst”.

In this context, the main beneficiaries of the mass anger of 2012 were sections of the bosses’ class who had been in opposition to the Peoples Democratic Party. PDP was clearly the dominant party of the bosses when the republic was reinstated in 1999. Some of its leaders declared at a point that it would be in power at the centre and in most of the states of the federation for sixty years! But the bourgeois oppositionists who had presented themselves as friends of the people during the 2012 January Uprising defeated PDP at the polls three  years later.

Five opposition parties merged along with splinter of the PDP to form the All Progressives Congress (APC) barely a year after the uprising. Not a few left activists joined them or at the very least gave their supposedly social-democratic politics support. It came up with a “Change” mantra as its campaign platform in 2015 and buoyed by mass anger against PDP, it made history by becoming the first party in Nigeria to wrest power from a sitting government (the military had come in twice – 1966 and 1983 – when attempts of the ruling party to cling to power by rigging elections resulted in political crises).   

Meanwhile, on the left, there were no significant efforts at addressing the problem of organisation, not to talk of addressing it in a creative manner took place for six years, until the formation of the Take It Back (TIB) movement. The movement was aimed at organising Sowore’s bid for the presidency in 2019. But it was not a movement based strictly on electoralist politics. It did not shy away from declaring its intent to do away with the old order of politics in the country, with mass action as much as via the ballot. It led or participated in several demonstrations in the pre-election period, including for press freedom, extension of the period for voter registration and for electricity rights.

But to run for the presidency, there was the need for a party platform registered by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). There were a few left parties which Sowore engaged in discussions with for this purpose. These were the Peoples Redemption Party (PRP), the Socialist Party of Nigeria (SPN) and the National Conscience Party (NCP), which he most favoured for several reasons.

Unfortunately, the right wing of the NCP won over the party to joining a so-called Coalition of United Political Parties (CUPP) which the PDP formed at the beginning of 2018, supposedly to isolate the APC in the then forthcoming elections. This was the context in which the TIB formed the African Action Congress (AAC).

Socialist activists in the NCP at the time, including this author, who had been pivotal in trying to foster TIB as home for the renewal of left politics which the TIB was ushering in at the time, then face a dilemma. The TIB was itself a radical reformist formation with a right-wing of professional middle-class activists that were keener on winning office than revolutionary change. They were dominant in its bureaucracy. But Sowore with his revolutionary fervour provided a strong pole of attraction for increasingly radicalised young people from working-class background, who faced attacks from the state during the electoral campaigns.

To address the danger that could emerge from liquidating a socialist platform within the AAC, an independent left platform was formed. This was the Alliance for a Masses Political Alternative. It initially comprised the two left groups hitherto active in the NCP i.e. the Socialist Workers and Youth League (SWL) and Socialist Vanguard Tendency (SVT).

This constituted a coalition with the left wing of the TIB. This loose coalition was to be transformed into the Coalition for Revolution in the course as the process of radicalisation deepened on one hand within TIB and AAC, whilst the movement/party’s right-wing equally got confident enough to bar its fangs, in the wake of the February 2019 elections which the incumbent president Muhammadu Buhari of the ruling APC was declared to have won.

CORE’s call for #RevolutionNow in July 2019 was the culmination of the mass mobilisation which had begun with the formation of TIB at the beginning of 2018. Sowore had gone around almost all the state of the federation, some of these several times. Meeting rooms were filled up in several places and people had to stand outside the halls. Such phenomenon was unprecedented in 21^st century Nigeria. Most people at rallies of the bosses’ parties were paid to be there while the few left parties were so much on the fringe of real politics that they talked only to themselves, handfuls of persons in small rooms with more than enough space left unfilled.

And the mass mobilisation did not stop with the elections, for a CORE call to just come out of the blues in July. From April, CORE activists organised several mass meetings of hundreds of people in working-class communities and in some there were over 1,000 people in attendance. They led demonstrations against epileptic power supply and the detention of community activists who dared to fight in these neighbourhoods. CORE activists were also at the fore of struggle for trade and labour rights of workers, particularly at the Lagos State Polytechnic.

