By Baba Aye

A wind of change blew across Nigeria in March 2015, as contentious elections took place in the trade unions and the general polity. The re-emergence of General Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressives Congress (APC) on the political scene was heralded around the world as a new dawn for politics in Africa.

After an electoral stalemate of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) the month before – punctuated by violent disruptions by delegates of the National Union of Electricity Employees (NUEE) – Comrade Ayuba Wabba of the Medical and Health Workers’ Union of Nigeria (MHWUN) was eventually elected in a reconvened session, in what was widely seen to be a transparent electoral process.

This context buoyed mass support for Buhari from poor people, who were roused by 2012 anti-fuel price hike revolts in January. But the government will find it difficult to meet their expectations. The Nigerian state is broke. The fall in oil price has been disastrous, while the state depends on oil for 95% of its foreign earnings. Several federal ministries and half of the 36 states owe workers two to five months in back salaries. Despite gains in reclaiming territory from Boko Haram, the war in the north-east is far from over.

The ‘June 12’ years of revolution and counter-revolution: 1993-99

The ‘June 12 struggle’ – ignited by annulment of the June 12, 1993, elections won by MKO Abiola of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) – changed Nigeria. Not since independence in 1960 had the left been at the head of a mass movement from below.

Socialist activists as leaders of trade unions and the radical wing of the nationalist movement had been at the fore of mass mobilisation that birthed self-government in the 1940s. As independence drew near in the 1950s, the burgeoning native middle class de-radicalised the nationalist movement and made peace with the departing British colonialists. However, they could not reach a peace with themselves. Mobilisation of ethno-regional identities by different sections of the ruling class in post-colonial Nigeria became a perennial cause of political crisis, which also led to the civil war that claimed over two million lives from 1967-70.

Two military interregnums (1966-1979 and 1983-1999) helped put a lid on the Pandora’s Box of a ruling class whose hegemony was always fractured by a lack of any meaningful national consensus, leading to periodic eruptions of resistance. The left, fragmented and miniscule in weight, was however never positioned to give leadership to these outbreaks until 1993.

Before the 1993 presidential election, Campaign for Democracy (CD), a coalition of Left groups and social movements, had called for a boycott, due to the obvious insincerity of the military junta’s transition programme. However it was only in Ogoni land that the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP), with its mass following, ensured a boycott. Once the election was annulled, the Left – through CD – gave leadership to the mass upsurge of resistance.

NLC had given full support to the SDP bid, which MKO Abiola won. Three weeks after the annulment and with the country in the throes of an uprising, it demanded an official release of the election results and the swearing-in of its winner by the military government. In August, the junta stepped aside instead and set-up an Interim National Government (ING), with the active connivance of the leadership of the SDP. Noting that the changes in administration had not produced a return to constitutionalism, the NLC directed Nigerians to “stay at home with effect from Saturday, 28^th August 1993 until further notice”, but called off the general strike before it started.

This vacillating approach marked NLC’s actions until it was banned in 1994 by the General Sani Abacha-led junta, which eased the ING out of power on November 17, 1993, with the collusion of MKO Abiola as well as capitalist politicians arrayed around him and some left elements with the CD. This collaboration led to splits in the CD and various groups on the left.

The spectrum of the left today can be traced to re-alignments in the mid-1980s and the splits that occurred in 1993-94, reflected by the split of CD. Two parties of defiance were established in 1994 to challenge military absolutism: Democratic Alternative (DA) and National Conscience Party (NCP). They were both registered after the reinstatement of the republic. But they were also de-registered (amongst others) for not presenting candidates or winning seats in an appreciable number of constituencies. NCP challenged this anti-democratic act in court and still remains a bona fide party, which participated in the 2015 general elections.

While the NLC remained banned, the year 1997 opened with workers’ agitations. The industrial unions wanted Congress unbanned and strikes swept through the shop floor, albeit on economic issues. All this was tonic for the pro-democratic movement to re-group and re-awaken. On May 17 of that year, United Action for Democracy was formed at Ilaje-Bariga in Lagos, with DA as its backbone. It gave leadership to the final phase of mass struggle against the military dictatorship.

When Sani Abacha died on June 8, 1998, General Abdulsalam Abubakar – Abacha’s defence chief – took over the reins of power, looted the country’s external reserves and organised a transition to civil rule in 11 months.

