| THE BIRTH AND MURDER OF THE NIGERIAN LABOUR PARTY (A GREAT PROMISE BETRAYED) BY Eskor Toyo Introduction The Nigerian Labour Party, born a giant child of hope of Nigeria down-trodden millions, passed away by murder. She was led away in the dark down the river by conspirators and bartered away to armed robbers to be put to death as a sacrifice to Midas. The bourgeoisie have arms in one hand and money bags in the other and the working people know that they are bandits. The bourgeoisie are the insatiable money mongers who mount on money for economic power, lean on guns for political power, and exploit political power for more economic power. They lord it over the working millions as the ruling class. It was always my intention to write the present work. I have felt obliged to tell the Nigerian workers or working people how the party they totally supported was formed and how it was betrayed and abandoned to die. Now that the traitors feel that the Nigerian workers and working people are ignorant and unthinking goats to be betrayed and fooled again and again, giving the facts to the people has become an urgent imperative. I initiated the formation of a massive working people party. It is perfectly true that if l had not lived in Nigeria between 1983 and 1989, no one would have thought of anything like the Nigerian Labour Party, 1989- 1991. The party took the capitalists, the imperialists and everyone except the workers in Calabar by surprise. Since the party resulted from my long and resolute campaign for it and my persistent education and argumentation, I am the only one alive who can tell the workers a full story of their betrayed party from the very beginning to the time when traitors, cowards and opportunists killed it. I have a duty to tell this story, a duty maximally compelling and important. I am used to telling the people what l know to be the truth. Lies and hypocrisy can only weaken them. In order that the story may be clear and because l have nothing to hide, l shall mention the names of main actors as far as I know. The wage workers, the working people, Nigerians as a whole, and the world at large deserve the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. The Idea Conceived The Nigerian Labour Party (1989-91) arose from my vision from 1983 that any time the military regime that took office in that year retired, the Nigerian working people should face the succeeding civilian capitalist regime with a substantial working people party. Actually l had this vision during and after the civil war. Again and again in speeches to workers audiences then I told them and their leaders that they should unite, educate the workers for power and launch a struggle to take power through a party of their own after the civil war. In this connection, two pamphlets that l wrote during the civil war must be mentioned. They were a part of my campaign to educate the working class towards working people power. One is entitled, The Working Class and the Nigerian Crisis. It was an attempt to get the so-called workers leaders to unite and intervene in the developing crisis to save the working people and the country through an alternative pro-people power of the working people themselves. The second pamphlet was entitled, “Nigerian Soldier, Peace and Future. It was intended to tell the soldiers that their sacrifice of life and blood would have more meaning and would be much better rewarded if after the war Nigeria ceased to be governed by a regime in which a few greedy Nigerians and foreign fortune hunters conspired to keep the people in perpetual exploitation, poverty, illiteracy, ill health and misery. We should return from the war to see a new power a people-oriented power. It must be said that during that war and after it l was the only one who spoke or wrote openly advocating people power. The rest were either slaves of bourgeois propaganda or frightened. Part of the reason why they were frightened is that they did not know enough, were not patriotic enough or were not honest enough. Knowledge, patriotism and honesty each gives power. “Nigerian Soldier, Peace and Future was very well received by soldiers who saw it. They always asked for more of it, but only a very limited number was available. There was no money to print more. “The Working Class and the Nigerian Crisis had been also very well received by workers who saw it, but only a few were available for the same reason. I was not like the others. Before l left for Europe out of utter frustration with the idiocy of trade unionists and snake “comrades, I had dared the lion several times in the open regarding a party for the working people. Always the workers received the idea enthusiastically. Others smashed up the effort through opportunism, etc. The older dockworkers, medical and health workers., etc. in Lagos may remember my speeches during the civil war in 1968 and 1969 before I left for Europe late in 1969. As far as the military were concerned, first it was Nzeogwu, Ojukwu and Ironsi, then Gowon, then Murtala Mohammed, then Obasanjo. After that, came another bogus Uncle Tom civilian regime, that of Shehu Shagari. Before one could say Jack Robinson, another military regime, the one headed by Buhari, ousted the Shagari civilian joke. It was too much for me who in my youth had fought for independence. Was Nigeria a harlot or football? Were workers and peasants mere donkeys? I became concerned. In 1985 Babangida staged a coup and took over. I decided that the working class should no longer sleep. Before the military retired whenever they did the working class should confront the next civilian regime with a party of the working people. It is this resolve that led to the Nigerian Labour Party. Initial Steps: 1. From 1983 the workers in Calabar used to invite me to every May Day rally. I used every such occasion to tell them of the need to unite against the exploiters, for political education to understand things, for working people power as the authentic solution to the sufferings of the workers and other ordinary people, and for a political party of the working people as the vehicle to power. 2. In 1984, two unions in the Cross River State invited me during their education seminars to give them a lecture. The first union to invite me was the Nigeria Civil Service Union, led by the Secretary, Iyambi Akpet. I spoke to the workers about the importance of power; that power was no monopoly of civilian exploiters or military autocrats; that they, the workers could and should form their own party like the bourgeoisie and struggle for power; and that one day they would come to power. This would be the beginning of solving society problems in the workers interest. Everything else was mere illusion. Whichever class or group was in power used it to feather its own nest. This had become obvious The lecture was oral. The workers were so convinced and impressed that they unanimously told me that the message of the lecture was too revealing and important to be limited to the few of them that heard me or to Calabar or the Cross River state. Why not write it down so that it could be read by workers in the whole country? I noted their request, but who would print it? I did not ask them. Two weeks or so later, the Civil Service Technical Workers Union, Cross River State, led by Ebony Okpa, had its own education workshop/seminar and invited me to give a lecture. Again orally l repeated the lecture on workers and the power question that I had given to the workers of the Civil Service Union. The workers received the lecture with the same unanimous enthusiasm as their colleagues of the Civil Service Union. To my great surprise, they made the same request as the workers of the Civil Service Union. The lecture, they urged, was too important and eye opening to be limited to them. They too demanded that I should write the lecture and let all workers and trade unionists in the country read it. I replied that l had delivered the same lecture about two weeks back to the workers of the Nigerian Civil Service Union and that, amazingly, their colleagues there had made the same request. I then said: This shows that the workers are one because they suffer the same exploitation and oppression wherever they work. Surely, since you can understand me, you are educable. Once you are determined to take up the government and rule, you can do so. Soldiers are not more educated than you. Actually, it is you who work to run the government under military or civilian rule. The trouble is that you leave the policy decisions about what is to be done to military gangsters, civilian gangsters, or imperialist fortune hunters to take. It is not difficult at all to reduce the lecture to writing, but who will publish it? I have no money to pay a printer. At once, the workers told me: Our union can print it. I asked: Will you ask your union to print it? The workers answered in unison, Yes. I then told them I would write out the lecture and give it to their Secretary, Comrade Ebony Okpa. A week or two later the lecture was written, typed and ready for printing as a pamphlet. It was entitled, “The Working Class and the Third Republic. It was sub-tiled “Reflections on the Question of Power The workers reception of my lecture did one thing: it confirmed my experience during the civil war. In speech after speech during the civil war, I observed that the workers accepted the message of the need for them to prepare to take power with unbounded enthusiasm and admiration. It was the trade unionists and the so-called “socialists or “revolutionaries who were frightened of the bourgeoisie or too concerned with their own narrow opportunistic, “leadership or factional interests to bother. In fact, the country was gripped in fear and the working class was chained in a mental prison. No one knew enough or had enough courage to think and speak openly to workers of workers or working people power. What was the fate of the pamphlet? Comrade Ebony Okpa got the pamphlet, promised to get his union to print it and took the typescript to Lagos to get clearance from Sylvester Ejiofor who was the General Secretary of his union. To my greatest shock, Ebony Okpa reported that Ejiofor demanded that the reference in the preface to the workers of the Nigerian Civil Service Union should be removed. In the preface, l had written that the pamphlet was the text of a lecture delivered first to workers of the Civil Service Union and next to workers of the Civil Service Technical Workers Union (Ejiofor union), and that the workers of the two unions had demanded its being written down and published for all the workers in the country. I was stunned by Ejiofor request. This was the first time when he revealed his perfidious, selfish and anti-unity character to me. How could Ejiofor or anyone else be so mean as to demand the exclusion of a mention of the workers of the Civil Service Union from a factual preface? I turned over the matter in my mind. What kind of trade unionist is Ejiofor? Are the workers of the Civil Service Union not workers? I knew that Ejiofor once belonged to a small “radical group that considered trade unions that did not share some of their so-called “Marxist views as reactionary. However, I had long held the opinion that a union leader might be reactionary but not all the workers led by him. At any rate, response partly depends on how a case is stated. Moreover, and most importantly, workers and trade union leaders are to be educated. I did not know by then that Ejiofor was busy trying to enlarge his union by encouraging break-away groups from other public service unions and that this could estrange him from the Civil Service Union. Whatever was Ejiofor quarrel with the Nigerian Civil Service Union, here was a demand by the workers themselves. Why did Ejiofor want credit for this request to be limited to the workers of his union alone, if not for a very perfidious and carefree factional reason, or in order to impress some foreign funder that his union alone was busy with workers education in Nigeria? I turned to Comrade Ebony Okpa and said: Comrade, you can now see for yourself the kind of irresponsible factionalism, opportunism, personality cult and hatred among the so-called trade union “leaders in Lagos that have paralysed the working class movement in Nigeria all these years since the days of Imoudu. You can see the level of pettiness that your General Secretary is capable of. Well, Comrade, I insist that the tribute to the workers of the Nigerian Civil Service Union should be in the pamphlet. If you cannot publish it, let all this go into history. Comrade Ebony Okpa agreed with me and the pamphlet was eventually printed. It is worth reporting that the first union to take copies for sale was the Nigerian Civil Service Union. Our solidarity defeated the sectarianism, factionalism, perfidy, irresponsibility and personality cult of Sylvester Ejiofor. I have told the story of this pamphlet in detail because of what it shows of Sylvester Ejiofor as a person, of his standards, of his sense of responsibility to the fate of the working class and its movement. This case also brings to mind the selfishness, treachery, dishonesty and irresponsibity that long characterised trade union “leadership in Lagos and led to immobility and defeatism in the trade union movement in spite of the existence of the Nigerian Labour Congress. 3. I went on giving lectures in the same vain in Ikom, Ikot Ekpene, etc. At Ikot Ekpene, something happened that all workers should know. The Nigerian Civil Service Union had invited me to give a lecture at Ikom. I told the workers about the need for their own power. I said: It is because the so-called workers leaders are only interested in begging for crumbs from the exploiters table and not in workers power that each time the civilian exploiters mess up things, it is the military who take over. The armed forces are not necessarily united as far as political thinking is concerned. The day workers leaders show unity and embark on a serious bid for working people power they will find that some of the military people are on their side. This has happened again and again in the history of other countries and can happen in Nigeria. After all, the men in military uniform are Nigerians. Not all of them like or benefit from the rot going on. The country is like a sleeping fool because the workers leaders do not really care for the fate of the country or the working class. About two weeks later, I was to deliver the same lecture to the branch of this union in Ikot Ekpene. In between, i.e. before I went to Ikot Ekpene to deliver the lecture, Babangida coup took place. At Ikot Ekpene, the workers were already seated in the hall when I arrived. As soon as I entered the hall, they exploded with a loud and prolonged applause. It was an unusual reception of an unknown guest. I was taken aback. They said: Sir, you have been vindicated. They explained that the coup confirmed what I had said in Ikom, that the military were not necessarily united on the political question. Here was one set of the military overthrowing another. It turned out that some of the organisers of the meeting had been in my lecture at Ikom and had reported what I said. Again, this incident shows the force of the kind of enlightenment I was giving. It also demonstrated that it was not their own unreceptiveness or inability to understand things that kept workers in Nigeria from power. It was lack of ability to educate and the inability to mobilise because of selfishness, factionalism and opportunism and cowardice on the part of so-called leaders. My experience from 1960 till today has again and again confirmed this. The workers understand the language of power and can be mobilised with great enthusiasm for it. The trade unionists settle, of course, only for crumbs from the master table, begging the masters, and bowing before them which is the professional role assigned to trade unionism. The trade unionists also incline to opportunism, manipulation, double talk and aping the behaviour and life style of the masters. 