THE IGBO GIANT STRIDES AGAINST ALL ODDS
9 years ago
‘There is one army stronger than all armies
in the world put together; that is an idea whose time has come’- Victor Hugo
A. INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND
This forum, and this particular theme, has
provided me with a long awaited opportunity to put down and share my thoughts,
in a more structured manner, on the lessons of the pro-democracy and
self-determination struggles of the last two decades in our country.
Of course there were several currents in
both struggles, currents that were often in contention one with the other,
currents which struggled against a common foe externally, and sometimes
struggled among themselves for hegemony within the struggles, and of course
too, currents which saw the two broad terrains of struggle as inter-connected,
and which approached and participated in both struggles as part of a single
multifaceted process of class struggle.
I belong to one of the currents, which not
only saw the various terrains of struggle as linked and part of a single
multifaceted class struggle, but also actually organised in such a way that
enabled it to participate in all the facets of the class struggle.
For that current, the various struggles
were essentially integral parts of a class struggle for social emancipation. In
that sense the most sustainable and socially transformative outcome for any of
the struggles was and remain social revolution, the socialist reconstruction of
society.
Running through all these struggles were
various dialectical contradictions; between repression and resistance; between
non-violent struggle and violence; between armed struggle and the mass
movement; between self-determination and social emancipation; between
revolution and counter-revolution; between elites and hoodlums; between elitist
leaderships and foot soldiers; etc. Some of the contradictions were real and
were expressions of reality, others were simplify false oppositions and
contradictions.
So, in the following pages the issues in
this theme are being addressed from the perceptive of an active participant; a
participant who is part of an active organising and mobilising process, who is
part of the ideological debates that ensued within the course of the struggles,
and who is passionate about the subject. So permit me if I sometimes sound like
comrade Eskor Toyo, and at other times like comrades Ola Oni, Edwin Madunagu or
Bala Usman among others; at once pontificative, reflective, judgemental,
self-critical, angry, conciliatory, and or futuristic.
B. SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND SOCIAL CLASSES
Social movements are organised and
mobilised assemblages of people actively working towards the realisation of
shared goals and interests. These may be around a single issue, or a combination
of issues.
Social movements are of various forms and
types, and maybe defined by their composition, their goal, their issue or
issues being pursued, the alternative vision being proposed etc.
This means that we can have social
movements of ethnic nationalities and or indigenous peoples fighting for self
determination; social movements of workers in specific sectors of the economy
fighting for improved living and working conditions; social movements of
exploited classes and or peoples fighting for social transformation; etc.
Social movements play a decisive role in
the process of struggle to remake society; social movements are composed of
social classes organised and mobilised in pursuit of a shared goal, objective
or vision and mission. Society is composed of social classes who are engaged in
daily process of sometimes contentious and sometimes complementary interactions
called struggle. These struggles waged between and within classes are called
class struggle.
C. WHAT ARE CLASSES?
So we go on to a seemingly mundane question, what are
classes? Classes are groups of peoples
who are defined and shaped by their place, position and role in the processes
involved in the production of the means to provision the well-being and
livelihood of a society.
It is therefore, a historically determined and constructed
socio-economic category. Human beings
need to feed, clothe, be in good health and provide shelter etc for
themselves. They also have sundry other
needs which they need to cater for.
To meet these needs, human beings engage the natural environment, as
well as engage one another, in activities of various types in order to produce
goods and services that they now use to meet these needs and wants.
The relationship, which evolves between them in the course of these
activities, is what gives character to classes, in terms of their composition,
interests, etc.
Throughout most of human history, humanity has been divided into at
least two broad categories or classes; the class of the owners of the means,
including instruments of production, and the class of those whose labour is
exploited to provide the wealth of society for they own no means of production
of their own.
In the modern world, in the world of the twentieth and twenty first
centuries, the two main classes are those of the capitalist classes, who own
the industries, agricultural concerns, mines, etc; and the class of workers,
who are employed in these economic concerns.
