The Movement for a Socialist Alternative (MSA) calls on the Central Working Committee of the two labour centres of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and Trade Union Congress (TUC) to reject the communiqué and the endorsement of deregulation by the labour leaders. And as well insist on a new mandate for a 48-hour general strike and protest as first step for the immediate reversal of the hike in the price of fuel and electricity tariff.
The Labour leaders led by Ayuba Wabba and Olaleye Quadri had in an early morning parley with the Federal Government called off the 24-hour general strike and planned protest/rallies against the increases in the price of fuel and electricity, planned to kick off on the 28 September, under the guise that it now fully buys into the “perverted logic” of deregulation and that the increase in electricity tariff will be suspended for two weeks.
The proposed promised deadline of December 2021 given to the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) to achieve a 50% completion for the rehabilitation of the refinery in Port Harcourt, with no delivery date for those in Warri and Kaduna, makes nonsense of the agreement and in itself is a clear indication that government cannot be taken seriously.
Nearly all the members of the ruling elites are direct or indirect beneficiaries either in the form of the huge super-profits of millions in hard currencies and/or the racket of the fictitious subsidy regime, which explains why they can never be committed to actually ensuring that the refineries are functional or new ones are built. Ironically President Buhari himself had labelled the oil refinery plan a “fraud”. The fraud that labour leaders are now endorsing by way of supporting deregulation of the oil sector, which gives reign for the working masses to further be condemned into more penury to guarantee more and more super profits for the oil barons.
In April, the Group Managing Director, of the NNPC, Mallam Mele Kyari had pronounced to the whole world “there is no subsidy and it is zero forever…”, so who is fooling who?
If, after over five years in power and a total of 21 years since the end of the military dictatorship in 1999, the ruling elites have failed even with trillions of naira budgeted and spent in the so called “Turn Around Maintenance” of the refineries, it will be naive to think that the Buhari regime will have the muscle to now achieve this feat. In reality, it completely endorses neoliberal capitalism, and employs the importing of petroleum products as a means of improving the capital base of a greedy capitalist class that is averse to investing its looted wealth in the development of the means of production, given the fact that there is more profit to be made from merely buying and selling.
Nor will even private refineries, as is the expectation of a Dangote refinery, mean that profit will cease to be the operating philosophy of the logic of the market. If anything, according to the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Mrs Zainab Ahmed, the Dangote refinery will not function as a charity outfit. Its prices will be competitive and determined by “international market forces” so as to maximise profit. This increase, from the point of government, is only aimed at demonstrating that there are super profits to be made in the oil sector as a means of attracting the private sector to invest in it.
For the labour leaders who know that even the so call N30,000 minimum wage has been over taken by inflation and the devaluation of the currency, with many states to date refusing to even pay, and all the political office holders earning wages as high as heaven, it beats one’s imagination hollow that the labour leaders can even consent to the policy of deregulation. This past four decades of regime after regime and pump price after pump price increase, with the driving force determined by deregulation, and capitalism have freely given the reign of power to reap super profits from the oil wealth of the country, while millions of the people continue to wallow in poverty.
Trillions of naira have been spent in the past five years on subsidies, this demonstrates the fact that the country is rich enough to build new functional refineries and even make existing ones functional. But no, the All Progressives Congress (APC) led Buhari regime, like the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) regime of 16 years that it replaced, puts first and foremost the interest of members of the billionaire club as opposed to the well-being of the working masses.
It is already clear as daylight that the DISCOs (electricity distribution companies) will not respect this agreement and that the electricity tariff increase will not be reversed. The logic that applied to the increase in fuel is the logic that will be applied to electricity as well, and that the working masses, will have no other option than to turn to themselves and all of the existing movements in the communities to organise and demand a reversal and the renationalisation of the electricity sector back into public ownership, but this time under a democratic control and management of the working masses, through elected representatives of the electricity workers, community consumers to manage the sector.
The crisis in the oil sector demands nothing less as well, and we need the building of new refineries, outright opposition to deregulation and privatisation, with the oil industry nationalised under the management of workers.
The surprise for a larger layer of the working masses would have actually been if the strike had gone ahead, the labour top brass bureaucrats are perceived as not any different from the ruling elites in their aspiration to equal the life style of the members of the billionaire club and the ruling elites. Like them they are chauffeur driven in jeeps, move about with bodyguards, see themselves as CEOs of their union, whose words are command and must go unchallenged by any rank file members of the union.
It is in the light of this that the anger that has been expressed by workers against the calling off of the 24-hour general strike and the open show of disapproval by a majority of the leadership of the state councils of the NLC and TUC with their national leadership over the call off must be applauded. In Edo state, the local leadership of the NLC and the TUC even defied the suspension and went ahead to lead a protest against the call off, this is one positive development that cannot be ignored. In this act is the seed of a potential for an alternative leadership of the unions around a programme of defending the interests of the working masses, and also going ahead to build a mass working class party with the structures and resources of the unions to challenge the ruling elites, defeat and wrestle power from its grip, overthrow capitalism and commence the process of the socialist transformation of society by putting in place a workers’ and poor farmers’ government.
Whatever magic that has been employed under the table to achieve this deal with the labour leaders, whether using a dangling of carrots for future political offices, or appealing to their support for the APC, the labour leaders have been propelled to make a retreat. It is clear to all that the Buhari regime cannot in reality claim a victory for long, there is in reality no escape from the fact that the regime and its capitalist system await a date of confrontation with the working masses. Calling off the general strike cannot annul this reckoning with the regime. If, in the end, the labour leaders decline in their responsibility to provide leadership to the anger of the working masses, it is clear that the working masses will not vacate their historical task and will inevitably come into the arena of struggle to confront the ruling elites and their capitalist system. The working masses will as a consequence independently through its own class dynamics produce a leadership for itself, and this in why it is important to challenge the Joint Action Front (JAF) and other pro-labour and socialist organisations to up their game with a plan of action for mobilising the working masses, providing education to the masses that will build up the consciousness of the masses to allow them to come into struggle against the ruling elite, build an independent political platform or take up the task of building the Socialist Party of Nigeria (SPN), calling on workers to join and build the SPN as a party of the workers, farmers and the poor to take on the ruling elite.
The MSA calls on the Central Working Committee to follow in the footsteps of the majority of workers who in their various workplaces have condemned the call off by rejecting the agreement and communiqué signed by the labour leaders. This new support for deregulation must be rejected with all its ramifications.
To come to a conclusion that the price hike can be taken away from the question of deregulation is in itself laughable, when deregulation and indeed capitalism and the system of meeting the greed for profit by the oil barons is the very reason for the constant hike in prices. That the labour leaders have now come full circle to make an open peace with deregulation and capitalism, this will no doubt earn them the anger of the working masses. However, the regime can no sooner claim a victory and the two week deadline will come and go, indeed other micro economics indices like devaluation and inflation which are already at in double digits will also in no time also come to bear and this current increase will also become too little to meet the insatiable greed of the billionaires.
The so call palliative can only be aimed at cutting a deal for the labour leaders, other arranged palliatives of the past had in no way prevented a new hike, this will not in any way also do the same.
