Baba Aye's

The latest suicide bombings in Gwazo, in Borno State, caught security agents napping. What do you think about the incident? This development cannot, but fill one’s heart with sadness. My thoughts and sympathies go to the loved ones of the over 30 people killed in that synchronised suicide bomb­ings. The extensive use of women and girls to carry out suicide attacks over the years is a pointer to the heartlessness of the top hierarchy of Boko Haram strategy. Between 2014 and 2017, for example, they used over 200 females for this purpose. That is the highest number of the use of fe­male suicide bombers by any terror­ist group in the world. Some of them were earlier kidnapped and then coerced or brainwashed. That been said, it is also important to note that this recent development is a pointer to the point we have always made that it would be an illusion for the Nigerian government to think they can defeat insurgency in the North­east militarily. Without addressing the underlying cause o...

Could you give a brief assessment of the one year of President Bola Tinubu administration ? Tinubu himself gave the clearest perspective for appraising his administration at the so-called G20 compact with Africa economic conference in Berlin last November. Addressing German investors at conference, he boasted that he deserves the Guinness World Records recognition for neoliberal reforms.  Tinubu has been the most effective presidential tool of the capitalist class and imperialism in Nigeria’s history. That is why the IMF and rating agencies like Standard and Poor’s have showered him with praises. Under Tinubu’s watch, big capitalists and multinational corporations have been able to extend their capacity to exploit the working people and natural resources. Tinubu and his cronies are of course beneficiaries as well, as you can see with the award of the Lagos-Calabar superhighway contract. But poor working people and the already squeezed middle class have been the worse off. The r...

With increase in kidnapping and other crimes, the Afenifere leaders have just suggested a multi-level policing in the country. To what extent do you agree with the Afenifere leaders? Do you see this yielding meaningful results considering the existing Police structure? Kidnapping has become a major industry of what you can describe as the insecurity sector of the national economy. You might want to recall that in the first half of 2021 alone, over N10 billion which amounted to $19.96 million at the time, was recorded as ransoms paid to free over 2,000 kidnapped people. This did not stop the deaths of about 10 percent of these victims. We thought things were bad at that time. But compared to now, that was child’s play. This nefarious industry now has different scales, large-scale, medium scale, small scale and even micro. You tend to hear of those big women and men or increasingly so middle-class people that are kidnapped. But even welders, cobblers, barbers and other poor artisans ...

Comrade Ayodele "Iturity" Akele The death of Ayodele Akele marks the loss of one of the fiercest and most consistent class fighters in Nigeria, over the last four decades. From June 1980, when, as a students’ leader at Yabatech he emerged as founding Secretary General of the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) he trod a path of self-sacrifice and unrepentant struggle as unionist and socialist activist. At the time of his death, he was National General Secretary of the National Conscience Party (NCP). As a quantity surveyor, he worked at the Lagos State Property Development Corporation (LSPDC) from where he was elected Lagos State Chairman of the National Union Public Corporations Employees (NUPCE) in the late 1980s till 1996 when NUPCE along with CSTWUN and RSEU, merged to form the Amalgamated Union of Public Corporations Civil Service Technical and Recreation Services Employees (AUPCTRE). Beloved by rank and file workers who had implicit trust in ...