4. I must now report on what a militant described as my criss-crossing of the country to agitate for a workers party. Between 1983 and 1988, I had requests from various circles to study capital investment in Nigeria, all the commodity boards, and co-operatives, and the whole question of self-reliance. When Babangida launched MAMSER (Mass Mobilisation for Social Justice and Self-reliance) and the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP), my lecture schedule so expanded that many wondered where I lived. I visited Sokoto, Funtua, Kano, Katsina, Maiduguri, Bauchi, Yola, Jos, Kaduna, Zaria, Makurdi, Akure, Lagos, Ibadan, Benin City, Port Harcourt, Enugu, Owerri, Umuahia, Umudike, etc. in some cases two or three times. I made use of these opportunities. Wherever I went I asked for and often met leading trade unionists there. Sometimes, I had a meeting of working class activists other than simply NLC leaders. It is pertinent to record the main points of my speeches and two questions that were always asked. I made the points that follow. (a) Since so-called independence, the country so-called “leaders have been building capitalism. This is a system where, as can be seen in Nigeria, the masses are exploited and denied to build up a few millionaires. (b) Whether it is the military that rule or the civilians, the situation is the same. The military have only demonstrated what I said in a lecture in Kano early in 1965, that the solution did not lie in military rule. (c) Military intervention has also demonstrated beyond any doubt the value of power. It shows that power is important and that whichever class or group rules is the one that shares out the national cake. It considers itself first and foremost. Those on top of the military want to retire to be millionaire businessmen and millionaire landlords. This decides their preferences and their alliances. (d) The military have also demonstrated that power or rulership is not for civilian wealth grabbers alone. Actually power is for all citizens and no one has any special birth right to it. (e) The military are actually workers. They work with guns, tanks, etc. to prepare for and if the need arises fight to win a war. They are paid wages and salaries for this job. This job is not done by businessmen; it is done by workers specially trained for this. The same is true of bank, petroleum, road, air and all other workers. (f) The military officers stage a coup not because it is their job to do so but for two reasons. First, unlike the civilian wage and salaried workers, they know the value of power. Secondly, when the civilian non-worker millionairing rascals mess up, it is the military that care, either for personal or for national reasons, to organise and take power from them. (g) If the civilian workers become interested in power there are many ways in which they can take it. (h) The very first thing to do is to form a workers or working people party aiming at power. That, after all, is what the civilian exploiters do. They form parties and they rally the workers to vote for them because the workers do not see that they too can be in power through their own party. (i) In the period of military rule the formation of a political party is not allowed. What workers should do is to form an educational forum to educate themselves towards their own party and to discuss political questions that arise from their own point of view. On the question of education, I was at their service. There were many universities with people that could help. The workers should unite around the idea of a party and of power, no matter what divisions might exist around trade union questions. These speeches were received with a lot of enthusiasm. The workers realised for the first time the importance of power, the importance of a political party, the possibility before them, and the need for unity and self-education around the party idea. Two questions always came from the workers like a recurring decimal. The first question is Comrade, the party idea is very good. It is what we must embark on. Is it the trade union leaders that will run our party? My answer always was this: No, comrades; not necessary. Not all trade unionists will be party activists. Some trade unionists will even be detractors. Some may even betray the party while pretending to be active in it. Trade unionism and workers politics, i.e. the politics for working people power, are not the same. You have now a trade union leadership but you do not as yet have a political leadership, i.e. a leadership for workers power. Trade unionism is not a movement for power; it is a beggar movement. It is a movement to beg the master for crumbs from his table. The political struggle aims at making the workers the masters. The politics for workers power will require certain types of education, understanding, organisation, discipline and code of conduct which are different from those of trade unionism. For instance, it may require a certain kind of courage which a trade unionist need not have. It will demand a kind of sacrifice that he may be unable to make. Trade unionism is a full time job with its problems. Workers politics is not a chance affair but needs a full-time dedication which a very busy trade unionist cannot afford. Besides, some party activities will be definitely incompatible with the spirit and practice required of a beggar movement. By the way, this party is not going to be a party of workers alone although workers will start it. It will be a much better party if it also embraces peasants, artisans and professionals. Moreover, you cannot really get the leadership adequate for this party from the start. Those who start the party may not long remain leaders of it. The leadership of the party a leadership adequate for its tasks is to be evolved. It will emerge from education, action, and experience. A proper leadership can emerge only from growing knowledge of ourselves and sorting out. Anyone lawyer, doctor, artisan, farmer, retired worker, etc. may be a leader in the party. Why must the trade unionists alone, even if they are good, be the leaders? Without forming the party and going into action, you cannot determine who can and who cannot lead the party. Therefore, go and form the party first. The party is actually first and foremost an educational apparatus. It is a machinery for educating the workers, other working people, and the country; a means of learning discipline, a means of gathering experience and learning from it in action. It is a means of creating a new leadership for the working people and the country. No such leadership exists. It has to be created. Without starting the party, you cannot create it. I must report that the question and the tone in which it was asked arose from a deep distrust of the trade union leadership and lack of faith in their sincerity. I must report also that the workers were satisfied by my answer and heaved a sigh of relief. It was obvious that if they were not assured on that question they would not embrace the idea of working towards a party. The second question that always came was: Comrade, the regime will not like our party. What if they do not recognise or register it, or if they ban it? I always proceeded as below. Eskor Toyo: Do you know of the organisation called African National Congress (ANC)? Workers: Yes Eskor Toyo: Where is it? Workers: In South Africa Eskor Toyo: Who is the leader of the ANC? Workers: Nelson Mandela. Eskor Toyo: Where is he? Workers: He is in prison. (Nelson was then in prison and the ANC remained banned) Eskor Toyo: Who is the Prime Minister of South Africa? Workers: Blank. (No answer came because nobody knew) Eskor Toyo: As you know the ANC and that it exists, so does every politically conscious person in the world, including the rulers of South Africa. As you know of Nelson Mandela and that he is in prison, so does everyone. That ANC which you know about is a banned party. It was banned way back in 1960, but it continued to exist as if it was not banned. The leader has been in prison for more than twenty years but the ANC exists. It can be so with your party. The ANC continued to exist in the jaws of the world most ferocious fascist tiger. That could happen because of the will of its members. They did not form the ANC because the White racists would like it. They did not seek the permission or assistance of the racists to form it. They formed it as a vehicle to fight for power which they would use to abolish their suffering. So long as their suffering continues, the ANC remains and will continue to be relevant. I went on thus: The ANC is only banned in the law of the racists; it is not banned in the heart of the humiliated Blacks who formed it to end their humiliation. As the ANC has found ways and means of survival and of action in clandestinity, so can you. By the way, a really sincere, really courageous and really fighting working people party for power never operates all the time in the open. Most of the time workers parties live under cover and come to power from underground. Nowhere in the world will the exploiters power tolerate the existence of a large, genuine and effective working people party which can come to power. Even when you manage somehow to come to power, the capitalist employers will seek somehow to destroy your power and your party. If they cannot do that, they will seek to corrupt the party and government and destroy them from within. All the time, you have to be vigilant and strong. The condition for being strong and indestructible in any circumstance is to be sincere and close to the working people. There are parties in the world that all the millionaires and imperialists of this world have been unable to kill. Let us cite only three. One is the ANC. Another is the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). A third example is the working people party of China, which they call the Communist Party of China (CPC). There are other such working people parties, like those that have come to power and formed worker-peasant states. Even in Nigeria, the hostility of and non-recognition by a ferocious military regime was not able to end the life of the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS). These were mere students very young people. They decided that they formed NANS not in order to please anyone but because of their problems. Since the Babangida regime or any person or agency has not solved those problems, NANS remains relevant and must live. The students have made it live. Where there is a will there is a way. In this case, there are many ways. You are not forming a party for the Babangida regime or anyone else. You are forming it to struggle for power in order to solve your problems and those of other common people. So long as those problems remain, you can find ways and means of making nonsense of anyone non-registration, non-recognition or ban. The important thing is to form the party first and begin to march. When we reach the stage when they refuse to register our party or ban it, you can turn to me. We shall know what to do. As for recognition the party is for the recognition of workers and peasants. It is wrong to seek exploiters recognition. They will be forced to recognise the party whether they like it or not. After all, everyone eventually recognises a strong opponent or enemy. This speech always settled completely the doubts of workers who had misgivings on this score. With the matter of leadership and continuity disposed of, the workers always unanimously embraced the party idea. I must say, however, that because of the way and circumstance in which our Nigerian Labour Party came to be formed in 1989, those who had fears about leadership by the trade unionists were at once vindicated. They were again vindicated in 2001. I must note also that because opportunists took over the party, the workers were not in a position to seek my advice and I was not able to do anything about the betrayal and abandonment of the party by those who misled it. I was even very much unwanted by them. The fears of those who had a worry about registration, recognition and banning proved also prophetic, given the misleadership and opportunism that prevailed. National Addresses and Rivers State During my campaign, I had occasion to address the National Executive meetings of several trade unions either orally or by letter. I spoke to members of state councils of the NLC in many states. However, I must report specially four addresses, three national and one at Port Harcourt to be mentioned later. One occasion was under the auspices of the MAMSER. This organisation had summoned to Lagos a meeting of local government chairmen to talk about mass mobilization. I was invited. At a stage I addressed the meeting. My theme was Who are the masses, and mass mobilization for what and for whom? I defined the masses as “working people namely, wage workers, the lower echelon of salaried workers, peasants including fishermen, artisans, professionals and petty traders. They are those who toil from morning to evening but remain poor or relatively so and suffer. The masses are these people, their wives or husbands, and their young children. It was wicked, I said, for anyone to mobilise these beasts of burden for permanent exploitation and neglect by fortune hunters. This was what had happened in Nigeria since independence. Mass mobilization was not new. The nationalists had mobilised the Nigerian masses to struggle for independence. When so-called independence came, get-rich-quick sharks exploited their rulership opportunities to form so-called political parties to mobilise the people for exploitation by them. The people had turned apathetic because of civilian and military exploitation. Anyone who wanted to mobilise the Nigerian masses this time must mobilise them in order to give them power to solve their unresolved problems themselves. A party of the working people and people power were necessary after military rule. The local government chairmen must think, act and mobilise towards this end. While doing so, they should use their official opportunities to do the very best they could do for the common people in their council areas. I remember this assembly because of Madam Mogaji. My speech was received with a loud applause. At once an elderly woman raised her hand and was recognised. She was introduced as Madam Mogaji, the famous leader of the Lagos market women. She spoke briefly and eloquently. She said I was the man Nigeria needed as leader. When the military retired, I should contest the presidential election. She would mobilise all women in Nigeria to vote for me. Such is the immensity of the goodwill that awaited the Nigerian Labour Party if it had been well led. The second occasion was a meeting of the National Executive Council of the National Association of Seadogs. The meeting was at Kaduna and they invited me. They had met to define their attitude to MAMSER. I pointed out to them that military coups would not help the country. They did not need to attack Babangida so-called mass mobilization. If they could, they should use any opportunity afforded by MAMSER to meet the people and educate them about the need for a working people party for people power after military rule. I gave them the assignment to mobilise serious minded young people towards a working people party for power. These young patriots were excited about the party and their assignment. They emphasized their own accent on discipline and action. After some on-the-spot consultation, they told me that their organization was at my beck and call. I left them saying they should not lose sight of the assignment I had given them. Again, this was a body of young activists potentially powerful and ready to go to war at the call of a disciplined and well led party of the working people. Another incident I must report is also connected with MAMSER. This organisation called a meeting of leading trade unionists from all over Nigeria to discuss the topic “Labour and Mass Mobilization. It was at Durbar Hotel, Apapa. I was invited as a guest to the meeting. Many trade unionists a hundred or more arrived from all over the country. This was the period when the trade unionists were split into the Shamang Group alias “Democratic Group and the Ciroma Group (which some people styled “Marxist group or “Radical group). The Shamang-led faction was actually a small but growing rival faction of the NLC, led then legitimately by Comrade Ali Ciroma. In my activities and speeches I refused to recognise the split and spoke to the trade unionists as trade unionists and to workers as workers. This class approach was most effective. It had magic results. When this large number of trade unionists had arrived at Durbar, there developed a hitch and Professor Jerry Gana, Head of MAMSER, apologized to me and said the meeting would not hold. I replied that it would be most discourteous to let such important people travel from different states to Lagos only to send them back without even an apology. Was it because they were trade unionists? They would feel slighted. I suggested to Jerry Gana that there should be at least a brief meeting where the postponement could be explained and I could speak to the unionists. Jerry agreed. The meeting immediately took place. I addressed the gathering as follows. Mobilisation is nothing new to trade unionists. They mobilise their members all the time. Should trade unionists mobilise workers for military rule? This is a foolish idea, for the military come to power by force and rule by force. They need no mass mobilisation. They rather need mass demobilization. Mass mobilisation makes sense only in the light of the recommendation of Babangida Political Bureau which recommended a socialist direction for the country. As for the fate of the country, the trade unionists have not cared. Since independence, the Balewa regime messed up the country, but the unions did not care to move towards its removal. They only grumbled and grumbled. It was a part of the military that cared and risked their lives in a coup to save the country. Every time the civilians were given a chance to rule, they used it to divide the people, steal, accumulate wealth for themselves, tell lies all the time, and mess up the country in all ways. It was the military that cared to respond politically by taking the misused power from them. The trade unionists are in perpetual sleep; they do not care. The military themselves have not saved the people from suffering, but is it enough to condemn them? Should the trade unionists not rather praise them at least for caring and thus moving to take power? (Prolonged applause). The workers leaders should now care. Political power is not the monopoly of anyone certainly not the monopoly of exploiters, civilian or military. Political power is the right of any citizen or any group or class of citizens. Political power belongs even more legitimately to the working class who bake the national cake that maintains the country. What is the sense in baking the cake and then handing it over to rogues to share? Each time it is some people of courage in the armed forces that care to chase the rogues away. But the military are workers; only they are a special group of workers for war only. They work with all the tools that other workers work with, plus war making tools like guns in their case. Even hunters use guns and tanks are like caterpillars. Civilians fly aeroplanes but not warplanes. Sailors sail ships but not war ships. Miners use explosives but not to blast up cities and kill. Builders construct houses and bridges but not fortifications. Military people are not landlords or businessmen. They do not live on rents and profits. They are paid wages and salaries like other workers and on this they largely live. Next time, it should be different. Trade unionists and others should begin to mobilise working people for an entirely different direction for the country a working people direction as against exploiters direction which is anti-people. We must mobilise towards a working people party at the end of military rule. As soon as military rule ends the working class this time must come out with their party and wage a life and death struggle with the exploiters and thieves for political power. (Standing and prolonged ovation). Something happened at the end of this speech which I must report. Someone that I later learnt belonged to the Shamang group got up and started challenging my speech. No one allowed him utter more than the words with which he began. The whole house without exception descended on him. It was like a vulcano erupting. Step down! Step down! Clear out! Who asked you to challenge his speech? Do you know that man you are challenging? The poor man folded up. I later learnt that members of the Shamang group were the initiators of and the most vociferous in shouting the man down. This experience confirmed the amazing effectiveness of my approach. It confirmed my civil war conclusion, namely, that contrary to the excuses of both Right and Left the workers themselves are overwhelmingly ready for power struggle. What is lacking is proper and courageous education, a non-factional approach, honesty, and a clear-headed, informed and non-opportunistic leadership. The incident reminded me of an experience I had in Lagos during the civil war. A trade union was holding its annual conference and invited the late S. U. Bassey (a trade unionist of the Left camp) and myself. That was before the NLC was formed. The unions were deeply divided. There