FROM “RENEWED HOPE” TO “RENEWED HOPELESSNESS”
Tinubu’s Capitalist Policies Have Failed!
Time for a Socialist Alternative
At a recent high-level meeting in Nigeria’s capital Abuja in May this year, the British High Commissioner to Nigeria, Dr. Richard Montgomery, said the following “I’d like to use this opportunity to express the whole lot of support of my government to the Renewed Hope Agenda of His Excellency, the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Bola Tinubu. We commend his agenda for its focus on priorities and delivery. We acknowledge that you have done a lot to put in place transparency and accountability”. (Press from the Office of the Vice President Kashim Shettima 17 May 2024). Similarly, in November, the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, Kristalina Georgieva, also commended “Nigeria’s decisive actions to reform the economy, accelerate growth and generate jobs for its vibrant population. The IMF strongly supports Nigeria on this journey.” (Punch Newspaper, 22 November 2024).
By H.T. Soweto
No doubt, millions of Nigerians must be wondering whether these high priests of global capitalism are talking about the same country as the one they live in when they commend Tinubu’s policies in such glowing tones. This is because over the past 16 months, their experience of the Tinubu government and its economic reforms is nothing but hopelessness and mass misery.
AN ECONOMIC CATASTROPHE
While on the campaign trail in 2023, Tinubu promised to reform the economy in order to usher in growth and development in all areas of life including agriculture, infrastructure, public education and health care and job provision. His vision for Nigeria was captured in a blueprint titled “Renewed Hope Agenda” wherein he pledged to build “a Nigeria, especially for our youth, where sufficient jobs with decent wages create a better life” and one where “no parent is compelled to send a child to bed hungry, worried whether tomorrow shall bring food. He also pledged to “make basic healthcare, education, and housing accessible and affordable for all”, and to “generate, transmit and distribute sufficient, affordable electricity to give our people the requisite power to enlighten their lives, their homes, and their very dreams”.
Nearly two years after, none of these promises has been kept. Instead, Tinubu has succeeded in plunging the entire country into a new depth of hopelessness and mass misery. Between May 29, 2023 and now, the price of petrol has increased by about 355 percent thereby detonating an inflationary rise in the prices of all commodities. The result is what has been variously described as the worst cost of living crisis in a generation! Even though GDP growth has recently improved to 3.46% year-on-year in Q3 2024, the cost of living crisis persists. In fact, so bad is the situation that millions are starving as food prices have rocketed by 61 percent over the past one year. According to a United Nations estimate, nothing less than 35 million more Nigerians are at risk of acute starvation next year.
As we have previously observed, the key to the unfolding economic catastrophe in Nigeria was the decision of President Tinubu to implement IMF/World Bank prescribed economic reforms principally the abolition of petrol subsidy and the devaluation of the country’s currency. These reforms were carried out despite their attendant negative consequences for the productive capacity of the country and in expectation of promises of more usurious loans despite Nigeria’s already huge debt profile. In the last one year alone, nothing less than 11 multinational companies have exited Nigeria. The list includes Pfizer, PZ Cussons, GSK, Jumia Food, Bolt Food, Procter & Gamble etc. Gone with them are hundreds of jobs in an economy where unemployment is at over 40 percent – although the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) claims a lower figure of 5.3 percent by saying that anyone who works an hour a week is not unemployed! The exit of the companies is reportedly due to the impact of the increase in fuel price and devaluation of the Naira on business operations. Of course, this cannot entirely be true since manufacturers already passed the impact of the policies to consumers by raising prices yet it gives an insight into the confounding economic catastrophe the neoliberal reforms have created.
Aside operational costs, consumer spending capacity has declined seriously due to inflation and effect of naira devaluation on income. The recent increase in the national minimum wage from N30, 000 to N70, 000, though yet to be paid across the country, is unable to raise the living standards of the working class. This is because in real terms, the N70, 000 minimum wage is lower in value than the worth of N30, 000 minimum wage five years ago when it was first signed into law. Five years ago when the old minimum wage was signed into law, N30, 000 was worth $83 in dollar terms, now the new minimum wage of N70, 000 is worth only $42 in dollar terms today. In addition, over 80 percent of Nigeria’s workforce are employed in the unregulated informal sector where the minimum wage law is hardly respected by employers of labour. This therefore means that even if the new wage is fully paid by both the Federal and state governments, only a fraction of the workforce would benefit leaving millions of Nigerians still struggling to survive on poor wages amidst a rampaging inflation.
LABOUR’S WEAK RESPONSE
Sadly, the leadership of the labour movement have been unable to mount the kind of resistance that the situation demands. Instead, the leadership of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and the Trade Union Congress (TUC) have spent the last one and a half years pussyfooting despite the neoliberal offensive against the working class. Occasionally, the labour leadership issues bold and radical press statements to respond to the economic policies of the government but except for appeals and threats, the labour movement is yet to put forward a clear strategy to resist the onslaught. Indeed, given the obvious contradiction between radical words and inaction, the labour leaderships seem to have drawn the conclusion that it is often better to be silent.
But even the fewer press statements have become weak politically in terms of the position of the movement on the key neoliberal economic policies of government. So for instance, labour has abandoned the movement’s traditional rejection of fuel subsidy removal and call for reversal of any increase in the pump price of fuel. This ideological and political retreat has had a demoralizing effect on the union members and also the general movement as a whole, by adding to the mood of despair or feeling that nothing can be done.
