Baba Aye's

The 2027 general elections are around the corner. The elections will take place amidst the worst economic distress for working people in recent history. This is compounded by mounting insecurity and social crisis. Nonetheless, politicians have started warming up for campaign. Different sections of the ruling class are coming up as usual with empty promises. But now more than ever, the working masses, the marginalised youth, and oppressed people across the country need an alternative that challenges the systematic rottenness of social, economic, and political life. Issues shaping 2027 A recent poll by Business Day confirmed that, towards the 2027 elections, the topmost concerns of Nigerians are the economy and security. This is not at all surprising. While there has been economic growth since the Bola Tinubu administration of the APC regime came into power in 2023, the lives of poor working-class people have got worse. It is now more difficult for the vast majority of the population to ...

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o bade this world goodbye on 28 May at the age of 87. Fare thee well, great griot of our pathways. Say us well to the ancestors whom you now join to be clothed with the earth from which we all must return. He was definitely one of the greatest writers of in the world. He gave us – Africa and the world at large – a profound depth of beauty, thought and inspiration with his work. He was also, in my view, the most representative of the spirit of Africa, of the numerous colossal figures of the word, that have been Africa’s contribution to the world and its literature. At childhood, his life was interwoven with that of the Kenyan people fighting against British colonialism, with all the consequences of this history. He  was named James Ngugi at birth. This was name he used to publish his first novel Weep Not Child . But he threw away the slave master's name, renaming himself in line with the ways of his forbears. He did not just criticise the past of colo...

The ferociously brutal bombing of Gaza in October drove me to immerse myself in literature on Zionist colonialism in Palestine and the Palestinian people’s resistance. Most of what I did was rereading. Rashid Khalidi’s and Wasseem El Sarraj’s books were two that I read for the first time, and found invaluable. They are both similar in two ways. First, as with many other books worth reading on the history of the Palestinian struggle, they both provide a rich history of the land. Tracing this back for centuries, they disprove the Zionist lies of “a land without people, for a people without a land.” They reveal Britain’s deceitful actions, spanning from the Balfour declaration to the Nakba, and the continuous backing of Jewish colonialism by imperialist powers. The books examine how Arab countries, like Jordan, have had conflicting stances on the Palestinian cause and how this impacts the people’s struggle. And prominently, they highlight this struggle’s “history from below” in all its st...

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...

We are in the middle of a spate of elections across Africa. Last year, a dozen countries went to the polls. Ten more have held elections this year, with about thirteen more to go before the end of 2019. In a formal sense, democracy appears to be sinking deep roots into the continent’s soil. Gone are the days of the last quarter of the twentieth century when military dictatorships and one-party states where the norm. However, this has not translated into the betterment of the lot of the poor masses. Two thirds of the least developed countries in the world are in Africa. This of course does not mean that everyone in those countries bear the brunt of poverty. The politicians and businessmen in countries like Congo, Mozambique and Uganda which are considered to be some of the poorest countries in the world, enjoy opulent lifestyles. The key to ostentatious wealth for these degenerate figures of the African ruling class is political power. And through hook or crook (quite often som...

Introduction The 2 nd Biennial Conference of the West African Health Sector Unions’ Network (WAHSUN) was held on April 18-20, 2016 at the Benin Royal Hotel, Cotonu, Republique du Benin. Delegates from health sector unions in: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Liberia, Niger, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and Togo participated actively in the Conference-in-session. After extensive deliberation on issues of critical concern to the health of the people in West Africa, the health system and the conditions of the health workforce in the sub-region, the Conference-in-session resolved thus:    Resolutions: Combating Communicable Diseases; Conference-in-session observed the severe challenges that have been faced with the outbreak of such communicable diseases as: Ebola Virus Disease; Meningitis; Cholera &; Lassa Fever, in several countries within the region over the past two years. The spread of these diseases, it noted is attributed to weak health sys...