The owners of the means of production, the capitalist class, through their
ownership of the means of production, appropriate the wealth of society, and
through this wealth, access the levers of political control, creating a
political power, the state, to oversee society in their interest.
These two main classes are present in Nigeria. The Nigeria situation
is made complex because of the neo-colonial and dependent character of her
economy. This means that the economy is dominated by foreign capital, Foreign
Transnational Corporations, thus ensuring that the Nigerian worker suffers
under the yoke of not only the national ruling class, but also under that of
the foreign capitalist class.
WHAT IS CLASS STRUGGLE?
In a situation where one class owns exclusively and through
historically committed brigandage and banditry, the means of production, and on
the basis of this, appropriates the wealth created by social labour; and where
another class creates wealth, through its labour, but finds itself impoverished
through the appropriative act of the other class; in such a context the relationship
between the social labourer and producer of social wealth on the other hand,
and the appropriator of that wealth on the other hand, can only be one of
antagonism, now overt, now covert.
It is this relationship of antagonism, based on conflicting
interests, which gives rise to a struggle between these classes. This struggle is referred to as class
struggle.
Class struggle is thus, a relationship of antagonism between and or
within two or more classes, or fractions of a class, arising out of fundamentally
opposed interests, and expressed in forms of confrontational activities.
CLASSES
AND CLASS STRUGGLE
Often times when class struggles are discussed, it is
erroneously thought that only exploited classes wage it. Thus, class struggle
is often exclusively associated with such actions of the exploited classes as
strike actions, protest marches etc.
The fact however, is that class struggle as a relationship between
two or more classes is waged at every time by both the exploited classes and
the exploiting ruling classes. For example the Venezuelan ruling class is
currently waging an intense form of class struggle against the Venezuelan state
presently headed by a populist figure.
When a military dictatorship deploys units of the armed forces to
disperse a street protest, a rally or even a symposia; when an employer or the
state locks out striking workers, arrests their leaders, breaks up their
meetings etc; or when a civilian regime, doctors the electoral act, refuses to
register more political parties, or embarks on spurious propaganda on the need
to remove so called subsidy from petroleum products; the ruling and exploiting
class, or some of its fractions is engaged in waging class struggle.
When the state, or an employer, decides not to recognize a union, or
refuses a wage demand, or retrenches and declares redundancies in order to
shore up profits; when such a class proposes to cut wages, or when such a state
decides to cut social spending, but gives tax breaks, to businesses and
increases spending on security; it is engaged in waging the class struggle.
The class struggle both in the economic sphere i.e. in production,
and in the political sphere i.e. in the state arena, is constantly waged on a
daily basis. What varies from day to day
is its intensity.
D. WHAT
IS THE STATE?
The state is the whole apparatus of exercising political
control over a society. It includes the
bureaucracy exemplified in the administrative structures, as well as the
coercive machinery manifested in the armed and security services. It also includes the ideological
structure. The state is a system, a
process of power relations crystallized above society in order to assure the
control and regulation of that society in the interest of the ruling and
exploiting class.
There is no such thing in a class
society, as a neutral state. The state
in a class society, in a capitalist society, is a class state, a capitalist
state. It is a system of regulatory,
control, and administrative structures erected in the interest of the dominant
and thus, dominating class. This is why
in the periods of intense class struggle, in moments of open class hostilities,
the state sheds its pretentious neutrality and intervenes decisively on the
side of the ruling class against the exploited classes.
This is why the American, British or Nigerian state will proscribe
unions, in order to force striking workers back to work.
E. STATE AND
CLASS STRUGGLE
Something else needs to be pointed out about class
struggle. It is not only waged between
classes, it is also often waged within classes.
Thus, various fractions of a ruling class may engage themselves in
antagonistic conflicts, which may even be debilitating to its strategic
interests as a collective hegemonistic class.
