For Nigerian Masses, There’s Nothing To Cheer About 66th Independence Anniversary — Baba Aye*

Comrade Baba Aye, a veteran trade expert and activist, is Co-Convener of the Coalition for Revolution (CORE) and a Council Member of Progressive International (PI). Baba Aye, former Deputy National Secretary, Labour Party (LP) and former National Convener, United Action for Democracy (UAD), during the June 12 struggle and a member of the National Implementation Committee of the Campaign for Democracy (CD), in this interview with EJIKEME OMENAZU, speaks on the 66th Independence anniversary from a socialist point of view. Excerpt:

Nigerians are in the Independence anniversary week. Looking at the state of the nation, do you think the 66th Independence anniversary is worth celebrating?

The exit of colonial rulers could not have but, been a welcome development in 1960. Even today, we cannot discountenance it as a historic moment, despite reservations we do have about its significance and rightly so. The working masses – workers, peasants, poor women and marginalised youths – who rallied time and again against colonial extraction and oppression in protests, strikes and uprisings of different sorts saw decolonisation as a pathway to their liberation or even as liberation itself. However, in no time at all it became clear that the local capitalists, no less than the colonial ones, had come only to kill, to steal and to destroy. At the heart of the issues here is that there are two nations in every nation: the nation of the exploited and oppressed on one hand and the nation of the oppressive exploiters on the other. For the ruling class, there is every reason to celebrate the 66th Independence anniversary. They have been able to become wealthy and powerful in ways that they might not have been able to aspire to under colonialism. But for the working masses, there is little or no room for cheer. Our situation has constantly been that of sorrow, tears and blood, in one way or the other.

You have been in active activism for several decades. How do you see the social life of Nigerians all these years?

I became an activist some four decades ago as a young teenager. A lot has changed in the social life of the country since then. Most of these have been for the worse. There was much more connection in a way, long before the virtual became a key element of our lived realities. We should, however, not be dismissive of the nature of today. Technological advances have somewhat contributed to atomising us. But it has also, to some extent, enabled the broadening of conversation in real time, even though a good chunk, if not most, of such discourse borders on the mundane. We cannot foolishly try to stop the tide like King Canute or bemoan the time gone by. There was never an idyllic, all rose-scented past. Each generation has its own obscurity from which it has to discover its mission and fulfil or betray it. The unfortunate thing is that most generations in these periods have not exactly fulfilled anything, although that has not wholly been for lack of trying.

What is your view on the different phases of activism in the country from the pre-Independence era till date?

Thank you for this question. It was at the heart of the chapter on Nigeria I wrote for a book published last month titled ‘African Labour and Liberation’, although in that I actually traced the phases from even the colonial period to the current moment. To understand the changes or phases of radical activism in the country since 1960 requires grasping the global socio-economic, political, and ideological evolution, and relating these to Nigeria-specific developments. In the 1960s to the early 1970s, the radical Left was centred in the trade union movement, looking up to the Soviet Union. This brought about two Marxist-Leninist parties: SWAFP and the Nigeria Labour Party, none of which had up to 5,000 members. This was at the height of the Cold War. There was funding from the Soviet Union for SWAFP in particular. But when the Civil War came about, the radical left on both sides of the divide queued up behind their ruling classes. The expansion of universities from the 1970s broadened the soil on which left seeds germinated. The late 70s and 80s could be considered the pinnacle of serious left politics in terms of battling with ideas and establishing organisations with a clear sense of organisational discipline. It was, however, in the 1990s that the radical left had the greatest direct influence on mass politics. Not politics in terms of elections, but in terms of power to influence a historical conjuncture like that of June 12. But because nothing really serious in terms of numbers and entrenchment within the working people had been built before that period, the moment was frittered away. The Campaign for Democracy, which rallied the masses in July and August 1993 against Babangida, had become a shadow of what it was then within six months. Efforts to rejig things with the United Action for Democracy and, to some extent, JACON in the late 1990s were not so successful.

The 21st century has been a mixed bag. We have lost most of our people to either the parties and politics of the ruling class that most of them spent the better part of their younger lives fighting, or to the careerism of the development sector, NGOism.

Also, the students’ movement, which was a pulsating spirit of resistance, has now become a ‘wetin you carry’ conveyor belt for opportunists and their stylised ‘chop and clean mouth’ praxis. However, all that is just part of the story. This is also the same century where you have seen such mass revolts as #OccupyNigeria, #EndSARS, #EndBadGovernance and the rise of the African Action Congress (AAC), which is the most significant nationwide revolutionary Left political party in the annals of Nigerian history.

Some activists have found themselves in government during this period. Would you say their participation in government made any difference?

