This Hardship Is Too Much: FIGHTBACK!

The living conditions of working-class people in Nigeria keep getting worse, while a handful of rich people keep getting richer. The situation has pushed us to the edge of existence. We cannot continue like this.

The hardship we are facing is human made. It is the result of the policies that the government has put in place. Bola Ahmed Tinubu declared that “fuel subsidy is gone” the day he was sworn-in. Ever since then, fuel pump price, electricity tariffs, telecoms tariffs, prices of foodstuffs in the market and virtually of all commodities have all gone up.

Our meagre salaries cannot buy anything substantial in the market. We struggle to send our children to school, and many have dropped out of school because parents can no longer afford the cost of tuition. Youth suicide is rising, driven by a spike in the number of students who die from suicide because neither they nor their parents can continue to bear the rising financial costs of their education.

We are afraid to fall ill as we cannot afford treatment. Public hospitals are in a state of dilapidation. Drugs are not available in these hospitals. Chronic illnesses like diabetes and high blood pressure have become death sentences because people cannot afford to buy the drugs they regularly need to keep these in check. Even anti-malaria medication and medicines for other acute ailments as well, are now beyond what the purse of most people can bear.

When we cry out from a deep place of pain, frustration and justifiable anger, the government gives one useless excuse or the other. Or they simply tell us lies, lies and still more lies. First, they said that the suffering would only last for a stint of time, and after that everything will be alright. Now they even tell us to our faces that things have already started getting better. But we know better. Who wears the shoe of hardship knows where it pinches.

Economic growth has not benefited us, the poor working people. It is not because the system is not working. It is because that is how it is meant to work: serve the rich capitalists at the expense of the poor working people. 

But we can change things when we resist, when we fightback, and when we overthrow this exploitative system. Time and again, we have shown that we can fight and win. At this point in time, what is to be done?

We must organise and mobilise around clear demands and set objectives. We must build our power by expanding the unity of working-class people and youths who are organising to challenge the government, and the small set of super-rich people who benefit from this system.

We must push back against the increases in tariffs of everything. We must demand a living wage as the national minimum wage. We need to win these and similar reforms. But even these are not enough. The bosses will take back whatever we win except we smash their system.

Our fightback cannot simply be defensive. We are waging a revolutionary struggle for our total liberation. Join the struggle NOW! Onward forward to victory!!

This Editorial of the Socialist Worker was first published here.