But of course, there is none as blind as those with eyes who choose not to see and the most difficult persons to wake up are those pretending to be asleep. So, in several circles of the tired left that the #RevolutionNow project has been reduced to the 5 August #DayofRage, which itself has been declared ill-prepared and adventurous, and so on and so forth.

A closer look at the “forces” projecting these perspectives shows that whilst they might differ in some way or the other, they are united in being persons or groups that have either been wholly inactive (except for statements or articles posted online) or they are those who have been able to gather barely more than a dozen persons into their ranks in over a quarter of a century or more.

A broad left alliance, involving more serious-minded groups and persons who do not fail to see the wood for the trees, is however coalescing. Its pole of attraction is the #RevolutionNow movement, with its pathbreaking role of renewing real radical politics (i.e. not the incestuous “politics” of left groups talking to themselves or at best to “the people” whom they lack any tangible connection whatsoever in concrete terms with).

In lieu of a conclusion: battling budding neo-fascism

The bogus cases against Omoyele Sowore and other #RevolutionNow activists including Agba Jalingo standing trial by the PDP state government in Cross River state helps put the character of the current regime in perspective more than a dozen abstract theses ever could. By regime here, we do not simply mean (the APC) government at t the centre of the federation. We are talking of the mode of exercising state power of the state, by the ruling class.

There is an “unprecedented level of paranoia” on the part of the federal government as Wole Soyinka puts it. But this goes deeper than the Aso Rock presidential villa.

For sure, the APC government, in serving the bosses’ class as a whole has lashed out at even other representatives of that class, from the PDP. With the DSS firmly within its grip, disobeying court orders has become the order of the day, despite the comical proclamation by Mr Tanko Muhammed, the Chief Justice of the Federation, that the judiciary will not tolerate such under his watch.

Even children have not been spared as a six-month infant was illegally detained for 13 days along with four other members of his family, for writing to demand the payment of their father’s gratuity from a state governor. And the case of Agba Jalingo of the Cross River Watch and a leading #RevolutionNow activist for demanding accountability from the PDP governor shows that the ruling class as a whole are beginning to realise that they have murdered sleep. But their response is rather the hammer of repression.

But Sowore and the #RevoluionNow movement have not only helped working-class people and youth to better interpret what is happening, they also show that we can do something about it and change the tide, if we dare to fight. Sowore captured this evolving reality when he seized the opportunity of being brought to court to address #RevolutionNow activists, pointing out that "The whole charges is around the fact that they're afraid that there's new consciousness in the country, and that Nigerians are now looking at alternatives."

The emergent movement’s activists have no illusion that the period ahead will be tumultuous. But a national movement of revolutionary youth, and working-class people is being formed. There will be, indeed there has been attempts to tear this apart from within. The sharpest political example of this is the faction established by the right-wing of the AAC, despite its lack of any roots across the branches. Will the revolutionary forces be able to restore full control on its party or will a new party have to be formed for electoral contest in 2023?

These are some of the questions that will have to be addressed over the next months and years. But the most important fact is that, whilst electoral politics is not thrown aside as being wholly irrelevant, the #RevolutionNow movement has helped more and more people to realise that politics is not and cannot be considered merely as the right to tick a box every four years.

Politics is about power and our power lies in our numbers and organisation. Indeed, we cannot and will never defeat the bosses simply through the ballot. Mere electoral “victory” could put a left government in office but not in power. That is why we need a revolution. And whilst revolutionary situations could emerge simultaneously, without organisation manifesting revolutionary politics, such moments would be gone with the winds in no time or even worse, appropriated by the lines of the APC government who then bare their fangs as the most dangerous representatives of the ruling class.

The renewal of radical politics and organising nationwide around this must thus be at the heart of actualising revolutionary change. This struggle is not just about Omoyele Sowore, as even he continually points out. But people make history and the role he continues to play, inspiring youth to the struggle for Revolution Now does prove, as Karl Marx did say, that the sword of enthusiasm just might be as good as the sword of genius.

An abridged version of this article was earlier published here by the Global African Worker