was the Nigerian Trade Union Congress (NTUC), headed by Wahab Goodluck; the United Labour Congress (ULC), headed by H. P. Adebola; the Nigerian Workers Council (NWC), headed by Chukwura; and the Nigerian Federation of Labour (NFL) headed by Bassey Etienam. The big unions stayed away from these formations and came together in the Labour Unity Front (LUF) to try to mediate and agitate (in vain as it turned out) for unity. I rose first to speak and spoke as follows: The workers need unity. The armed forces have shown that political power is not the exclusive right of any person or group. Political power is important. Experience has shown that without power the people are but slaves of parasites. After the civil war, civilian exploiters will go to the armed forces with their various political baskets each asking the military to hand over power into its basket. These fellows had ruled before and their rule was disastrous not because of accidental errors but because of the selfish and greedy nature of their class. Workers can and should prepare their own basket. As the war comes to an end, workers should go to the military and ask the military rulers to place the power in their own basket. After all, the others had ruled before and their rule was a prolonged disaster. What is the basket? It is the working people own political party for power. Workers should not wait but begin to prepare by self education. The initial step is to unite. To keep the workers divided into warring and inconsequential factions is inimical to the interest of the workers and the country. This speech was received with a unanimous approbation. Then S. U. Bassey rose to speak. To my great surprise, he did not make his own speech but set out to attack my own. He said he was there only to speak about trade unionism. He had contested election and won in the civilian regime. If I wanted to talk politics, I should wait and contest an election after the civil war. At that stage, the workers exploded with anger. Make your own speech! Make your own speech! We heard him. Leave his speech alone. He was addressing us not you, and we heard him. Bassey was greatly embarrassed by the unanimous hostility of the workers towards his conduct. He really had no speech to make. That experience expressed one thing. The so-called trade union secretaries in Lagos were factionalists rather than class leaders. They relished in the negative and had no time for construction. Sylvester Ejiofor was nursed in that culture. He rose in it and through it. Imoudu: Grand Father of the Party. In a way, Comrade M. A. O. Imoudu actually initiated the Nigerian Labour Party (1989-1991) and Ali Ciroma, Paschal Bafyau, Aliyu Dangiwa and Iyambi Akpet aided him without knowing it. I was the link. From 1950 I knew Comrade Imoudu to be not only a great trade unionist but also a great patriot, a symbol socialist, a lion revolutionary and the absolute in courage. With him, the late Ola Oni, Baba Omojola, M. E. Kolagbodi, and others, on my prompting, had formed the first Nigerian Labour Party in 1964 which perished with the military coup detat in January, 1966. That party, though small and very young, was responsible for the earth-shaking boycott of the federal elections of 1964 by the United Progressive Grand Alliance (UPGA). The story of how that happened cannot be told here. Comrade Imoudu, the synonym for courage, was the President of that party and Eskor Toyo the General Secretary. It was like an ant daring the elephant and halting it. When campaigning as the sole candidate for that party in the election before we brought about its boycott by UPGA, Comrade Imoudu had charged the workers: The workers of Nigeria must take power into their hands before my death When the NLC was split between the official Ciroma and the rival Shamang groups, the official NLC called its congress at Benin. It was boycotted by the Shamang faction which at the same time called its own congress of dissidents elsewhere. I was invited to the Benin Congress of the NLC and so were Comrade Imoudu and other veterans. They attended and I did. Surprisingly, during a recess Comrade Imoudu came to me on his own and said: Waziri Ibrahim is my friend. He has promised to give me money. When he gives me that money, I shall call you and we shall tour Nigeria and form a political party for the workers. I was amazed that the old warrior had not forgotten our political war. I asked simply, So No. 1, you have not forgotten this mission? No. 1 is the fond name that Imoudu comrades gave to him. To my puzzled question, he replied How can I forget it? Then I said: All right No. 1. When you have the money, call me. We shall move. I tell this story because of its importance. First, the question of a working people party for working people power has been since 1952 for me and, as far as I know, since 1963 for Imoudu, a thing only second to life itself. It is not with us a chance love affair to which those engaged in the fun bring all the species of opportunism, irresponsibility and falsity from the bottomless corruption of the bourgeois sea. The second significance of the Benin conversation is that of all the persons later associated with the Nigerian Labour Party (1989-91), Comrade Imoudu is the only one who without my prompting thought of it. All others were rallied to the idea directly or indirectly by my words and activity. The third significance of the story is that I took it as a duty to see that Imoudu idea came alive. I could move even if Imoudu was too old to do so. I waited for months and the money from Waziri Ibrahim never appeared. Eventually I made up my mind that I must do all I could possibly do to make sure that this time before the military retired the working class must be educated and mobilised at least to confront the next civilian regime with a substantial party of the working people. The word “substantial is important. For me, it was necessary and sufficient to have a party that was large enough not to be ignored by anyone and was visible and well known to the working people. From 1953 there had been several small, ineffective workers parties known to a few persons. I made up my mind that such an isolated small group would be a futility. We must go beyond that. This resolve explains my “criss-crossing the country, my contacts, the contents of my speeches, and my not paying attention to the so-called Left which was as fragmented and sectarian as the so-called Right. Directorate for Literacy If Imoudu was the grandfather, the Directorate for Literacy (DL) at Calabar and the Cross River State was the father of the Nigerian Labour Party (1989-91). The Directorate for Literacy (DL) came out of my lectures to workers at Calabar every May Day and other occasions and the Political Bureau set up by Babangida. In 1986, the Babangida regime set up a committee called “Political Bureau and charged the body to ascertain the views of Nigerians on and make recommendations for the future polity of Nigeria. The Political Bureau adopted the method of going from place to place to receive opinions and calling for written memoranda. Several organisations sent memoranda to the Political Bureau. The trade unions as usual remained at first unbothered. The first trade union in the country to bother was the Nigerian Civil Service Union of the Cross River State under the secretaryship of Iyambi Akpet. The union organised a forum which discussed and worked out a definitely people-oriented memorandum which it sent to the Political Bureau. Bassey Ekpo Bassey was at this forum as l was. He and l spoke. I told the workers to send the memorandum but that there was no substitute for their own party and their own power. They did not put Babangida in power to represent them. A short time later, the Nigerian Labour Congress, Cross River State, organised its own forum for a memorandum to the Political Bureau. Bassey Ekpo Bassey and I were also invited to this forum. A memorandum was sent to the Political Bureau. I hammered once more on power and on political education and a party as the means to it. In view of my constant emphasis on political self education, self-liberation and workers power, the trade unionists themselves decided not to wind up the committee they had set up to arrange the forum for the Political Bureau discourse and memorandum. They decided that the committee should stay on and assume the name, “Directorate for Literacy. It was for educational purposes. They made me chairman of the Directorate and Bassey Ekpo Bassey the secretary. The Directorate was soon a beehive of highly inspired, sincere, courageous, and hard-working activists. It is impossible to forget, for instance, young Felix Ekpenyong who devoted himself totally to the Directorate for Literacy and soon to the Labour Party, only to be shoved aside later by the opportunist monarchs of the Labour Party, to waste away in hunger, and to die in misery. Neither can a sincere narrator forget the benign Comrade Umoren of the Medical and Health Workers Union who passed away in the thick of our mobilization. There come to my mind the loyal, sturdy and tenacious Chief Okon from Obio-Oko in the peasant area and the equally loyal, sturdy and tenacious chief from Eningeye also in the peasant area. The party was to be their party and that of their neighbours. However, the party they laboured to initiate in rain and sun was delivered in a way to fall into the claws of thoroughly bourgeoisified vultures. The DL had a lecture or discussion every Wednesday. After a time, it became clear to the unionists and workers active in the Directorate that we had to work and were working towards a party for the workers. As the Directorate grew at Calabar, I made contacts with other towns in the Cross River State who set up a Directorate for Literacy (DL). During my journeys to other states in the country, I tried to get working class militants to set up DLs or similar bodies with other names. Again and again I went to Lagos , told Sylvester Ejiofor, Pascal Bafyau and others I could meet about the DL and urged them to set up a similar body. No one in Lagos paid any heed. My contacts with other towns to urge the formation of Directorates were made without any noise as I was not sure of responses and did not want the workers at Calabar to be later disappointed. At a stage the members of the DL at Calabar called me and asked: Are we the only ones who will form the workers party? What of the rest of the country? I told them that they were not the only ones and that there were equivalents of the DL in several states. As a result of their question, we organised an all-Nigeria conference of organisations engaged in workers education. The response surpassed my expectation. Representatives of such organisations came from eleven of the them existing nineteen states. Education groups from two other states - Sokoto and Gongola responded by letter. Our invitation had gone to them late, and they bitterly regretted not being opportuned to be present. However, they were fully with us and looked forward to a future such meeting. No one came from Lagos. We had it in mind to call another meeting. The contacts had to be extended and more of DL had to come into existence. However events moved fast. At a certain stage during the campaign of the Directorate (DL), it became well known in working class circles that the DL was committed to a political party of the working people. David Ojelli, then General Secretary of the Nigerian Civil Service Union, visited Calabar to see his union. I met him and spoke to him about the need for a party. David Ojelli agreed with me. He was the first national level trade unionist to visit Calabar. I did not know the degree of his sincerity when he spoke to me. Later, the press came to ask him questions about several things. On the party, they asked what he thought about the idea of a workers party. David Ojelli said: l support it totally. We shall form the party. Workers should fight for power. We cannot be underdogs for ever. Enough is enough. And when we form our party, if anyone forms the fool, we shall show him that cunny man die cunny man bury-am. The speech was televised. This absolute declaration by no less a person than the General Secretary of the Nigerian Civil Service Union settled all doubts about the party at least in the Cross River State. Mass Line Apart from my physical contacts, the creator and educator of the DL equivalents was “Mass Line. “Mass Line was a cyclostyled organ for the political education of the working people activists started and edited by me and financed from my abnormally low salary. “Mass Line ceased to exist when inflation made it impossible for me to continue the sacrifice to make and distribute it. Its focus was to educate working class militants for a working people party. The copies of “Mass Line were, of course, very limited. However, what we could make went out with two bits of advice. (1) Do not keep “Mass Line. Read it and pass it on to a friend. (2) Form a group for the discussion of “Mass Line. The organ was addressed to working people activists as such and was non-sectarian. Later, a group of “Mass Line readers emerged which was totally dedicated to the idea of a party. These readers became organizers of equivalents of DL. That is what they were expected to do. The Central Memorandum of the NLC. After the memoranda from Calabar had gone to the Political Bureau, it then dawned on the headquarters of the NLC in Lagos to prepare and send a memorandum to the Political Bureau. When I had wind of it, I insisted that a mass meeting of workers in Lagos should be called to look at and approve the memorandum. I was made the chairman of the workers rally to look at the memorandum. The NLC central memorandum, like those of the rallies sponsored by the Civil Service Union and the NLC in the Cross River State, was very down-to-earth, thoroughly people-oriented, frank, and courageous. It spoke the workers mind on the different issues on which the Political Bureau wanted opinions. The venue was the main hall of the National Theatre. The place was jammed full with workers. As chairman, I caused the whole memorandum to be read to workers line by line. This had an electric effect. Every portion of the memorandum was greeted with a loud applause, I then called on the veterans who were present, Comrade lmoudu, etc., to address the rally on the memorandum. There was great enthusiasm. I then made the workers vote for or against the memorandum. They unanimously voted for it. I made a closing speech. I said: This memorandum contains your own ideas about which way Nigeria should go. It does not contain Babangida ideas, those of his government, those of the armed forces or those of anyone else but you. You did not put Babangida or his government in office. When he made his coup, he did not consult you. He had his own ideas. No one else will have the will to carry out your own idea. The memorandum should go to the Babangida regime as a brief statement of your mind. It is wrong to expect anything from it. However, power is not the monopoly of anyone or any group. Only when you are in power will your own ideas be carried out and by none other than you. How do you come to power? Since you are not military, you cannot do it the military way. You have to do it the civilian way as the exploiter civilians manage to come to power, namely, by forming your own political party. You can start now to prepare. When you come to power you can then carry out the ideas in your own memorandum. If you like, when you are in power you can leave the factories, mines, banks, etc. to be run by your exploiters; if you like, you can take them over and run them yourselves for everyone benefit. You can give any name to the people centred system which you will build. You can call it Nigerianism, workersism, we-we-ism, or anything else. The place rocked. The workers burst into a refrain We-we-ism! We-we-ism!. After this, nothing happened except for the growth of the DL and equivalents outside Lagos. Long after, I went to Alhaji Ali Ciroma, President of the NLC, and asked why the vast NLC building was not being used for workers education, Alhaji Ali agreed with me that some of the building should be so used, but complained that he had himself suggested that but received no positive reaction from his colleagues. I then asked him whether if I drew up a modest plan for workers education and the use of the headquarters building for it he would present it to the NLC. Alaji Ali welcomed the suggestion enthusiastically. Within a short time, I sent my plan to Lagos but nothing happened. Contact with Veterans and Bassey Election When Babangida announced his intention to retire, bourgeois politicians started political activities, but there was no move towards a workers party. The Directorate for Literacy was then in a position to mobilise workers towards a party that could not be ignored, but I felt that if at least some NLC leaders could be made to be interested, that would be better. I went to Lagos to discuss the idea of a party with Ali Ciroma, Sylvester Ejiofor, Pascal Bafyau (then General Secretary of the Nigerian Union of Railwaymen (NUR) and others. All these men warmly welcomed the party idea. I must say, however, that Ejiofor surprised me, for he said neither “yes nor “no. I could not see what made it difficult for him to say a definite “yes or “no. When I met Alhaji Ali Ciroma, I was surprised. A “Marxist in the NLC had advised me to leave him out because he was reactionary. I remembered, however, that before then Alhaji Ali Ciroma had twice made a statement, published in the press, saying that only socialism could save the Nigerian people. What was reactionary about these statements? Who could have had the force to compel him to make them? What did he stand to gain by making them? I decided that the “Marxists in the NLC were dead sectarians. I proceeded to Lasisi Osunde who himself welcomed the party idea when I broached it. When I asked him about Alhaji Ali and told him of the assessment of the “Marxist, Lasisi Osunde said: Go and speak to Alhaji Ali. I walked into the office of Alhaji Ali Ciroma, President of the NLC. He received me warmly. I had hardly finished presenting my case for a party when Alhaji Ali snapped:. The thing is long overdue. The bourgeoisie have already gone far with their preparations and we of the labour movement as usual are only looking at them. For how long will things continue this way? Then I visited Sokoto where I spoke to Aliyu Dangiwa, General Secretary of the NLC before Lasisi Osunde. I was again surprised. As soon as I mentioned the need for preparation for a party, Aliyu Dangiwa was with me completely. In addition to making the round of the veterans. I also addressed the executive councils of trade unions that invited