Mariam Mariam
During the 1980s, I was very actively involved in the Nigerian trade union movement. I had been elected as the chairman of my local chapter of the Radio, Television and Theatre Workers’ Union (RATTAWU), and eventually I also got elected as the vice chairman of the Nigeria Labour Congress in Kwara state, as well as chairman of its educational/information committee. The various positions that I held in the unions allowed me to understand the workings of the labour movement. I saw from very close quarters the weaknesses of the trade union platform as an organ of struggle against the state as well as its basic strengths. There was an atmosphere of intrigue as different tendencies attempted to determine the direction of the entire movement. There were genuinely committed trade union organisers as there were opportunists.
My union, RATTAWU, was a particularly interesting outfit, because its leadership was very rightwing and always part of the minority that opposed almost by reflex the positions of the more radical leadership of the NLC. This minority of union leaders, organised around the then president of the Nigerian Civil Service Union, David Ojeli, had been primed by the Nigerian state during the Shagari presidency to take over the NLC leadership at its Kano convention of 1981.
The group was defeated decisively and it was in the wake of that defeat, that the first steps were taken during the Second Republic to introduce a trade union amendment bill, to remove the monopoly of the Nigeria Labour Congress as the only central labour organisation in the country. So the Nigerian state has always tried to decapitate a militant labour movement in Nigeria. What Obasanjo did with his recent anti labour bill is not exactly new. The hope of the reactionary regimes ruling Nigeria has always been to have an industrial relations regime which will open the route for unbridled exploitation of the working people, without a strong platform of protest or protection by the workers. This is the context within which the trade union movement has always operated.
Unfortunately, most people who comment about the labour movement often do so without an understanding of its peculiar features, its weaknesses or even an appreciation of its strength. Many of the critics of the leadership of the NLC don’t seem to understand the creative balance and consensus building mechanisms that allow a normally fractious movement to work together for the Nigerian people, as it confronts a government whose policies are against the country’s interests.
It seems to me that the labour movement has become the victim of its own success. If we look around us, the political party system is literally dead. The parties are anything but democratic institutions and therefore cannot convey even basic ideas about the feelings of the Nigerian people, as they concern the poor quality of governance in the country today. As nature abhors a vacuum, the leadership of dissent and organised opposition to the prevailing economic regime has been taken up, in my view, courageously, by the Nigeria Labour Congress.
Yet so many people have taken a cynical attitude about the NLC and its leadership. At several meetings of our Editorial Board, there have been many individuals who would take the position that Adams Oshiomhole was getting his comeuppance, in the fuel hikes by Obasanjo, for not supporting Buhari’s stand against Obasanjo’s controversial re-election, or for generally hobnobbing with the government. Kabir Yusuf, underlined this cynicism in his October 11 column, NLC: Show off or show down.
I will not defend whatever weaknesses Adams Oshiomhole has, nor excuse the failures of the Nigeria Labour Congress and these are numerous. But the truth is that the NLC as a trade union body, must negotiate conditions for the working people, no matter the government in power. That is how it was able to achieve a new minimum wage for the working people at the beginning of the civilian era in 1999. It is a painstaking, day-by-day process, which naturally brings the union activists into all kinds of contacts with officials of the government of the day. The process is the same all over the world.
So those who wonder why Adams and other so-callcd labour aristocrats would become familiar faces in activities organised by representatives of the government, party chieftains or even the captains of industry, must be able to understand that there are formal and informal avenues and contacts that come useful in the strengthening of the collective bargaining process. Ultimately, the unions must be judged by what they achieve from the bargaining process for the workers. The fact that they get the loyalty of the working people, is testimony to their successes.
It is where the unions move into a more overtly political terrain, that they have drawn so much flak. A lot of romantics would want the unions to act as if they are an alternative political party; or that they dissolve into the platforms of the opposition and take up the fighuiJf the political opposition against Obasanjo. But this is not what the trade union movement is about.
This re-inforces the fact that the political system in the country today is one that is alienated from the desires of the Nigerian people. They fail to articulate positions about the felt needs of the mass of our people, and that explains the attitude towards the Nigeria Labour Congress. On the one hand, it is a vehicle of protests that conveys popular feelings, while on the other hand, it is seen not to go far enough.