But if the labour bureaucrats thought ‘bending the knee’ to the capitalist status quo would be of any benefit, the law of unintended consequences appears to have answered their illusion. At the end, the labour bureaucrats only succeeded in weakening their own position and this was made manifest in the way and manner the regime, emboldened by the retreat, recently harassed and arrested the NLC president, Joe Ajaero. The development was a lesson in how class collaborationism or social dialogue is a danger to the labour movement. Unfortunately, the leadership of the NLC and TUC do not seem to have fully learnt the lesson leaving the rank and file activists and Socialists the responsibility of campaigning to rebuild the trade union movement and refashion it as a platform of struggle.
FOR A 48 HOUR GENERAL STRIKE AND MASS PROTEST
Part of that would include campaigning within the labour movement for a properly prepared 48-hour general and mass protest to breathe new life into the mass resistance against the regimes’ anti-poor policies. Since early this year, a mass movement against the neo-liberal economic policies slowly built – its peak being the #Endbadgovernance protest that erupted for ten days in August. Instead of answers to the demands, protesters were met with water cannons and live bullets by the police and the army. Also, hundreds of protesters were arrested and detained including member of the Democratic Socialist Movement (DSM) and National Coordinator of the Youth Rights Campaign (YRC), Adaramoye Michael Lenin, who, with others, is now standing trial for treason at the moment.
A new report by Amnesty International titled ‘Bloody August: Nigerian Government’s Violent Crackdown on #Endbadgovernance protests’ has exposed the chilling details of the bloody repression which left at least 24 dead. “In almost all cases the victims were shot by the police – firing live ammunition at close range, often at the head or torso, suggesting that they were shooting to kill. Of the survivors interviewed, two protesters suffered gunshot injuries after being shot in the arm and leg by the police. Several survivors were suffocated by indiscriminate use of tear gas” Amnesty International said in the report.
Due to the scale of the repression which continues even up till now, plus labour’s inaction, the mass movement has slowly stalled but the overall situation continues to worsen. In fact, between August and now, petrol prices have gone up at least twice! Now as the year ends, many working families are bracing for one of the worst yuletide in Nigeria’s recent history due to the economic situation. In this situation, a call for a two-day general strike and mass protest especially starting early next year can help to reignite the mass movement against the regime’s neo-liberal offensive.
However, even in the likely situation that the NLC and TUC leadership fail to call a general strike, there is still a need for activists to begin to discuss how to prepare for the next stage of the struggle. For us in the DSM, we think that there should be plan for new nationwide actions starting from February next year. To make this achievable, groups and organizations like the Joint Action Front (JAF), Take it Back (TIB), #Endbadgovernance Movement, ASCAB, TPAPM, Nigeria Patriotic Front Movement (NPFM) and others need to discuss to draw up a common plan and programme.
A POLITICAL ALTERNATIVE NOW AND FOR 2027
Linked to this is the need for a mass workers and poor people’s political alternative to fight for political power. One indubitable fact that has been proven in the last 24 years of civil rule is that unless the working class seize political power and begin to run Nigeria on Socialist basis, none of the fundamental economic and political contradictions facing Nigeria can be resolved.
Unfortunately, the Labour Party (LP) registered by the trade unions has not been able to play the role of such a political alternative despite the significant support its Presidential candidate, Peter Obi, got in the 2023 general elections. Peter Obi is a supporter of capitalism – the same social and economic system and programme that is behind the crisis plaguing Nigeria. Many of Obi’s young supporters are genuinely interested in changing Nigeria. Many of them are playing important roles in the struggle to challenge the anti-poor policies of the Tinubu regime and especially the #Endbadgovernance movement which erupted in August. As the class struggle unfolds, the best of them are bound to draw the conclusion soon that what is needed is a democratically run political party and candidates that stand fully opposed to capitalism.
But what would in particular hasten this radicalization in mass consciousness is the building of a mass party of the working class, youth and poor masses on Socialist programme. Such a party involved in the day-to-day struggle of the working masses and radical youth, unlike the Labour Party (LP) which distances itself, will demonstrate very clearly what kind of party is needed to liberate Nigeria. While we of the DSM are committed to the ongoing effort at seeing the possibility of reclaiming and repositioning the LP as a genuine working people party, we strongly hold that left activists should at the same time look outside the LP for an alternative.
The African Action Congress (AAC) led by its Presidential candidate Omoyele Sowore, has demonstrated clear consistency by remaining steadfast at the polls and in class struggle over the past few years. Although not yet a fully-rounded Socialist party although some socialists work within it, the AAC working with other left groups including the Socialist Party of Nigeria (SPN), the PRP Vanguard, NPFM, remnants of the National Conscience Party (NCP), ASCAB, TPAPM, the Movement of the People (MOP) and left activists working in the LP, can become the rallying point or nucleus on the road to building such a mass political alternative. But to do this require that the left is able to overcome the inertia and division that keeps it apart by working out a common programme for joint work and intervention. Obviously, we may not agree on everything but a joint action programme would be a basis for the start of activity.
Only this kind of political preparation can place the Nigerian working class, youth and poor masses at a vantage position to seize any opportunities that may present itself to change the fortune of this country for the better by fighting for immediate improvements and building a movement that is capable of taking political power and enthroning a workers and poor people’s government that will carry out Socialist programmes.
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MINIMUM WAGE: Workers and Labour Leaders Need to Fight for Full Implementation and Resist Anti-poor Policies