me, putting across the case for a party, which they warmly received. Eventually, I addressed a letter to the National Executive Council of the NLC, urging the need to mobilise for a working people party and workers power. NLC Split Three incidents happened during the split in the NLC into Ciroma group and Shamang group. The first concerns Ejiofor union, the Civil Service Technical Workers Union. I was friendly with this union from the days of Wahab Goodluck, its General Secretary for a long time. During the Benin Congress of the legitimate NLC, members of the union invited me for an evening party. The current General Secretary was not there. The workers insisted I should address them. I objected since their General Secretary was not present and not previously informed of the speech. The workers pressed. At last I yielded because these were the actual owners of the union and I was obliged to educate. I told the workers of the need for a party and how damaging the split in the NLC was to the cause of a party. I then told them that I was surprised at the emergence and growing strength of the Shamang splinter group. I told them I would have liked to address them on this point when their General Secretary was around. I said: I have asked from three sources why Shamang is gaining strength and each source points to your General Secretary as the cause. They say that he goes about creating factions in other unions in order to have a break-away group to join his union. The result is that unions threatened with a split rally round Shamang. I said that if the story was true, such an activity divided the workers when they should unite. I said their union under Goodluck had been trying to play a vanguard role, which I appreciated. However, playing a vanguard role was not really a matter of size. Each of the 42 industrial unions (as they were then) was large and rich enough for a vanguard role. Even if their union expanded and embraced all of the NLC, that would not necessarily make them an adequate union. The vanguard role depended on ideas, the ability to rally others, the force of example, and will. Comrade Imoudu union, the Railway Workers Union, had played the vanguard role from the 1930s until Imoudu retirement in the 1970s, and yet that did not depend on its size. The vanguard role is played, I said, by taking up issues of concern to the whole working class or a large section of it. That is how the Railway Workers Union led by Imoudu played the vanguard role. I used as an example, the way workers go to work in Lagos. They wake up well before 6 a.m. and go to wait, struggle and push to find space on a private bus to go to work. This means that if the capitalist transporters do not have enough money to buy vehicles workers will not get to work except on foot. Let a single trade union, say their own, take up the whole matter of the adequacy of transport to work. Would any trade unionist or union dare oppose the struggle or excuse himself or itself out of it? I must report my surprise when shortly after this speech, the Babangida government started its mass transit system and reportedly gave some buses to the NLC or money to purchase them. Did the Babangida regime have an agent in the Civil Service Technical Workers Union who reported my speech to him and advised him to avert a possible danger? The second thing worth reporting on the NLC split is that I took the trouble to go to Lagos to see Frank Oramolu, President of the National Union of Local Government Employees (NULGE) whom I learnt was influential with the Shamang group. I told him of the possibility of a working class struggle for power, the need for a party and the heavy cost of a split especially at that time. I said I expected him to do something to heal the split in view of the need for a political struggle. He made no promises but listened with interest. The third thing that happened during the split was that the NLC in Cross River State replicated on the trade union front the split at the center. I called a meeting of all the leading trade union comrades in the Cross River State. I said: Comrades, you are all in the Directorate for Literacy. It is your baby. However, on trade union matters, the unions are split nationally and probably also in the state. What is to happen to the Directorate for Literacy? What is to happen to our party idea? The comrades assured me in unison that the trade union split would not affect the Directorate or our mobilisation for a party in any way. Here was singular triumph for the workers of the Cross River State. I was happy that in the Cross River State we had succeeded in creating an antidote to the Lagos disease. We did that through education. The Election of Bassey and Awa As the Directorate for Literacy mobilised, a time for municipal council elections came and Bassey Ekpo Bassey decided to contest for the chairmanship. My speech at Obudu had led to the establishment of a Directorate for Literacy there. The DL in Calabar supported Bassey and the DL at Obudu supported Pius Awa. The two won their elections due to the activities of the two Directorates. I shall report on the election of Bassey, which I witnessed directly, and the consequence. It was the trade unions and the DL at Calabar that helped Bassey organise the election. He himself was an effective candidate. By the time of that election, the DL had become well organised in Calabar, fairly organised in Ikom, Obudu, and Uyo, and initiated at Eket, all in consequence of my contacts. The workers turned out massively to vote for the Secretary of the Directorate for Literacy. That election was held twice. Bassey actually won the election but was cheated by rigging. The workers were furious. They wanted a fight but I advised calm. As the regime could not pronounce Bassey opponent winner, the Electoral Commission found some reasons to cancel the election. The workers swore that even if the election was repeated twenty times, Bassey would win twenty times. Before the election was repeated, the Akwa Ibom State was created. However, to my surprise and happiness, those workers that had left Calabar to Akwa Ibom hired buses and came to Calabar and voted for Bassey. They had been registered as voters. This election confirmed my impression of Nigerian workers. Only lack of proper education, political mobilisation and leadership has kept them from power since 1964. Having been elected Chairman of the municipal council, Bassey stopped being active in the DL. That was, up to a point, understandable, but long before that time he had stopped attending the lecture sessions in the DL. His conduct had also caused a rupture which I managed to contain. He was accused of lack of consultation and non-accountability. Comrade Ebony Okpa was the Vice-Chairman of the Directorate and he made this charge seriously. To keep the DL focused on its educational work, I played down these organizational foibles. When Bassey became Chairman of the Municipal Council, he began to be on his own. When Bassey became the Council Chairman, Frank Oramolu, President of NULGE, visited Calabar and asked of me. To my surprise, Bassey did not bring him to me and avoided taking me to see Frank. I noticed the treachery. Bassey, I felt, had started to isolate me. Was it so as to gain all the credit for the work of the DL? Was it because of leadership ambition? I shrugged the treachery off, but it was obvious that I could no longer count on Bassey loyalty or comradeship. During Bassey tenure as Calabar Council Chairman, Paschal Bafyau visited Calabar. He was received by the workers like a popular king. It happened that a short time before Bafyau visit, President Babangida had visited Calabar. The town only whispered Babangida visit. Only a few officials went to see him at the airport. When Paschal Bafyau visited, however, it was a different matter. The precints of the airport were taken over by workers, motor cycles lined the route for miles forming a guard of honour, and the town was agog with jubilation. I heard of Babangida and Bafyau visits from several reports. By then, as far as Bassey was concerned, I was only an embarrassment. Reports reaching me from comrades of the DL showed that the Lagos leaders of the NLC who came to Calabar were astonished by the solid unity they found at Calabar in spite of splits in Lagos. They were highly impressed by the work of the Directorate for Literacy. The election of Bassey and the role of workers in it changed their attitude about a working people party. They now saw a worker party and workers power not only as a practical possibility but also as a necessity. Before Bafyau visit, I had been to Lagos several times to urge Bafyau, Ejiofor and others to form the equivalent of DL. They did nothing. I had also been to Kaduna (among other places), to urge Adams Oshiomhole of the Textile Workers Union and others to start the equivalent of DL. Some comrades in Kaduna, organised by Comrade Akagha, started to respond but Oshiomhole was not one of them. In my contact twice with him, I found him on each occasion unenthusiastic. By contrast Comrade Akagha, who was not a trade union secretary but was thoroughly convinced of the need to educate the working people towards their own party, responded positively and did what I am convinced was his best within his very narrow financial limits. He was nick-named “A Luta Continua by the Kaduna proletariat. Port Harcourt and Balarabe Musa I must report of my visits to the NLC in Port Harcourt and to Balarabe Musa, because of the lessons to be learnt. In my journeys to have DLs formed, I relied on Paschal Bafyau, Sylvester Ejiofor, etc. to have one formed in Lagos, on Comrade Ola Oni to have one formed at Ibadan and on Comrade A Luta to have one formed at Kaduna. I contacted the NLC people in Kano and had assurance that one would be formed. Of the towns with a large concentration of wage workers and artisans, Port Harcourt remained. I did make efforts. I visited Port Harcourt twice but could get no meeting with trade union leaders. On the third occasion, I had a well attended meeting with NLC leaders. I put the issue about the need to have a DL and to prepare for a party to them. They told me the party idea was welcome by itself, but that they did not trust the trade union leadership in Lagos. Whatever one did, they said, those Lagos leaders would dominate the party. Therefore, they were not interested in it. No effort from me to persuade them prevailed. I respected their frankness and firmness. After all, they knew the Lagos trade union “leaders at first hand and had worked with them for years. I was deeply disturbed by the turn of things in Port Harcourt. In the 1950s, militant and united workers in Port Harcourt had organized a Council of Labour (CL). In an election into the Port Harcourt Town Council, the CL had put up Comrade Bille of the AG Leventis Workers Union to contest as chairman and he had won or almost won. The Port Harcourt turn around showed the immensity of the degeneracy that had happened in the Nigerian labour movement. Later, after the NLC leaders had come round to the party idea, Paschal Bafyau himself went to Port Harcourt and tried to swing round the trade union leaders there. The report reached me that they stuck to their guns. It is not surprising that later Kri Kalio, who was in Port Harcourt, dissociated himself from the NLP (1989) when the National Executive Council of the NLC decided to form the party. In the case of Balarabe Musa, he is ideologically close to the working people. I thought he would be a tremendous asset. I went to him twice. The first occasion was when all information showed that the NLC was interested in the party idea. I went to Kaduna and tried to inform Balarabe Musa and discuss the idea of a working people party with him. I expected that he would embrace the idea and even feel happy about the development. He turned down the idea. To justify his rejection, he argued that workers in Nigeria were not conscious and that the peasants were more conscious. I tried to argue that workers were conscious enough for many in the NLC to want the party. He remained adamant. What if a party supported by a substantial part of workers actually emerged? He returned no answer. Rather, he argued that in the Third World workers do not form the vanguard of a socialist revolution; it is the peasants that can form the vanguard. Then he put in that the People Redemption Party was actually a socialist party. This might mean that there was no need for another party aimed at liberating the working people. However, I did not pursue the matter. To support his contention that in developing countries, it is rather a peasant party than a workers party that leads the socialist revolution, he cited the case of China. He claimed that the Chinese socialist revolution started from the countryside. I did not argue this matter of who should start the working people revolution with Balarabe Musa. I felt that if a man of his experience could be so negative to the idea of a workers party and argue as he did, it was useless belabouring the issue. However, let me report that I felt bad about Balarabe Musa rejection and even worse about his arguments. Concerning the consciousness of workers, he should know that no one is born with any particular political consciousness. Did he not know that workers simply as workers do not just have even trade union, let alone socialist, consciousness or consciousness for political transformation, just because they are workers? Did he not know that it is teachers that go among people and change their consciousness? Regarding the so-called peasant consciousness in Nigeria, if it is a consciousness that extends to opposition to Nigerian ruling class or imperialist exploitation of the common man, it is only in areas where the Northern Elements Progressive Union (NEPU) had worked intensively that it existed. Even in the northern parts of Nigeria, there were vast areas where it did not exist. In the rest of Nigeria, it existed nowhere. Was Balarabe Musa unconscious of the fact that it took dedicated NEPU militants and enormous sacrifice from 1950 to create the type of consciousness he simply took for granted? Without the long, persistent and well educated teaching of the great teacher, Mallam Aminu Kano, and his literate lieutenants, how would this peasant consciousness have come into being? Concerning revolution in developing countries, Balarabe Musa was wrong in the Chinese example. Yes, it is popularly believed by those who have not bothered or have not been opportuned to read in detail about the development of the working people revolution in China, that the Communist Party of China (CPC) started the revolution from the villages. However, what is the CPC itself? It is a worker party that became in fact a worker-peasant party. The CPC is a party that started from the cities. The CPC had led big strikes in cities like Shanghai in China for years before circumstances forced it to shift its main revolutionary base to the countryside first of all in some provinces. Even then it has never at any time ceased to be a workers party. It has never renounced its identity as a workers party. Apart from China, the party that has been fighting in war or in peace for the liberation of the working people of Korea is called the Workers Party of Korea. It led the peasants as well. The same is true of Vietnam. In the case of Cuba, the Communist Party of Cuba, a workers party, had operated in Cuba for years. Even though the armed revolution was begun from some provinces of the countryside in the form of guerrilla struggle, the politics of opposition and the education conducted for years by the Communist Party of Cuba prepared the atmosphere that led to the mass support for the armed rebellion. I turned over these matters in my mind. For me, and given the Nigerian situation, there was no excuse for an either/or dogmatism. Peasant consciousness is not a substitute for workers consciousness. Both are needed. If workers start a party, there is no reason why they cannot negotiate an alliance with peasant parties or movements. At any rate, neither a workers party nor a peasant one could immediately launch a revolutionary uprising in Nigeria. The first task was to educate, unite, mobilize and politically isolate the exploiters among the working people. I put the experience behind me and continued. However, let me continue the narration of my experience with Balarabe Musa whom I considered important precisely because of his broad contact with the rebellious section of the peasantry in a substantial part of the country. My first visit to him was paid before the NLC met to decide on the party. After the NLC had met at Calabar and taken a decision to form the party, I visited him again to know his attitude. I asked him what he now thought of the matter in the light of the decision of the NLC to organize a workers party. I thought that the NLC was weighty enough to be treated seriously. Balarabe Musa simply replied that he had finished forming his own party and that as soon as the military regime gave the go ahead to start full scale political activities, he would within forty-eight hours announce the party. I made no comments and left. The Party Founding NEC The NEC meeting we are referring to here is the National Executive Council meeting of the NLC at Calabar which decided to found the party. There was an open session and a closed session of NEC. Many personalities were invited to the open session, including the late Bola Ige, who opposed the formation of the party on the ground that the workers would not have the money to run it. I had the impression that this so-called progressive did not want a working class party to contend with his “progressive bourgeiosdom. Certain things must be reported of this meeting. 1. Bassey Ekpo Bassey had long distanced himself from me and avoided meeting me and discussing anything with me. I was the Chairman of the Directorate for Literacy and he nominally the Secretary, but he had stopped bothering himself about the Directorate. His “comrades were now in Lagos and he was to his friends the Master of Calabar. 2. The Chairman of the NLC at Calabar was Ededem Ita Edem and he was a loyal member of the DL. The address of welcome to NEC written by the Cross River State Council of the NLC was brief and excellent. I was surprised and happy about the transformation that just one year or so of political education could bring. 3. In the open session, I spoke in support of the formation of the party. I cannot remember that anyone bluntly opposed it. Even Bola Ige took cover under an empty purse. In my speech I made the remark that, after all, the party would be voluntary; individuals who had reservations need not bother to join it when it was formed. 