Thus, a fraction of the Nigerian ruling class temporarily
controlling state power, and using state power to oust its opponents within the
class from favoured, choice and powerful economic positions, may engage its
factional opponents in violent and even debilitating class struggle including
assassinations, judicial murders, arrests and detention, harassments etc.
Likewise, different fractions of an exploited class may also engage
themselves in conflicts, which may even assume a violent and debilitating
nature.
It is within this context of the class character of the state, and
the multidimensional nature of class struggle, that the relationship between
the state and class struggle can be located.
The state often times participates in the class struggle on the side of
the exploiting and oppressing ruling class, even when it is apparently neutral
in the conduct of its activities.
The more intense is the resistance struggle waged by the exploited,
the more visible the (Ruling) class character of the state becomes.
The class state is therefore, not a priced trophy to be captured and
preserved unchanged by the exploited in the course of the class struggle. The state is on the contrary, a machinery to
be captured and then dismantled as a prologue to rapidly erecting new popular
state machinery in its place.
F.
SELF DETERMINATION
AND SOCIAL EMANCIPATION: FROM BORI TO BOLIVIA
This section is going to explore the
progress being made in the struggle of social movements for self-determination
and social emancipation. From Bori to Bolivia what has changed and what is
changing? What is the significance of Bori, as well as of Bolivia? What is the
relationship between Bori and Bolivia?
Bori, and the Ogoni social movement, MOSOP,
that it symbolises represent one end of the spectrum that ranges from
resistance to revolution. Bolivia and the social movement of landless and
indigenous peoples that it symbolises represent another end of that spectrum.
But whereas Bori is closer to the resistance end of that spectrum, Bolivia is
closer to the revolutionary end of the same spectrum.
The difference between the two is very
essential. Bori, which encapsulates the entire process of the mass organisation
and mobilisation of the Ogoni people for minority rights and
self-determination, threw up the question of political power but did not
organise and mobilise to address it. In Bolivia on the other hand a similar
social movement on pauperised indigenous landless peasants mobilised and
organised for protection and guarantee of ethnic rights and self determination,
posed the question of power, grasped the question of power, and proceeded to
successfully organise and mobilise to take state power.
The Bolivian social movement understood the
necessity to challenge state power, which was class power, drew and integrated
the appropriate lessons from that process of challenging state power, and
reorganised itself to make the transition from resistance to revolution.
The self determination struggle in Nigeria,
despite the intervention of Chikoko movement, from Bori to Kiaima failed to
correctly pose the question of power, failed to understand it, failed to draw
the appropriate lessons and failed to make the transition from resistance to
revolution.
The Bolivian activists took state power,
the Nigerian activists failed to pose the question of taking state power much
less organise and mobilise to achieve that goal.
Cochachamba represent the epitome of the
protest movement of indigenous peoples in Bolivia; Bori, Kiaima, June 12, etc
represent and epitomise the various peaks of the class struggle in Nigeria.
Nevertheless we can speak of Cochachamba as Bolivia today, because it made the
transition and took state power. And we speak of Bori, Kiaima or June 12 today,
in the sense in which we speak of them, because we failed to organise seriously
to take state power.
But it can be said that the various armed
militant groups in the Niger delta, and the emergence of armed militancy
directly refutes my thesis above. It can be said that this armed militancy
demonstrates seriousness in challenging state power. I quite agree that armed
resistance maybe one of the measures for demonstrating seriousness in
challenging state power, but so were the mass rallies in Bori, in Yenagoa,
across the country in the run up to the collapse of the Abacha dictatorship,
etc. But there is a fundamental difference between challenging state power
however seriously, and challenging for state power!
To challenge state power is to organise
against expressions and manifestations of the exercise of state power. This is
important, but quite inconclusive. To challenge for state power on the other
hand means not only to organise against the manifestation of state power, it
significantly also means to organise to displace and supplant state power, to
organise to capture state power and displace the class, class alliance, or
fraction of class holding and wielding state power, and replace it with the
class, the class alliance or fraction of class waging the resistance struggle.
