Baba Aye's

“A tale of two September 21s” was what first came to my mind as a title for this article (and I still see it as an alternative title). I intended to trace out the similarities and differences in the significance of two events, which in different ways affected the two main components of the labor movement in Nigeria. First was September 21, 1974, when internment led to the unity of the trade union movement . Despite repression, infiltration, self-serving momentary splits, and attempts at state incorporation, the spirit of unity that emerged that day has remained alive. The second was September 21, 2005, when the death of a leading revolutionary socialist and civil society activist inspired efforts at uniting the socialist movement . After five years during which the initiative atrophied, it became clear that it had failed. It was, however, probably the longest-running attempt at establishing an alliance of the left. There are lessons to draw from this understudied period of our re...

Eddie Madunagu is undoubtedly one of the most profound and insightful socialist thinkers and publicists in Nigeria’s history. His books such as The Tragedy of the Nigerian Socialist Movement and Problems of Socialism: The Nigerian Challenge¸ which were published some four decades back present us with some of the clearest analysis of the situation of the radical and revolutionary Left in that period, probably much more sharply than any other book. Over the following decades, Comrade Eddie continued with analyses of the left and the society which we want to change. His column every Thursday was the sole reason why I bought The Guardian for most of the 1990s. It must be stressed, as many have done and will continue to do, that Eddie has not only been a theorist. He has, along with his soul mate Bene, contributed to some of the most sustained efforts at building left organisations and united fronts. They have also contributed significantly to critical thinking for new generations of...

Scores of thousands of young people took to the streets across Nigeria in October 2020, to protest police brutality. Their primary demand was for government to end the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), an elite and particularly vicious unit of the Nigeria Police Force. This mass movement was thus defined as EndSARS. It was sparked when the video of a young man who was allegedly killed by SARS operatives in Ughelli, a small city in the Niger Delta region went viral on 3 rd October. There were over twenty-eight million tweets and retweets of the video and calls for protest within three days. In Ughelli and neighbouring towns there were immediate spontaneous actions by aggrieved youth. By 8 th October, hundreds of protesters set up camp in front of the Lagos State House of Assembly in Nigeria’s most populous city and its commercial hub as well as in the city centre of Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory. Within a few days, these numbers had increased to thousands and demonstration...

The Coronavirus public health emergency became considered a pandemic on 11 March 2020. The pandemic has highlighted and worsened global health and social inequalities. Poor working-class people have been most affected in different parts of the world. By the beginning of February, there had been 106m recorded cases and at least 2.32m. The United States, India, Brazil, and Britain are the most affected countries. A second wave which started by the end of 2020 has been particularly debilitating with at least four variants which are more transmissible. Most political commentators expected developing countries, particularly those in Africa to be the most affected. This was because the public healthcare system is in shambles on the continent and poverty (with millions of people living closely together in slums) is so widespread. But for reasons which are not yet clear, this has luckily not been the case. But all the same there have been more than 3.5m reported cases and almost 90,000 d...