4. After the open session, the President of the NLC, Paschal Bafyau, called me aside and told me not to continue to express the notion that the party would be voluntary. He feared that if it was known that the party would be voluntary some of the union members would back out. I could see his fear at once: voluntarism could shatter the effort as some outside the Cross River State were still half-hearted. It could reduce the affair simply to that of Paschal Bafyau and some others. After all, those gathering in NEC had not heard the lectures that the DL at Calabar had heard. However, although I took Paschal Bafyau point seriously and never mentioned the optional character of the party again to any trade unionist, I knew that this sincere effort to get everyone by being silent on optionality could pay off only initially. Before long, however, it would harm the party. Political parties are supposed to be optional. Besides, only those who really love a party can work hard for it, dedicate themselves to it and be honest with it. Actually, by being silent on optionality, I knew that Comrade Bafyau was thinking not of individuals but of the affiliates of the NLC as trade unions. He wanted the support for the party to be an all-union affair or to be from a comfortable majority of the unions. So be it. 5. Before the closed sessions of the NLC NEC discussed the party matter, I got to know that there was a sharp division among the delegates. I decided to go to the venue. Luckily I met Ijeh of the Non-Academic Staff Union outside. I had known him in the 1950s. I told him that I was not happy about what I heard, namely, that there was a division in the NLC NEC regarding the party question. I said: Comrade, you are an elderly comrade. Why the division? Can you or anyone else in the NLC tell me why workers must have masters and must be on the begging side for ever? Who has the prescriptive right to rule? Do those who ruled this country from Balewa on love the country more or are they more educated or more hard working? Do they know the country more or are they more experienced than the workers and the trade unionists? If a man is a national or state trade union secretary or president, which ministerial office can he not hold? Why all this servility as if the country is for non-workers to rule while workers must simply be commanded to do the dirty job? Even from the point of view of self respect, there must be a party of the working class for power. Experience has shown that non-workers cannot save the country. Why do we expect them to save the workers from exploitatiuon and misery when it is precisely from that exploitation and that misery that they become millionaires? Comrade, I learn that you are influential amidst the faction that is opposed to the party. Does this opposition make sense with all our experiences in Nigeria? Comrade Ijeh listened to me with wrapped attention. Then he thanked me and said: Comrade, you have spoken to me. I make no promise but we will know what happens. 6. The result of the NEC vote on the party was a near unanimous vote for the party - unanimous except for Kri Klio. 7. As soon as this vote occurred Kri Kalio raced out of the meeting, went to the press and announced that he did not support the formation of the party. 8. As soon as Kri Kalio non-participation statement appeared, the Nigeria Union of Teachers issued a statement condemning him. Statements from others rejecting his position followed fast. 9. Actually, I learnt later of two incidents that brought about the unanimity in the NLC NEC. First, when the division had appeared the previous day, the Cross River State Council of the NLC, led by Ededem Ita Edem, had quickly summoned a meeting of representatives of state councils of the NLC. That meeting had reached a unanimous decision in support of the party. When NEC met, therefore, the state councils presented to the meeting a stone wall without a crack. It was difficult for anyone to prevail against the unanimous voice of such representatives. Secondly, those against the party had noticed that they would lose by a majority vote for the party. They had, therefore, planned to abort the meeting by staging a walk out, so that the press might report that the meeting broke up without a decision. Ijeh, who had been a party to that plan now scuttled it. At a stage in the meeting when Kri Kalio saw that the opponents were overwhelmingly outnumbered, he got up and went to the door with intent to fling it open and start the walk out. Ijeh knew what he was up to, raced past him, stood at the door, closed it firm and said. None of us is leaving this meeting. We will stay here and take a decision today. The opposition to the party crumbled with Ijeh support for it. We can draw three lessons here. First, the DL, Cross River State, once more showed the power of education. Secondly, some people think that believing in a cause and holding a university degree make one necessarily able to argue for the cause and convince and carry people for it, but they are wrong. Thirdly, my class approach once more had flying success; the factional and personal ambition approach once more met a waterloo. Programme and Launching of the Party The time when the NLC decided to organize the party was in the period when the global noise about Perestoika and Glasnost in the Soviet Union a worker-peasant state and the bourgeois drum beating about the “collapse of socialism were at their height. By virtue of my studies and travels over the years, I knew more about the developments in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe than any other Nigerian. I considered the DL and the Nigerian working class movement lucky in having me around. I also felt in duty bound to educate. I suggested to Bassey Ekpo Bassey, the official General Secretary of the DL, that I should give a lecture on developments in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. I was again astonished when Bassey objected. The man had said he was a socialist, a workers man, a believer in worker-peasant power. So he was now a renegade to the extent that he did not even want to learn or bear the truth being told to others? Other people heard Bassey speaking derisively about socialism. I heard about his saying, scoffingly or scathingly, that socialism had collapsed and should no longer be mentioned. His new admiration for S.G. Ikoku politics, for people like Arthur Nzeribe, for Ebenezer Babatope and for the style of American bourgeois politics especially the last showed me that the man had indeed turned a renegade to socialism. His hostility to socialism might be a way of having himself thoroughly accommodated and trusted in the camp of the exploiters of the people. This story about the new Bassey relates to the programme of the Nigerian Labour Party. Very soon, I learnt that a programme for the party was being formulated. In meetings which we held at Calabar to consider what should go into the programme, not only was Bassey opposed to the word “socialism being used, but he was opposed to anything that suggested ousting the bourgeoisie from power. What then was he forming a worker party for if he was still interested in the party? Was he interested only in a mere welfarist pressure group? I myself was not keen on the word “socialism being used. I had carried workers audiences in Nigeria for years without using that word, even though I was a socialist. I had long before then arrived at the view that what mattered was not a label but the concrete spelling out of what one thought should be done. As to labels, “workersism or “we-we-ism was as good as “socialism. However, my attitude arose from deep understanding; sympathy for the handicaps of the less literate; the need to get near to the people and be with them; and the love of simplicity because complexity could be inefficient. Why use a word which I had to spend hours or days trying to explain when there were words that fell within the experience of the hearer? When one attitude springs from hostility to socialism itself, arising from bourgeois class instinct, from lack of understanding or from fear of the exploiters, that is a different matter. In my lectures in the DL I had spelt out socialism concretely in such a way that the whole thing fell within the workers experience. Then I had added as an aside: This is what is called socialism by those who want to be brief. You can call it anything you like. With what Paschal Bafyau told me about the possibility of people decamping, with the action of Kri Kalio, and with the attitude of the new or chairman Bassey, I decided that it was important to nail down the main thing. The main thing was that workers must be in power. All the rest were matters of detail. They should use the power to abolish their exploitation by others; what meaning else could their power have? I felt concerned and went to Lagos. It would be disastrous to wait until the basket of eggs had fallen. I had for years been mobilizing the workers for their own power and they had completely and even enthusiastically understood me. Some eleventh hour “leaders must not spoil things by presenting their own timidity to workers in the name of a programme. I went to Lagos and met Bafyau and some others separately. To each I said: I understand that the programme and launching of the party are being prepared. The programme must zero in on power. If it does not, count me out. The bourgeoisie form parties to get into power and do their will. What is the point forming a workers party if it is not to put workers in power to abolish exploitation and transform the country? The idea of getting into government or lobbying the bourgeoisie while it is the bourgeoisie that actually enjoy power will not do. I said this in order to avoid a situation like that of the British Labour Party where even when the party forms a government, it is the capitalists that are actually in power. The position of the Norwegian Labour Party is approximately the same. Government and power are not the same thing, but I did not elaborate. One thing must be said very emphatically at this point. When I was mobilising workers for a party, I did not necessarily expect the NLC to come in as NLC. I knew of the origin and track record of the British Labour Party. The trade union influence on and mentality in it eventually made it ineffective for workers power though it was large. If the NLC had not come in, the Directorate for Literacy at Calabar would have called another conference of DLs without the Lagos confusion and indifference. That conference would without doubt have formed a working people party. That would definitely have been a qualitatively better party more clear, more inspired, more active, more serious, and much more democratic than the Nigerian Labour Party turned out to be. Left to me, I was gunning for a substantial party, by which I meant as I put it at that time a party with a membership or grass root support large enough for it not to be ignored by workers or anyone else. Wahab Goodluck, Lasisi Osunde, Dapo Fatogun and Sylvester Ejiofor had been running a so-called “party known to only a few. It was absolutely useless to repeat that kind of futility. If I had been satisfied with that, all my labours would not have been necessary. I wanted to take the workers party and the workers power ideas to the working people themselves everywhere, openly, and without any fear or inhibition. I had no truck with an isolated group styled a “party chosing to work in clandestinity for fear of the bourgeoisie or forced into clandestinity by sectarianism, dogmatism, timidity or inability to educate. If one was a socialist, socialism was not a magic formula in anyone lone star head; socialism is the massive movement of the working people seeking political power for themselves and humane transformation for society. However, if the whole of the NLC was pulled into the process by the work and victory of the Calabar DL, one could not object, although there were grave dangers in the sudden and unprepared way in which this happened, owing to the lethargy of those who later commanded rather than led the party from Lagos. For me the sole benefit of the NLC involvement is the massiveness it imparted to the effort to own a party, although it turned out to be an empty massiveness with as little credit as Nigeria gigantism in Africa. Socialists and Party As part of the mobilizing, “Mass Line was preparing socialists and I was meeting with those of them that I knew, trying to get them to support the idea of a massive party. Eventually I succeeded but not totally. Some socialists supported the idea of a party, but a small cadre party rather than a mass party. Some thought of a small party within a “masquerade or “broad front party. Nearly all of them did not trust the trade unionists, especially the NLC leadership in Lagos. On the whole, the socialists were few since they were unorganized in Nigeria and had no links but for the paltry effort of “Mass Line. I must record that Ejiofor, especially, was not trusted among so-called “progressive unionists. I must narrate three incidents. A meeting of socialists was called at Ibadan and I proposed the invitation of Ejiofor and other socialists in the NLC leadership. The late Ola Oni protested vigorously from his knowledge of them, especially Ejiofor. I prevailed, arguing that we had no secrets to hide. Ola Oni said he found Ejiofor slippery and unreliable. Ejiofor did not come and that went to strengthen Ola Oni position. Again after the party had been proclaimed, I thought of and wrote up how trade unionists in every union could help its growth. I gave these papers to Ejiofor for discussion within the party leadership. When I mentioned what I had done to Ola Oni, he said simply, “Comrade, Ejiofor will pass those papers to the government. I found it difficult then to believe that Ejiofor could be guilty of that. I hold a different view today. At any rate those papers were not shown to anyone in the party. Subsequent events revealed that Ejiofor was not interested in party organisation. He turned out a terrible bureaucrat. Another incident worth narrating is that at the initial stage of my mobilization for the party, there was a rupture in relations between Lasisi Osunde, General Secretary of the Nigeria Labour Congress, and Sylvester Ejiofor, General Secretary of Comrade Wahab Goodluck former union. Comrade Goodluck had groomed Ejiofor, and Osunde had worked for a long time with both in the Nigerian Trade Union Congress. I moved in to try to settle the dispute between Osunde and Ejiofor. When I met Comrade Goodluck on the matter, he told me in his characteristic blunt way that Ejiofor was a traitor but that Osunde was absolutely reliable. Of the two, Osunde really loved the worker movement; Ejiofor was an opportunist. The trade union father of the two had spoken. At Calabar, when the NEC meeting that founded the party was going on Dapo Fatogun approached me to suggest that the socialists should meet some time to consider what to do about the party. I agreed with him at once. I added, Why not start now? Some socialists came to watch the NEC meeting. Let us rally them. We did. Later, a few prominent socialists met after NEC had decided for the party. I remember that present at that meeting were Dapo Fatogun (from the “New Horizon group), Eddie Madunagu (from the Democratic Action Committee, or DACOM, group), one young lawyer who lived in Jos and was introduced as the Secretary of the Socialist Congress of Nigeria, or SCON, group). I was the bellman in their midst. The socialists decided to support the party. There was a long discussion of how to participate. One thing must be recalled of this meeting because of its significance and because the head of SCON later kept complaining that SCON was excluded from the party. The young man from SCON spoke three times at the meeting. Each time he spoke the burden of his speech was how the socialists could control the party. At the end of his third speech, I said: Sir, three times you have spoken and three times your concern is the control of the party by socialists. Where is the party? The NEC has just taken a decision to form it. Has it been formed? Who will educate it and how? Or does it not need education? Who will organise it? Is it the trade unionists as such that will organise it? How do you want to control something you have not built? I did not address this speech to the ears of this young man only. I was fed up with the prevalence among socialists in Nigeria of sectarianism, arbitrariness, factionalism, bureaucratic sensibilities, indolence about self education, and the presumption that the masses will be conscious and rise without education, and organisation. Only Fatogun and myself really thought that education was necessary. Socialists in Nigeria were and are inclined to think the masses rose under the leadership of Lenin in Russia, Mao Zedong in China, Fidel Castro in Cuba, etc. without years of education and honest guiding. Every young socialist with a degree in Nigeria sees himself as a budding Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky or Mao. I have learnt a lot from Imoudu, Aminu Kano and Kwame Nkrumah. The young Nigerian socialists know all about “socialism, “Marxism and “Revolution and have nothing to learn from anyone. To them control ambition and avidity or grasping for “leadership are the same thing as Revolution The socialists at the meeting decided to rally all socialists and meet again. By then “Mass Line had ceased to exist because university lecturers had reached the rock bottom of penury. Dapo Fatogun and myself were appointed joint co-ordinators Comrade Wahab Goodluck attitude to the party was very negative. I did not quite understand why. It was necessary to know. I went to Lagos and saw him alone. I found that Comrade Goodluck attitude arose from the leading role which Ejiofor in particular and the NLC leadership in general were set to play. In his view it was a disaster that such an impressive party was placed in the hands of Ejiofor and others who were sure to betray it. I greatly appreciated the fears of Comrade Goodluck. I tried to take him to the party by making two points: the massive character of the party and our own role which I looked forward to. I said: Goodie, it would be inexcusable to abandon a party to which the workers are certain to rally massively. The country is expectant. How can we abandon the party to the very people who may sell it? We cannot be excluded. You will be there. Dapo Fatogun will be there. I shall be there. Let us see how it will be possible for them to sell it or mess it up. Let us put the matter to the test with all of us there. It seems to me the sensible thing to do. Comrade Goodluck was carried by this speech. I learnt that having decided to support the party, he put his all into it. It is said by those very close to him that the betrayal and abandonment of the Nigerian Labour Party (1989) by the very people Wahab Goodluck predicted would do so shattered him and caused his death. I remember that the brilliant Professor Harold Laski of London University died because he put all his hope for socialism in Britain in the British Labour Party. When that party won an election massively in 1946 but turned down the socialist road in practice, Harold Laski long advocacy of the parliamentary road to socialism lay discredited and shattered. In 1953 he died. The Launching of the Party The party was launched in Lagos in the largest hall in the National Theatre. Certain things must be observed. 