G. WHY WE FAILED TO MAKE THE TRANSITION
Why did we fail to make the transition from
resistance to revolution? We failed because of a number of reasons touched upon
below. And this enumeration is a clear challenge as well as poser to all
participants in our collective struggles past, present and into the future.
This listing is not in any other of priority.
Let us recall here that along the road from
Bori to the present, was Gioko, which was the first watershed and historic
crossroads for the Ogoni struggle and its social movement, MOSOP. Bori represented
the high tide of the movement, and Gioko the denouement; in the same vein as
Kiama represented the ascendancy of the IJAW struggle and Odi, its denouement.
The tragic failure, which Gioko represented, led to the tragedy of the Ogoni 9
and the military repression of Ogoni land.
The tragic failure represented by Odi, led
to the tragedy of the military occupation and repression of the Niger
Delta. The repression and conquest of
Odi, was as it was happening a metaphor for the future occupation of the Niger
delta by the Nigerian state.
One of the most significant response to the
success of Bori and the failure of Gioko, was the emergence of the Pan Niger
Delta Resistance Movement, Chikoko. With Chikoko came Kiaima and the Kiaima
declaration, the Ijaw youth Council [IYC], the mobile parliament of the IYC,
experience; the various declarations and bills of rights of the various
nationalities of the Niger delta, including the Oron, the Ikwere, the Isoko,
the Ibibio, the Anang, etc.
Along also came the attempt to build
strategic alliances within the Niger Delta and across Nigeria. These include
the initiation of contacts with OPC, and the establishment of the Coalition For
Self Determination [COSED] around the goal of the insurrectionary convocation
of the Sovereign National Conference [SNC]. COSED sought actively to construct
alliances with youth formations from the South West, South East, North Central,
and core north of Nigeria.
Beyond this was the alliance of Chikoko and
the self-determination movements with the pro-democracy movement represented by
the United Action For Democracy [UAD].
We also sought and proposed a strategic
alliance with the organisations of Nigerian workers, and in particular the
decisive organisation of Nigerian workers in the Niger Delta, the Oil workers
[NUPENG].
For the most salient lesson of the Gioko
tragedy was and remain the futility of isolated struggle, and the consequent
necessity to construct historic and fighting alliances of oppressed classes and
fractions of classes.
It was the retreat of this internationalist
and revolutionary perspective, the defeat of the tendency propagating this
within the Chikoko movement, occasioned by the separation of a critical and
decisive segment of the emergent leadership from the mass movement, and its
evolution and consolidation into a new elite which lies at the root of our
historic failure.
H.
REVOLUTION AND
COUNTER REVOLUTION IN THE SELF DETERMINATION STRUGGLE
Why is this so? And what is meant by the
above formulation? Any reading of the original manifesto of the Chikoko
movement will reveal its revolutionary and social emancipatory character,
likewise is any reading of the Kiaima Declaration. But what happened along the
way?
The emergent leadership of the movement
began to separate itself from the mass movement, began to draw distinctions
between itself as a new elite and the foot soldiers as hoodlums and riffraff.
This leadership, understanding the
revolutionary nature of the movement being organised and mobilised into being,
and fearful of the consequences of a revolutionary outcome for elite power,
began to speak and mobilise with revolutionary phrases while organising and
acting in reformist ways. This led to a situation where the majority faction of
the emergent leadership began to present reform as revolution.
Secondly, rather than organise the active
defence of the mass movement on the streets and in the creeks, this faction of
the leadership, began the diversionary debate counter posing non violent to
violent struggle.
The same leadership, which requested the
aroused followership to dance Ogele bare-chested and face military bullets in
the process, had the gut to accuse the mass followership instinctively
organising its own self-defence of corrupting a non violent struggle with
violence. This leadership afraid of the state power, and even more afraid of
the possibility of popular power, turns round to accuse the victim of violence
as being its perpetrator thereby exonerating the real perpetrator of violence
even though state violence was verbally also condemned!