The Fourth Republic and the Current Situation

The Fourth Republic is the longest stretch of civilian rule since Nigeria’s independence. The liberal market ideology of ‘globalism’ required an ideology of ‘freedom’. Civilian rule thus became the norm. Despite its faults, PDP did succeed in building a genuinely pan-Nigerian party of the bosses. This was significantly helped as the government’s oil revenue grew steeply from N724 billion in 1999 to N4,400 billion in 2007 and to N8,800 in 2011.

But while the ruling class has been able to forge pan-Nigerian party formations of significance – first through the PDP and now the APC – the same has not been the case for labour. Despite the fact that the past 16 years have been filled with monumental battles led by organised labour – including eight general strikes, the left has not been able to build an alternative political vehicle on a significant scale.

The Labour Party and the Working Class

In January 1999, Adams Oshiomhole was elected president of the NLC, and the Congress agreed there was the need to establish a workers’ party with a socialist perspective. While in office, Oshiomhole led an unprecedented six general strikes.

The Labour Party, from its founding convention on February 28, 2004, aimed to woo progressive elements within the ruling class and ‘patriotic’ professionals. The past 13 years have shown just how futile these ‘social-democratic’ pursuits have been.

Adams Oshiomhole appeared to support the party. In hindsight, he used it as a ladder to fulfil his political ambition of becoming governor of Edo state. He contested on the platform of the Action Congress in the 2007 elections based on an understanding with the Labour Party. However he jettisoned LP and stuck with ACN, which was the backbone of the merger that formed the APC.

There was also renewed interest in joining the party among workers, after Dr Segun Mimiko was returned as governor of Ondo state in 2009. He would abandon the party and join the PDP five years later.

The Labour Party had twelve seats in the last National Assembly (it now only has one in the House of Representatives). But LP members did not support popular demands; during the January 2012 general strike against the hike in the pump price of petrol, for example, they voted against the protests.

There are two radical left reformist coalitions: the United Action for Democracy and the Joint Action Front. They encompass diverse groups and tendencies of the revolutionary left and other groups including nationalists, liberation theologians and human rights campaigners.

The National Conscience Party was the only left party that contested the 2015 presidential elections, winning only 24,455 of the nearly 30 million valid votes cast, and faring no better in other elections.

After 2015 – what prospects?

There was massive support for the candidacy of General Muhammadu Buhari within the working class, with some socialists even describing ‘Buharism’ as a form of socialism. After his victory, revolutionary socialists of the ‘Power to Protest’ movement went so far as to describe this as ‘historic and momentous’, which marks the closing chapter of a bourgeois democratic revolution that started with the January 2012 uprising.

General Buhari has stated that Nigerians should not expect miracles. It would not be the first time that a party promising heaven and earth gets into government and then declares that it found an empty treasury. It will require mass action led by the NLC for Buhari to be made to implement key aspects of his manifesto, in the context of dwindling state resources. These include a social wage for the 25 million poorest Nigerians and significant increases in state spending on education and health.

Buhari’s presidency is unlikely to represent an end to the tumultuous period we are in. On the contrary, we are likely to see a deepening of the current protests and strikes and increased confrontation with the APC-led state at federal and state levels. For these to further the self-emancipation of the working class, the need for a workers’ party with a socialist programme is clear and urgent.

The leadership of NLC is committed to rebuilding the Labour Party. Many on the left have rather called for the building of a new party due to the party’s history of class collaboration. Some have formed socialist parties of various tendencies. But history shows that it is nearly impossible to build a mass workers’ party outside the trade unions in Nigeria. It is equally unlikely that a mass party established by the trade unions will be revolutionary even if it disavows the crass opportunism of the existing Labour Party.

The left therefore faces major challenges on two fronts. On one hand, there is the need to fully engage with organised labour in its quest to rebuild LP or to build a new workers’ party along radical-reformist socialist lines. On the other hand, the various left groups need to build their strength and deepen their influence within the working class. These two legs are not mutually exclusive. On the contrary, they are the two necessary threads for weaving a fabric of working class struggle that can bring about change that furthers the self-emancipation of the working class.

Baba Aye is a Nigerian trade union and socialist activist and poet, and National Convener of United Action for Democracy (UAD).