1. Everything they could do was done by Bassey Ekpo Bassey and Edwin Madunagu to exclude me from the party or to prevent my getting into the leadership. Dr. Madunagu did not belong to the DL. Rather he had his own exclusive small group called DACOM (Democratic Action Committee). When Chief Ekpiken, would-be chairman of the party at Calabar, observed the way Bassey and Madunagu tried to exclude me from the party, he muttered sadly: I did not know that this thing would be like this. Thus one potential pillar of the party was already alienated by the shameless treachery of so-called socialist “comrades. In the Cross River State Bassey did all he could to exclude me from party affairs. He was on his own. Only Iyambi Akpet and other comrades of the DL informed me from time to time of how the party was faring in the Cross River State when I asked them. There was a young comrade, a Ghanaian named James Crenson, who was very active in the DL and helped to organize things. In a conversation recently about the fate of the party, he told me that he was thoroughly shocked when he discovered the Bassey attempt to exclude me from the party. Once in a while, when the party “lived, Comrade Crenson used to bring me an invitation to a meeting. I noticed that those invitations came after the meeting had well started. It was clear that someone was trying to exclude me from these meetings but was planning to pretend he invited me by sending the invitation late. In our recent conversation, Comrade Crenson, who remains as loyal to the workers cause as anyone can be, revealed to me that he had been named convener by the party. He was the one who brought me those invitations. He did it against instruction from Bassey. He had Bassey instruction not to inform me about meetings. He brought me those invitations on his own against instruction because he was shocked to see Bassey new attitude to me. In fact after a time at Calabar there was a rumour that I was no more interested in the party. Anyone can guess that it was Bassey who invented that story to account for my inexplicable absence. 2. Another thing worthy of observation is that during the launching of the party in Lagos, I went on my own. I was not invited. A delegation went from Calabar to Lagos, but I only learnt of it. Bassey had become the owner of the party and Edwin Madunagu joined him in the plot to exclude me. The relations between Bassey and Madunagu had been very much strained for a long time. I was the one who tried to make them work together once more for the sake of the party. Now the partnership was being used as a two-man conspiracy to exclude me from the party. Even when I arrived in Lagos on my own and saw Madunagu outside the National Theatre, he was embarrassed and unhappy to see me. He knew where the Calabar delegation was housed but refused to tell me when I asked. It was during the launching in Lagos that the innocent Chief Ekpiken made his sighing remark. 3. The third thing worth reporting is the massive character of the turnout of the Lagos workers. The main bowl of the National Theatre is an immense hall, but it was jam-packed in the real sense of the term. There was an immense overflowing of people. There was no inch of space for any new entrant into the hall. From the door the crowd sprawled to the outside. I sat cheek-by-jowl with people on the floor in front. The press reported the next day that of all party launchings none attracted a crowd nearly as large as that of the Nigerian Labour Party. It reported that the crowd outside was far larger than the crowd inside the hall. To think that this is the kind of party that people had the heart to betray! 4. Sitting in front, I noticed that the party was launched exactly as I had thought it up. I had advised Bafyau that the launching should be done simply by a short proclamation statement. There should be no other speeches. Secondly, the proclamation should be done by a worker. The launching was done in this way. One young female textile worker resident in Kano read the proclamation. 5. This is the convenient juncture to report that the fantastic mass support awaiting the party could be read from two things. First, there was the overwhelming turn-out in Lagos and all the state capitals. In all places, except Lagos, the launching was done in the open air, usually at a football stadium. Judging from the Lagos experience, the orgainsers expected that no hall could hold the crowd. They were right. The second indicator of the thunderous reception awaiting the party was the fact that a few weeks after the launching in Lagos, the Nigeria Union of Musicians played for a night in Lagos to greet the party and raise funds for it. This action from the musicians came like a comet from nowhere. Actually, it was organised by my old comrade, Zeal Onyia, a leading musician. I had known him as a socialist and a warm supporter of the people cause long before 1989. I had three socialist comrade musicians in Lagos, Sydney Moss, King, and Zeal Onyia. It was Zeal that later told me how it happened. Again, opportunists only saw things happen and plotted to reap the benefits for self without knowing the source. First Party Conference After a time, the first party conference came up in Lagos. I was anxious to see it because, although others are not aware of that fact, the party programme is the first thing that matters. A political party is not supposed to be simply a group of camp followers gathering around an individual or a political faction. A really responsible person wanting to join a party must first ask for the programme. I was eager also to know what was the effect of my advice that the party should zero in on power. When I received a copy of the draft programme of the party, I was happy. It said in no uncertain terms that the country had been ruled by a class of predators since independence and that this class had used its power to exploit and oppress the working people. The working people now wanted to get into power. That power would be used to transform production relations without doing which the society could not be changed. The working class would transform the country to make it a people-oriented country. The rest is a spelling out of what it would initially do in economy, polity and culture. These were the essential things. One could pick some quarrel with some of the details, perhaps, but no one who wants workers power for social transformation firmly in the interest of the working people could quarrel with the main thrust of the draft programme. This was and is my view. A meeting of The Nigerian Socialist Alliance (NSA) was called to meet in Lagos just before the first conference of the party which was to consider the draft programme. “Nigerian Socialist Alliance is the name which we gave to the joint consultative forum of socialists in support of the party decided on at the meeting at Calabar earlier mentioned by us. Three things are worth reporting about this meeting of the NSA preceding the first party conference. First, we learnt that the steering committee for the party had decided to allow the Nigerian Socialist Alliance two representatives at the conference, who would join the steering committee. At its own preconference meeting the NSA nominated Dapo Falogun and the lawyer from SCON earlier mentioned to represent it at the conference. From its discussions of the draft programme, the NSA suggested only one amendment. This was not a do or die amendment. It concerned a rephrasing of one sentence in a way to make the intension to abolish exploitation more definite. We learnt that the conference became very angry with the NSA. What happened, as I later learnt from Fatogun and others, was this. The conference was not angry with the NSA suggestion. The conferees had no chance even to discuss it. It is the SCON man that first rose to speak for the NSA. As soon as he got up, he left his mandate which was simply the amendment of a formulation, and rather started to lambast the whole programme as not being revolutionary or acceptable. The conferees certainly could not stand that. He was not allowed to continue. He was lucky to be allowed to leave the place. I never saw him again. Nothing happened to Fatogun who remained at the meeting but was compromised by the behaviour of his “socialist ally and the hostility he aroused for the NSA. The other conferees naturally thought that the attitude of this SCON man was that of the NSA. This made it impossible for the NSA to participate in developing the party, let alone “controlling it. Actually SCON as an organisation was hostile to the party. It was very unfortunate that it was a man from SCON that was asked to represent the NSA. It is also unfortunate that the man himself lacked organizational and other experiences. The meeting he was addressing was a serious meeting of responsible people who had come from everywhere in Nigeria to found a party. It was not a small gathering of the sort of “socialists that Comrade Imoudu once referred to in a similar circumstance in the first Nigerian Labour Party as “riff-raff. Some people, whether they are revolutionaries or reactionaries, think that a meeting of workers deserves no respect and lose control in their talk. Naturally, some trade unionists and people like the new Bassey Ekpo Bassey happily exploited the opportunity to free their party from any suspicion by the bourgeoisie that it was a socialist outfit. Another thing that happened and is worth reporting is that when I went to Lagos either for this conference or another consultation to see if one couild continue the NSA effort, I met an old comrade, Dada. He was excited to see me, for we had not seen for years. I was shocked once again. Comrade Dada asked me: Comrade Eskor, what is happening to you in the Cross River State? I asked , Comrade , why do you ask? He said, People come here and tell us that you are no longer relevant in the Cross River State. I said simply, Comrade, you have known me for years. I am still myself. Just go on with the party. Let those who consider themselves relevant build it. That is all I am interested in. Nobody in the end but the workers themselves decide who is relevant and who is not. In the end we shall know who is relevant. There is one incident I must report here. When I was agitating for the formation of the party there was one socialist called Ayatola. He moved between Lagos and Enugu. I asked him to try and get a workers educational forum of the DL type going at least in Enugu. He tried but reported having problems. Then one day he told me that he had discovered the cause of his problem. He had on a previous visit met members of Ejiofor union to see if they could help. When he went back, the people told him that they had put the matter to Ejiofor and he had asked: Which party? Is it not this thing that Eskor Toyo has being talking about? Ejiofor turned them from the whole idea. From Ayatola discussion with me he revealed a deep mistrust of Ejiofor because of his experiences with him. For this reason, I decided to visit Enugu and see members of Ejiofor union. I did not ask them anything about Ejiofor. I just told them myself about the need for a party and education towards it. I then asked them whether their General Secretary had mentioned the idea of a party to them. They said “no. I told them that I learnt he had and that he had dismissed the idea of a party. They still denied his ever talking to them about the party. I then told them to consider the case themselves and take their own decision. Trade unionism, I said, was different from workers politics, and the trade union leadership was not a political leadership. I spoke to other trade unionists in Enugu. Eventually Enugu had an effective educational group. Political Leadership Who would lead the party? From the beginning Bassey Ekpo Bassey and Edwin Madunagu, as narrated, tried to exclude me from the party leadership. Several incidents must be mentioned here. 1. Soon after the NEC meeting of the NLC that decided to found the party, some young comrades from Lagos and elsewhere revealed to me that when they were at Calabar for the meeting, Edwin Madunagu was campaigning that “old comrades should be excluded from the leadership. Young comrades should lead the party. They were aware that the campaign was directed at excluding me from the party or the party leadership. 2. Babangida spoke saying that radicals or old politicians should not take part in the politics following his regime. This was interpreted to mean that socialists and those who had been active in pre-Babangida politics should not belong to the executives of the post-Babangida political parties. I was told in Lagos that a confidential paper was circulated by Edwin Madunagu listing me as an “old politician who should not participate in the “new politics. 3. The proscriptions of the Babangida regime made the leadership problem very difficult for the Nigerian Labour Party. To this was added the activities of opportunists. Whoever would be acceptable to the Babangida regime must not be a “radical or an “old politician. The Nigerian Labour Party, like others, sought registration. Most of the intelligentsia in the Labour Party would not be there if the party was not registrable. To them politics meant simply election. The party had to strain to find a registrable set of people for its national and state executives and registrable candidates for election if it was registered. 4. After the party had been launched, I once went to Lagos for a conference and a pressman asked me whether if the Labour Party adopted me as its presidential candidate I would accept it and run as a candidate. I answered simply: I shall do whatever the party asks me to do. No one in the party took note of the matter except Bassey Ekpo Bassey. He was furious. I learnt there was a party meeting in his house with people from different parts of Nigeria attending. This matter was raised and someone from Kaduna who had never seen me proposed that I should be expelled from the party. He did not prevail. 5. There came the registration exercise of the Federal Electoral Commission. Whether the party was registered or not, it meant nothing to those who did not labour to bring it about. However, I became worried. What if the party was not registered? If the leadership were such as could take the party underground, it would not matter, but I did not see the “leadership that the party had managed to put together for the Babangida regime acceptance as capable even of thinking of that. The party must be saved. An arrangement must be made for it to continue. I had an idea of what should be done. There should be a committee not subject to Babangida proscriptions that would carry on the party in case it was not registered. For me, the party was not a nine days wonder that would vanish once the Babangida regime said “no to it. Convinced of this necessity, I moved to Lagos. I discussed with Ejiofor, Paschal Bafyau and the late Armstrong Ogbonna the need to have such a committee of people ready. Ejiofor on the surface supported the idea and undertook to organise a meeting of some people to consider the matter. He and I fixed a date and I returned to Calabar. I was surprised when Comrade Ebony Okpa, the Cross River State Secretary of Ejiofor union, called me and said: Comrade, I do not know what meeting you arranged with Ejiofor in Lagos, but he has phoned to say that it cannot take place. I shrugged the matter off because I thought it was a postponement. A long time passed and I did not hear from him. As soon as I had returned from Lagos, I had gone to Bassey and told him of my discussion with Ejiofor. Bassey had not shown any real interest in the meeting. When eventually I met Ejiofor again and he did not bother to explain why the meeting could not hold, I concluded he had agreed with Bassey not to call it. After a time, the news came that the party was not registered. Rather Babangida got Humphrey Nwosu to write essays called “programmes for two empty boxes called parties. One box was labelled by Nwosu and himself National Republican Convention (NRC) and the other was labelled Social Democratic Party (SDP). Babangida decreed that there must be only those two “parties. He did not want extremists, he said. What was good for the country, he said,f was a “two party system with one party a little to the Left and the other a little to the Right. Actually, Babangida had first said that ideologies would harm the country. It is the formation of the Nigerian Labour Party that forced him into a little to the Left and a little to the Right. Nigeria was under the command of utter ignorance. At once the Nigerian Labour Party “leaders met in Lagos and decided that party members should join the SDP. Not all members of the party agreed with this decision. I discussed the matter with the then Secretary of SESCAN. I learnt SESCAN was a firm supporter of the party. The Secretary told me that he did not support the decision to join the SDP. He was furious. He said: We should have taken the party underground. I agreed with him that that should have been the best solution, but I asked: Are the LP leaders the kind of people who can carry a party underground? I must say that all the workers that I discussed the matter with agreed with the SESCAN position. It would have been a very popular move. Many workers believed that the non-registration of the LP and the arbitrary proclamation of the NRC and SDP by the Babangida regime were a ruse to negate the existence of the Labour Party. I was deeply worried once again. Will not the joining of the SDP mean a death of the Labour Party? Again, I moved. I went to Lagos and renewed my call for the formation of a group that could continue to guide the party in the SDP. In Lagos I met Ejiofor. He did not say anything about our previous arrangement and I decided not to ask him. This time I decided not to go immediately back to Calabar. I decided to stay in Lagos up to three or even four days to have a meeting. He said two days would be sufficient to rally comrades. I had seen Bafyau and some other comrades. This