The mobile parliament as the active
platforms and structures of organisation and mobilisation of the resistance
could have also become active platforms and structures of organising the
collective defence of the resistance struggle.
Youth formations in each community and Ijaw
clan could have been both platforms for organising and mobilising resistance as
well as platforms for organising and mobilising collective communual defence of
the resistance struggle.
Instead this emergent elite leadership,
seeing itself as a new ruling class in waiting, began the false opposition
between armed struggle and mass movement. Whenever youths raise the question of
defence including armed self-defence, the leadership countered by opposing
armed to mass struggle. Yet that contradiction was deliberately false.
There was no reason at that time to
separate the two, for the two not to find coexistence within the same form. The
historic opportunity existed in the experience of the Chikoko movement and the
IYC not only for a mass pan Niger Delta resistance movement to be built and
consolidated, but also for the that mass movement to have integrated collective
self defence into is organising and mobilising, and to have thus evolved and emerged
as an armed mass movement.
It was this betrayal of the mass movement
by its leadership, this tragic failure to organise mass self defence on a Pan
Niger Delta level and scale, which allowed for dissatisfied youths in the
direct line of fire to grope in the dark, separate off from the mass movement,
retreat from the streets and creeks, and organise armed clusters in the
isolation of the swamps.
This combined by the intervention of the
class enemy, in the form of politicians corrupting youths with money and
turning them into armed political party thugs, as well as the oil Transnational
companies giving security contracts to youth groups and paying youths off,
which led to the emergence of armed resistance grouplets which sometimes
challenged state power, but never challenged for state power, and which were
also divorced from the mass of the people.
Hence the emergent non violent elite
leadership became absorbed into the state apparatus at various levels, while
the leadership of the armed grouplets for a while roughed it up in the swamps,
and through the creeks arms in hand eventually emerged, ready to be absorbed
into the same ruling class and state apparatus responsible for the oppression
and exploitation of the people, and the brutal repression of the mass movement
and the armed groups.
I. IN LIEU OF A CONCLUSION
The self-determination and democratic consolidation struggle,
workers struggle, as well as the struggle for Human Rights, are forms of class
struggle.
Class struggle is a fact of life in any class society, and even more
so in a capitalist society.
The class struggle is waged by both the exploiting, ruling classes;
and also by the exploited toiling classes.
The class character of the leadership of the democratic struggle
plays a significant role in the outcome of the democratic struggle.
Democracy is imperfectly and exploitatively manifested in Liberal
Democracy. It is more humanistically
manifested in a popular workers democratic order.
For democracy to have meaning in peoples’ lives, the people must be
both the object and the subject of democracy.
Provisioning the basic welfare needs of all must be the goal and
foundation of democracy. The
democratization process resolved into its moments of democratic establishment
and democratic consolidation, can only be achieved and guaranteed by the
popular democratic masses, led by leaders thrown up from among themselves.
The bane of any democratic struggle is the indiscriminate
construction of needless strategic alliances with fractions of the ruling class
in temporary opposition to the regime currently wielding state power, and the
ceding of strategic leadership of the concluded alliance to the unstable
fractions of the ruling class.
And finally, the truly democratic society is one where all facets of
societal life, including production and power relations have been thoroughly
democratised; and which is based on a socialized economy under the management,
control and ownership of democratically elected enterprise management
committees.
Capitalism is an international system. Thus, the capitalist ruling class is an
international ruling class. Only the
worldwide solidarity of the exploited and oppressed classes can defeat the
capitalist ruling class on a world wide scale, and assure the overthrow of
capitalism globally, thus the creating the basis for the irreversible
humanistic development of civilization.
BY
JAYE GASKIA
PORTHARCOURT
AUGUST 2010.
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