It is the fact that the labour movement sets its own agenda and parameters of struggle, tha’ might not be in consonance with the wishful thinking in some political circles, which leads to accusations against its leadership and some of its tactical mistakes in the confrontation with the Nigerian state. A lot of people for instance have made accusations that the twists and turns of negotiation between the NLC leadership and government, which are often followed by strikes, the reduction of prices of petroleum products, and then new increases by the state, and a return to negotiations and threats of strikes are pre-arranged!
Maybe this should not even surprise an objective observer, given the general level of cynicism raging in the land today about leadership in every facet of our national life. The truth is that for a long time those who have had the opportunity of leadership more often than not, have used such privileges to behave irresponsibly, have not served the common good and have generally deepened the misery of the people. This is why those who have attempted to organise the resistance of the people, such as the labour leaders have done, cannot expect any lesser levels of cynicism about the content of both their intentions and actions.
But there is a wisdom to draw from the different misconceptions of the labour movement that we have drawn so far. It seems to me that there is a ripe basis for the emergence of a genuinely progressive movement in the political field of Nigeria, that can provide an ambience to canalise the anger in the land in a democratic wave that can sweep away the rotten political culture and its economic corollary of a neo-liberal surrender to imperialism. It is this rotten culture that is really the problem the Nigerian people must decisively excorcise. The vanguard position of the labour movement today in the people’s confrontation with an insensitive Nigerian state, is an indictment of the Nigerian political elite, especially of the socialists, radicals, so-called progressive politicians, the patriotic intellectual and all those who have a stake in building a truly independent, democratic country as opposed to the dependent, neo-colonial and incorrigibly corrupt state that Obasanjo leads. It is that state, which Transparency International laid bare the other day.
The Nigerian labour movement pre-dates the Nigerian state, and it is important to underline the fact that it is upon the basis of the militant actions of the working people, that the nationalist movement found its confidence and built its strength. Those who have read the history of the 1930s, would remember the active organisational work done by the Railway workers’ union under Michael Imoudu against colonial rule.
It was within the organisations of the Nigerian labour movement that many of our nationalist heroes developed their theoretical perspectives which in turn helped to direct the nationalist movement from the 1940s. For example, Chief Obafemi Awolowo was the Editor of The Nigerian Worker, while the most militant nationalist organisation of the 1940s, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe’s National Council of Nigeria and the Camerouns (NCNC), swam on the crest of the wave of working class actions. Working peop proved to be the most loyal detachment of the nationalist movement that ended colonialism in Nigeria as in most African countries.
Those who don’t understand this historical background might not be able to appreciate just why the Nigeria Labour Congress is today at the forefront of the national resistance to the unpopular economic policies of the Obasanjo administration. By its nature labour movement is political despite efforts by the state to purge the movement of a political content. It is the place which the working people occupy in a modem capitalist economy, and especially in She neo-colonial variant as we have in Nigeria, whichuivai iaoiy pushes them and their organisations towards active acts of resistance. This explains the unceasing acts of mobilisation and strike actions against the hike in petroleum products pricing in Nigeria.
By their nature therefore, these acts of resistance cannot be reduced to the idiosyncrasies of the individuals leading the movement at a particular time. During the colonial times, the main actor was Michael Imoudu, yesterday it was Hassan Sunmonu and today it is Adams Oshiomhole. “Each of these gentlemen operated within a set of historical variables, have been conditioned by the events of their times and each led the Nigerian labour movement with his own individual style.
There are several reasons to criticise Adams Oshiomhole, especially in respect of the role of the individual within the mass, and what might be the subjective intentions that underpin his activities or his choice of tactics, or the way his actions have been perceived to impact on the movement he leads. I think that Adams choices, actions, inactions and relationships have sometimes imparted negatively on the perceptions of him and his leadership of the labour movement However, in my estimation there is a lot of misconception is about the Nigerian labour movement, which becloud our appreciation of the heroic contributions which the movement has made to the emergence and consolidation of our country’s democratic process Aftcrall, in a terribly divided political landscape as we have today, how many organisations can lay claim to a Pan-Nigerian audience to its message as the Nigerian labour movement? This is one of its mosi positive attributes.
So on the eve of what many have referred to as the mother of al I strikes, planned for November 16th, it is important to highlight the positive side to the history of the Nigerian labour movement. This is not to underestimate its mistakes and its problems. But on ba sign I think the labour movement has been a force for goo’ ‘C and the history and that is why it can still lead the strug country from the economic and political factor.