time a meeting was actually held. We met in the office of the Nigerian Union of Railwaymen. There were some eight or so unionists. I stated my case, the need to have a committee, a party directorate, to keep the party together and guide it within the SDP. The comrades asked me to excuse them and let them consider the matter. I did. Within thirty minutes they called me in. They agreed with my project. Then I asked them to name those they thought should be in it. The NLC had quite intelligently formed a Political Commission of the NLC. The Chairman of the Political Commission was Frank Oramolu; the Secretary was Sylvester Ejiofor. In the list dictated to me, I did not see the name of Frank Oramolu. I asked them whether they did not consider him suitable for that committee. They said they could have him. On my advice he was listed. Then I asked about the erstwhile General Secretary of the Nigerian Labour Party, Salam. They said he was not a serious character and was not reliable. We decided to exclude him. I asked them to include Bassey Ekpo Bassey. I told them I would report the meeting to Bassey. We agreed on the date when next to meet. As soon as I arrived at Calabar, I went to Bassey and informed him of the meeting, the committee formed and the date of its meeting. Again Bassey was most uninterested. He told me he would prefer to work with people like Ebenezer Babatope in the SDP. I did not argue. I simply asked: How is it more profitable to work individually in the SDP with people who never joined you to form the Labour Party than to consolidate the Labour Party in the SDP? It was clear to me that Bassey had actually changed from socialist to welfarist at best; from the politics of workers power to bourgeois politics. Again as before, after a time Comrade Ebony Okpa called me and told me that Ejiofor phoned to say the meeting I had fixed with him would not hold. This time, illusion ended. I went to Bassey and told him of the cancellation once again of a meeting for consolidation. I accused him of being responsible. I said: What I can see is that you are not interested in this meeting since you have seen new friends in the SDP. As soon as I return and inform you, you contact Ejiofor and both of you agree that the meeting should not hold. I did not know by then of Ejiofor own unilateral contacts with new friends in the SDP. Bassey said: I did not know I had such influence over Ejiofor. Bassey knows English. What he told me meant that if Ejiofor himself had been interested in these meetings the influence of a Bassey Ekpo Bassey would not have prevented him from going ahead with them. Suffice it merely to report that Sylvester Ejiofor has seen me several times since the cancellation of these meetings but he has never bothered to say a word about why the first or the second was cancelled. Comrade indeed! As I was agitating nationally for a committee to save the party, I was also urging a similar committee for the party in Cross River State to begin with. The party had become effectively the Bassey party. Only one person could set up or refuse to set up such a committee. Eventually Bassey called one meeting in which he touched on this matter. I had the impression that I was unwanted there. I was informed late and came in very late. As soon as I came in Bassey raised the matter of the committee of the party to operate in the SDP. I sat there as Bassey alone named about 12 persons to constitute the committee. I was right in front of Bassey but my name was not among them. From all the information I could gather, that committee never met. One day Iyambi Akpet met me in the street. I asked him about the Labour Party. He said to me: I can see what is going on. Lie low. I was already lying very low indeed in the pit into which I was shuffled by those who were relevant, except that occasionally I asked to know what was going on. Climax of Betrayal When the Labour Party people joined the SDP, no one in Calabar was formally informed, lest questions be asked. I learnt of the fact of the Labour Party joining the SDP in Lagos when I travelled there. Nationally, as soon as the Labour Party “leaders decided that the party members should join the SDP, the Labour Party was dissolved in practice. Its former “leaders began to go to the YarAdua group dominating the SDP to ask for money and positions. When as Chairman of the Directorate for Literacy I called a meeting of the DL, Iyambi Akpet noted with utter disappointment the complete collapse before the bourgeoisie and seeking money and positions from them. He asked: Are these not the very people we were condemning and were mobilising to fight? Among those who had been interested in the NLP at Calabar had been Mr. Kanu Agabi the lawyer. At a time when I thought that things could still be saved and before the decision to join the SDP was formally taken in Lagos, I noticed that he was no longer interested in the NLP. I went to him to ask what was the matter and to revive his interest in it. He told me point blank: These people have sold the party. At that stage I thought he might be right or wrong. I did not have to wait long to know the truth. He was right. The decision that members of the LP should join the SDP was not discussed in any branch or state organisation of the LP. It was just taken bureaucratically in Lagos. Not long after the decision in Lagos to join the SDP, an event took place in Lagos that must be reported. The union of Adams Oshiomhole was opening its new building in Lagos. Of course, the union invited trade union leaders and leaders of the NLP in Lagos. I was invited and was there. Dr Fasehun, President of the NLP, was there. A large crowd of trade unionists turned out to open the new house of the Textile Workers Union of Nigeria. The police were there mounted in more than three landrovers. I wandered why the mere opening of a house attracted such a massive presence of the police, since it was a workers organisation that was doing it. I said to myself that if it was a millionaire, a firm or the Nigerian Employers Consultative Association that was opening a house, the crowd of flies around the money men might be as large, but there would be no policeman. The presence of the police symbolised class spite, class hatred, class fear, class power, class dictatorship. So thinking I was anxious to speak and was happy that the President of the NLP and some of its leaders were there. During speech time I raised my hand and rose to address the gathering. I said: Workers, I am happy that the opening of the house of the Textile Workers Union of Nigeria has afforded me the opportunity of speaking to you since the Babangida regime refused to register your party. I congratulate the Textile Workers Union on following the constructive lead of the Nigerian Union of Railwaymen to build a house in Lagos in addition to their house in Kaduna. I am happy that some of the leaders of our unregistered party are here and I am happy that the police are here and can also hear what I have to say. I want to talk of your party, the Nigerian Labour Party. You formed your party for yourselves, not for the Babangida regime or anyone else. Babangida himself did not seek your approval to stage a coup. The party is only unregistered for the coming elections. Even if it is banned in law, it cannot be banned in your hearts if you want it to stay there. Unless the exploitation, oppression and suffering that made you form the party are ended, the party remains relevant. So long as it remains relevant, it is entirely up to you whether it lives or dies. You know the African National Congress (ANC) of South Africa. You know that it is very much alive and is dreaded by the racists there. As you know that the ANC remains alive so does every informed person in the world and so does the racist government of South Africa. The ANC, however, was banned in 1960 but refused to die. Those who formed it found ways and means to keep it alive to the knowledge of the world since 1960. As it was with the ANC so it can be with your party. What can be done? The leaders of the Labour Party have decided that the party people should troop into the SDP. That is not bad, depending on what they do in the SDP. The NLP people should form a Labour Faction of the SDP. The SDP and the NRC are already in warring factions. Therefore, the formation of a Labour faction is simply common politics. Politics is a game of factions, pressure groups or tendencies. If Babangida, Nwosu and company do not know that politics, especially politics in capitalist society, is a game of factions, then they are simply politically illiterate. At any rate, neither the regime nor the bourgeois leaders in the SDP and the NRC can banish the factions there. These factions are results of the characters of the SDP and the NRC and contentions in Nigerian politics. When any issue arises in the country or in the SDP, the Labour Faction should meet, take a line on it and declare and mobilise for its own line in the country and in the SDP. I did not know that I was addressing “leaders who were not serious about the party and were already selling it. My view was that the mere non-registration of the NLP was not a terrible loss. The creation of a loose all-comers SDP or NRC had in fact, created a forum for the party to continue as a faction, to do politics, to reach and mobilise the peasants, to educate and to emerge as the dominant faction of the SDP. The party could then prepare for eventual victory and become a ruling party either through a parliamentary election or otherwise, depending on the situation. After all, the armed forces of the bourgeoisie had already shown that in Nigeria election was not the only way of coming to power. No one paid heed to what I said and the party disappeared. Apart from my speech at Ikeja, I suggested this line to some party people but to no avail. In desperation, I went to Paschal Bafyau to suggest that when it was time for the SDP to consider candidates for the Presidential election, I was ready to offer myself as a contestant. If the Labour Party people adopted me, I could use that opportunity to meet the people and consolidate the Labour Party. I made it clear to Paschal Bafyau that I was not interested in any office, Presidential or other. My intention was only to mobilise the working people to revive a party that others were abandoning. In fact, I said to myself, if by some miracle the party was to win a presidential election as matters stood, its rule would be a mess. I could not imagine anyone being a Labour President without a solid, disciplined and educated worker-peasant party behind him. We had hardly consolidated even the initial steps towards such a party. Paschal Bafyau accepted my suggestion. He said he would put the suggestion to erstwhile NLP officials. Later, I met Bafyau on the matter. He said he mentioned it but that Ejiofor was the obstacle. Ejiofor was bitterly opposed to it. Paschal then added that Ejiofor thought of the party only as a party of trade unionists. He was hostile to anyone else. I told Bafyau simply to forget about the matter. However, in order to play my role of educator, I told Bafyau that Ejiofor motive might be sinister; it might reflect some envy or personal ambition on his side. However, such an attitude as his was not unheard of in the politics of workers struggle for power. Trade unionists who had faith in or preferred only trade unionists in the workers political movement are called “syndicalists. The term derives from the French word “syndicat, meaning “trade union. However, I said what could not be explained was a certain anti-intellectualism present in Ejiofor but absent in the labour movement before he took Goodluck place. I told Bafyau that Imoudu always welcomed the role of intellectuals with university degrees in our movement. Many such pro-worker intellectuals were created directly or indirectly under his influence. I did not belabour the point, as Bafyau was himself aware of Comrade Imoudu close relation with and fatherly love for Comrade Dr. M. E. Kolagbodi. Ph.D., and myself. One reason why I did not go far is that this anti-intellectual trend deserved a distinct and serious attention as an issue by itself. I let Paschal know that the anti-intellectualism would weaken our movement. One does not spend years in a university doing nothing. If one brought that knowledge to the working class it was a big asset. Karl Marx and V. I. Lenin were university degree holders, and the working class movement in the world would never have been as powerful as it was but for their intellectual contributions. The bourgeoisie rule, guided by the advice of their intellectuals. I later learnt that my proposal to come into the Presidential race to help the Labour Party was mentioned to Bassey and that Bassey opposed it. I learnt also of Edwin Madunagu reaction. His view was that if I ever wanted to contest the Presidential election for any reason, it was wrong and inexcusable for Bassey and Ejiofor to oppose it. It was later that I knew why Bassey and Ejiofor opposed the proposition. They were in league to use the name and platform of labour to negotiate for positions for themselves to pursue their own ambitions. They had finished with the Labour Party. They had known and rejected my earlier suggestion of a standing committee aimed at sustaining the continuity of the party. They did not want to be disturbed by someone who would condemn and frustrate their unilateral negotiations or someone who would make the Labour Party factually real, in which case they would be subjected to discipline. They also did not want to annoy the bourgeoisie and lose what they stood to gain by obsequiousness to the YarAdua men who, for want of an organised counter force, dominated the SDP. What amazed me was the fact that YarAdua kept his group together in the SDP, but the Labour Party men who were potentially stronger dissolved their own party and scurried like rats to YarAdua. Bureacrats Rather Than Leaders The party even before it joined the SDP was being run very bureaucratically. Even in Calabar, no workers meetings were being called to explain things to them. Once, in Calabar, there was a decision prompted by me to go to localities and explain things to workers. It turned out that I alone bothered to do it. Others simply waited for election time or did not care. They took the support of workers and artisans for granted. I noticed that Bassey would simply take off from Calabar, meet the “relevant in Lagos and return without informing anybody of anything. Because Calabar was what it was, things soon blew up. After all, Bassey was not like Ejiofor. The members of the Directorate for Literacy were in the party at Calabar. To avoid them Bassey was consolidating his own Bassey group. When Olu Falae got interested in contesting the Presidential elections for the SDP, Bassey started going to Olu Falae. Soon I learnt that there was a bitter quarrel between Bassey and the trade unionists who were in the DL. This was not the first quarrel but in this case, Bassey on one side and all the trade unionists on the other called press conferences. I moved in to try to bring about a peaceful resolution. It was abortive. The trade unionists said that Bassey had used the name of Labour to get money from Lagos which he did not reveal to the trade unionists. I knew the extent of the bitterness when in my effort to have the matter of Bassey relations with the unions resolved, I went to Ededem Ita Edem who seemed to me to have withdrawn from Labour Party affairs. I found the man thoroughly disappointed and angry. He said Bassey treated others as if they were nothing. He particularised for himself and said: What does Bassey think he is? Formerly, any time Bassey called me, even at midnight when my wife and I had gone to bed, I would jump up, leave the house and go to him. What does he think I was doing that for? This story by itself has a great significance. In my life I had seen many sincere and devoted persons won over to socialism by me devastated and turned away permanently by others opportunism. In the case of the Directorate for Literacy, and Bassey turnabout, this happened to many. The stand-off remained between Bassey and the unionists till it was time for governorship elections. Bassey wanted to contest the governorship whether the trade union people liked it or not. I learnt that from the time of the press conferences, he went about telling people that he did not need the support of the unionists because as he was alleged to say, The unions did not make me. I said to myself, How could Bassey say this? Whatever Bassey thought and whatever new friend he had made, the trade unions in the Cross River State were still enormously important. In order that the “relevant Labour Men might have a labour candidate of the SDP for the Cross River State which everyone knew was the birth place of the Labour Party, a reconciliation meeting between Bassey and his camp followers and the trade unionists, was called with a view to resolve the party candidate matter. I learnt of this meeting from the trade unions. I attended it only to have another shock. Ejiofor came to the meeting from Lagos. The unions, as I had learnt from them, wanted a structure for consultation and discipline and the avoidance of unilateralism. Bassey claimed that there was already a structure. Bassey made no effort even to show the existence of this structure. Chief Ekpiken who had been the Chairman of the Labour Party in the state was at the meeting. I was surprised to find that Ejiofor was not interested in a reconciliation or in the question of a structure or collective decision as against unilateralism. He kept insisting that Bassey should be adopted candidate. The unionists replied that unless there was a democratic structure to run things and choose a candidate, the question of a candidate did not arise. The meeting got rowdy and the Bassey men walked out. That was the end. On the way home, I was in the company of a very sad and disappointed Chief Ekpiken. He said in a tone of utter dejection and finality: This young man has burnt up all the goodwill. I said to myself: So Ejiofor came here only to have Bassey adopted candidiate? Not long after, we learnt at Calabar that Bassey had been adopted by his “party in Lagos as Labour choice as SDP governorship candidate in the Cross River State. The unionists swore that he would get nowhere in the election. I am not aware of any campaign by them against him in the election. They simply did not go out to work for their “comrade as before. Their “comrade, Ejiofor candidate of the SDP in the Cross River State, eventually got nowhere. One incident must be reported. Bassey as candidate arranged a reception for party people to welcome him into the election. From Lagos came Paschal Bafyau and