The problem with governance is not primarily one of the government. It is a problem of the system which is inherently exploitative and oppressive. It is a problem of the state, which, irrespective of the government, is geared towards defending the functioning of the system the way it is meant to work, that is to say, for, by and always primarily in the interest of the rich few – the capitalists and their acolytes of different shades. There are some activists who enter government with the naiveté that the solution, or how to make any difference, as you put it, is for the good guys to be in office. These few activists with such an illusion are those who never had any serious revolutionary theoretical grounding in the first place for their politics when they were radical activists. But for those going into government and who are just paying lip service to making any essential difference, and these comprise a significant number – I must tell you – they are just being politically fraudulent. They know that they have abandoned whatever and whichever exploited class they lay claim to standing up for in years past. They are just watching out for themselves. They are out for their own personal self-liberation or, better put; seeking to arrive themselves in wealth and social standing. But today will pass. History will judge them if the revolutionary tide that could bring swift judgment tarries.

Nigeria has been practising representative democracy since independence, except during military rule. Which of the two systems, the Parliamentary system and the Executive Presidency, is more suitable and more beneficial to the Nigerian people?

The dominance of the Parliamentary system in the United Kingdom and the Executive Presidency system in the United States and parts of North America have their histories, which I will not go into now to save time. What I must highlight, however, is that neither was designed by or for the working people. They had to do with how the ruling class sought to design legitimacy to rule, which would give a real, but nonetheless illusory sense of representation to the masses. What the working people require is revolutionary democracy from below. This would entail having representatives who earn the average worker’s wages, are easily recallable, answer to their constituencies on a 24/7 basis and not the sham of every four-year election, and who are both executive and legislative servants of the people at the same time. In a nutshell, this would be a new form of state – a workers’ state, which has to be won through the libratory struggle of the working masses.

As a labour activist, what would you say about the life of the average Nigerian worker? Would you say the nation’s Labour Centres have been living up to expectations?

The life of the average Nigerian worker reflects the Hobbesian state of nature: “poor, nasty, brutish and short”. Their take-home pay cannot take them home. It is a life of ‘suffer head’. But as Fela sang, to replace this with ‘jefa head’, that is to say where and when they are okay, we have to fight for it. Regarding the roles of the trade union federations, I have repeatedly pointed out that it is not as simple as it is often taken. The trade union centres had gone on nation- and sector-wide general strikes that had shut down the country at least a dozen times this century. I cannot think of any other country that has this history. Now, there are other issues, and you can talk of plenty of movement, little motion. But it would not be apt to simply condemn them for not living up to expectations. A lot more has to be done by the trade unions and the labour centres. That is a statement of fact. But part of the problem is the weakness of the Left. At the height of all-round relevance of the trade union centres to the struggles of the working people in our history, it was partly because of the presence of core left groups being active in the labour centres and trade unions.

 You are a Co-Convener of Coalition for Revolution (CORE). Would you say the group is still active?

What type of revolution do you think Nigeria needs? That is a very good question. The group is not as active as it was or should be. And this has been the case for a couple of years now. As we learnt from Amilcar Cabral: “Tell no lies, claim no easy victory”. It is a reality which CORE has to address. I am, however, honoured to have worked with the comrades with whom we reorganised the coalition six years ago and believe there are things we could still do as the coalition going forward. But we need to have frank discussions on this. Regarding the typology of revolutions, I would say that every revolution is primarily a political revolution. That is to say, it is first and foremost about power. But you can have political revolutions where the change of power still lies within the same ruling class of exploiters. Our aim is for a social revolution, one in which the fundamental base of society changes from the current exploitative social relations of production to a liberated one where humankind can leap from the realm of necessity to that of freedom without coercion and oppression.

Nigerians have been running a capitalist system, controlled by being dictated by the Neo-Liberal bodies like the World Bank and the IMF. Do you think Nigeria will be better off under a socialist system? If so, what type of socialism will you suggest for the people, and how can this be made possible without rancour or crises?

You should remember that the report of the Cookey-led Politburo during the Babangida-led military junta recorded that the desire of Nigerians was for a socialist social, economic, and political system. For whatever that was worth or meant, it speaks eloquently to the desire of the working masses in the country for liberation from the exploitative yoke of capitalism. Nigeria and indeed the world require a social revolution, an international socialist revolution to overthrow the decadent and obtuse capitalist system which is holding back the development and fullness of the lives of 99% of the human population to the benefit of a handful of capitalists. Regarding rancour or crises, I daresay the problem is not with socialism or revolutionary socialists. Crisis is written into the DNA of capitalism. It is indeed with revolutionary socialism that we can talk of overcoming such cyclical crises. Finally, the question of which socialism we should talk about is very valid. Hal Draper pointed out in a book of his that we have socialism from above and socialism from below as the two key souls of socialism, if you will. Socialism from above is what we witnessed with the social democratic welfarist projects in Western and Northern Europe and in the Stalinist state-capitalist entities of the Soviet Union and its Eastern Bloc countries. The type of socialism that we need, which is liberatory, is revolutionary socialism from below.

*First published in the Sunday Independent, 4 October 2026, p.22. online here.