one other trade unionist. They found that there was no trade unionist from the Cross River State at the reception. On their way home, they strolled with me. They were thoroughly dissatisfied with Bassey speech which they said was arrogant and contemptuous of others. It turned out that as Bassey tried to campaign in the northern part of Cross River State he met a rebuff. Bassey is Efik and that part of the state is non-Efik and much larger in territory and population. The non-Efik groups felt that Efiks had been the top dog all along. The governor should come from them. The only way of attenuating this ethnic feeling would have been for the trade unions to be with Bassey so that the political battle would be a class struggle as during the heydays of the DL. Now the DL had long been put hors de combat by Bassey and his Lagos “party. The unions turned away. In the speech he made at the reception, Bassey did show spite and contempt. He said he did not care whether anyone supported him or not. Some persons and one driver from the northern part of the state could be heard swearing that he would not win in their part of the state. Bafyau and his colleagues were disgusted with what they saw as Bassey carefree egotism. I made no comment. I merely asked: But who made Bassey candidate? There is a crucial incident that must be reported. Ejiofor and others in Lagos merely ruled their “party by decrees from Lagos. They passed political orders to trade unionists and did not care for the existence of any local party organisation. In the case of the Cross River State, Bassey was the “party. It is important to report that in Lagos there was really no party branch. Only some young enthusiasts of the Labour Party tried to constitute a party branch. Baba Omojola was in that tentative branch. I learn from him and others who were in it that Ejiofor sometimes attended their meeting, but that each time he came there was an explosion because he simply came to dictate things to them. That was Ejiofor idea of how to run a workers party. One should simply dictate to workers as their employer bosses dictate to them and the trade unions. After all, what do they know, and without money, what can they do? The Last Gasp: Revelations When the Presidential election came, the Bassey-Ejiofor fraternity were already with Olu Falae. Both Falae and Kinkibe vied for nomination as SDP candidate. Among the Labour Men, there was a disagreement between Dr. Fasehun on the one hand and Ejiofor and others on the other on what to do. Disgusted with the lack of collectivity of the Labour Men, Dr. Fasehun came to me. He wanted me to intervene or wanted at least to make clear that if things fell apart, he was in no way responsible. Bassey was the National Vice-President of the Labour Party and Ejiofor the Secretary of the Political Commission of the NLC. Dr. Fasehun told me that at first Bassey would come to Lagos and both of them and some of the trade unionist party leaders would go to YarAdua, the de facto head of the SDP to present the position of “Labour. Later he noticed that the others took to going to YarAdua individually. YarAdua soon lost respect for them. If any of them or he as head of the “Labour Men went to YarAdua, to see him on an issue, he would snap: Ive already seen your men. That would be the end of the matter. I learnt from several in Lagos that Ejiofor was exploiting his position as Secretary of the Political Commission of the NLC to canvass for positions for himself as a concession to “Labour. One piece of information is worth looking at. In 1995 I had a motor car accident in the course of trying to help workers in the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. As I lay stricken in the National Orthopaedic Hospital, Enugu, Frank Oramolu (Chairman of the Political Commission of the NLC) and the President of the National Union of Local Government Employees, and Paschal Bafyau, President of the NLC, came to see me. It was as if my pains just flew off. However, I was not happy with what they told me about the fate of the Labour intervention in politics. They said Ejiofor went about claiming in government circles that he was forced to become the Secretary of the NLC Political Commission. I told them that it might be that some people were just carrying rumours. They said there was no question of peddling rumours and affirmed that Ejiofor actually made this claim. Then I asked: Did you people force him to be the Secretary of the Political Commission? They replied: Who forced him? Was anyone in a position to force him to do anything? I was again shocked. Socialist Critics and Why I Acted Some socialists were not happy about the Nigerian Labour Party. The Party, however, was supported by most socialists at least as a beginning if not the best beginning. What did the critics say? It is important to relate their views. We have seen that Balarabe Musa said that workers were not conscious and that the peasants were the proper vanguard of the struggle for working people power. The answer to the “not conscious argument is that political consciousness is not inherent; it is created, as Nnamdi Azikiwe and others created national liberation consciousness in Nigeria, and Aminu Kano and others created national cum anti-feudal consciousness in a part of the former Northern Nigeria. Some socialists contended that the workers should not have formed a registrable party. This means that they should not form a party to contest for registration. There is a truth in the fear of opportunism by this group, but as Comrade M. E. Kolagbodi always said, we must fight in circumstances given by history; we cannot manufacture ideal circumstances. I do not believe in the registration of political parties. Only the late Bola Ige shared my view on this. There are many things wrong with it, but I was not in a position to carry workers for a party and against registration at the same time. The registration of political parties in Nigeria is a big liberation question by itself. If the party lived, it could mobilise the country to get registration abolished and win or cause a crisis on the matter. Some socialists criticised the programme of the party. They said the programme was not revolutionary or not socialist. Some people do not know what revolution is all about and that revolution as a process has many aspects. If one class in history tells another, I want to determine my destiny myself. Therefore, I must replace you in power so that I can myself transform my destiny, that is a revolutionary resolution. Some socialists did not like a party formed under Babangida condition, that the leadership of the party must not contain “radicals or anyone who had played a prominent part in any party whatsoever, including, say, the People Redemption Party, the Socialist Workers and Farmers Party formed in 1963 or the first Nigerian Labour Party formed in 1964. However, as I always told workers during my long campaign for the party, if they formed a party during or after Babangida military rule, they were not forming it for Babangida rule or on the prompting of his government. They were forming it for themselves and by their own decision. Every party gets formed some day or in some situation. The important thing was that their party was possible, necessary and timely in the situation then existing. They should form it. Many socialists did not trust the trade unionists and very much doubted the success of a party formed by them. Either the party would collapse or it would be opportunistic. This possibility of collapse or opportunism was clearly there, and I saw it. As I have reported, the workers themselves were uneasy with the prospect of the trade unionists leading the party. We have reported on the attitude of the NLC leaders in Port Harcourt. There was truth in all the arguments other than the Balarabe Musa one. Why did I, nevertheless, persist? I persisted because of a number of things. The first is the power of the type of down-to-earth education I was giving. I had given this kind of education in the 1950s and 1960s before and after the Civil War. It had always been effective and it proved what it could do in the DL, Cross River State. The second reason for my persistence was my determination to see a substantial working people party confronting bourgeois-imperialist-feudal rule any time the military retired. The third reason is that I completely turned my back on sectarianism. In 1953, 1960, 1963, 1964, 1968 and 1975, I had mobilized socialists to found and lead a working people party. Each time the effort had floundered either because of sectarianism in the case of the 1953 effort or opportunism in the other cases. This time, I went to the workers themselves and the trade unions. There was no other way to obtain a massive party. If it was spoilt by opportunists, this would not be the first experience of that, but let it differ in being non-sectarian and massive. The fourth reason is that military coups had come and gone in Nigeria and the national and social crisis existed persistently, but no one moved except soldiers who eventually handed over power to the same despicable class of civilian bourgeois rougues. The workers must rise to intervene to make history. They did rise to make history. The fifth reason was the Directorate for Literacy. The blanket suspicion of trade unionists applied to trade unionists in Lagos. It did not apply to trade unionists in the Cross River State. My independent experience during the civil war, when I worked with Endeley Olagbose, the militant leader of dockworkers, to stage a strike during the civil war, showed that all trade unionists could not be condemned because of the bureaucracy, opportunism, dishonesty, cowardice, personal ambition and hypocrisy of some people in the NLC. That strike totally paralysed the Lagos docks during a war but the other trade union “leaders that the dockworkers had approached for advice had firmly rejected anything to do with a strike till the end of the war. They had then approached me. Some of those they had approached before coming to me were “Marxists. The DL in Calabar was unlike anything in Lagos or anywhere else, and the DL was the one that was betrayed by non-trade unionists and intellectuals of the so-called “Left; it was not the other way round. One reason why I remained adamant is that Nigerian “socialists had a text-book view of socialism or revolution. They think they can ape Lenin, Mao Zedong etc. by gathering a few people around themselves and giving the name “movement to meetings of a few people. Another reason why I could not listen to the socialists is that with the exception of Comrade Imoudu, Comrade Kolagbodi and a few others, they tended to be overawed by the magnitude of the strength of the enemy. They do not know that the workers can also be very strong if educated and organised. The next reason why the socialist critics could not convince me is that they thought of the party as a body of people to be immediately dictated to and “controlled. I thought of the party as a body of politically educated workers. The first and most important work of the party, I thought, was education and unification of the people which would lead to an ideological and organised isolation of the people from bourgeois solutions, bourgeois ideology and bourgeois politics. Next, let it be pointed out that ideas about the party differed. I certainly did not think of the party as simply or even principally an election platform. The circumstance in which the party was formed was such that it could have rejected participation in electoral politics by simply rejecting the conditions imposed on the election by the Federal Electoral Commission. Left to the workers themselves and SESCAN, the party could have been taken underground. One reason why I was not convinced by the socialists is that I had since the civil war shifted the emphasis from the word “socialist to “working people power and the content of working people power. Younger socialists might not understand this shift in Nigeria, but things could be explained to them later. My concrete approach proved, since the civil war, its superior effectiveness. When the working people are in power and practice workersism, let the capitalists go and argue with them. I reject the position where the capitalists are in power practicing capitalism and the workers are the ones trying to argue with them. The final and very urgent reason why I went ahead is that it was necessary to smash up the bourgeois notion that political parties were for the bourgeoisie only. The British colonialists had sown this idea under colonial rule and it was taken over by the Nigerian bourgeoisie because it serves them. The restriction of workers movement, labour movement or labour participation to trade union movement or trade union participation had to be ended with finality. That could not be done without a massive party of the working class, formed openly irrespective of vitiating circumstances, and impossible for anyone to ignore. Politics and political power were not the special preserves of the Shagaris, Okparas and Akintolas or the Armed Forces people. Workers could aim at power and could rule. No group of socialists or anyone else had brought the Nigerian working class and the Nigerian people to a general awareness of this. To create this awareness as a permanent change in political consciousness in post-colonial Nigeria is what I went out to mobilize workers and trade unionists to achieve. The workers responded resoundingly because of my method of appeal. Class and class struggle as a means of achieving the working people liberation was focused on unequivocally. No complex details or qualifications were allowed to a bald exploiter/exploited counter position. I was determined that the working people should see the significance of power and decide to fight for it. As I expected from experience, the working class responded with a totality that took the bourgeoisie or the imperialists by surprise. Whether workers won power or not, workers got to know that they could unite politically and take power. They united politically, but power eluded them because of the stupidity and opportunism of those whose “leadership qualities they had doubts about from the beginning. A few opportunistic trade unionists, suspicious of even one another, can now get together and declare a Social Democratic Party or a Labour Party. Without the massive demonstration of the Nigerian Labour Party and without the DLs at Calabar and elsewhere they would never have had the idea or the guts to make noises about any such party. The lift in consciousness which makes the workers of Nigeria aware that they can own their own party and arrive at political power through it was the main justification and the main achievement of the Nigerian Labour Party, 1989. During the Abacha years I met a lawyer in Lagos who told me that it was a mistake for Herbert Macaulay and others to have fought for independence for Nigeria. I do not think it was a mistake. It was not also a mistake to form the Labour Party. Betrayal and Loss We have proceeded factually in this skeleton account of the birth and betrayal of the Nigerian Labour Party. Let us now make an assessment. Betrayed were myself as the bellman of the working people; the Directorates for Literacy, especially the DL at Calabar and the working people of the Cross River State; the workers and other working people of Nigeria; the students of Nigeria whose National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) were very eager to work for the party and were rejected; the National Association of Seadogs (Pirates Confraternity) who offered their services to the party through me; the musicians of Nigeria; the trade union veterans, namely, Micheal Imoudu, Wahab Goodluck, Hassan Sunmonu, Ali Ciroma, Lasisi Osunde, Aliyu Dangiwa, David Ojelli, etc. who gave the party their total blessing; all the progressives of Nigeria who at last looked forward to an era of active liberation struggle and achievement; the opportunity of leading Nigeria and Africa out of the woods and helping to turn humanity in a direction of co-operation and love rather than selfishness, greed, exploitation, spite and imperialist bellicosity. Those who betrayed the Nigerian Labour Party in the secret service of the bourgeoisie, in order to boost their petty or mediocre ego or in order to make money, spat on a momentous opportunity to do good to millions and millions of people. After the betrayal of the Nigerian Labour Party I made journeys to Ikom, Lokoja, Minna, Bauchi and elsewhere. Anywhere I could see workers, they asked: What has happened to our party? If I had had money simply to go round this country the Nigerian Labour Party would have lived large, strong and militant, whether Babangida and company wanted it or not. Nevertheless, I believe our party is not dead in the hearts of workers who saw and embraced it. One thing I must say. Those who played nasty games with and abandoned the Nigerian Labour Party are as guilty as the bourgeoisie of all the blows that the common people of this country and Nigeria as a nation have had to endure since they destroyed the party in 1990/91. It is absolutely silly, mischievous and hypocritical to sabotage the effort of the workers to get to power and then pretend to blame Obasanjo and company who are exercising the power gratuitously allowed them by traitors. Here let me narrate one incident that has a great significance. When I started my campaign for the Labour Party, there was one labour education gathering at Calabar attended by both Salam and Ejiofor. Here I met Salam for the first time. In his first remark, Salam said: These are the days of scientific trade unionism; not table pounding. I had to get up to put Salam right. I did not go into the silly bourgeois language about whether there is anything describable as “scientific in the bourgeois conception of trade union collective bargaining. I simply said that the talk of “table pounding is bourgeois language and reflects bourgeois contempt for militant trade unionism. I said that Salam met trade unions ready formed, legalized and accepted by the bourgeoisie as a fact of capitalist life. In Nigeria and outside Nigeria, this was not always the case. In Britain, the mother of trade unionism, trade unions were regarded as conspiracies in restraint of trade. In Nigeria, this rejection of trade unionism was initially the situation. Rejection, contempt for workers, employer arrogance, and the use of employment termination and forcible ejection induced the kind of response that resulted in so-called “table pounding. There was a time in Nigeria when a union had to gain attention for talks by going on strike and showing real anger at contempt and negligence. To pick up this language about “scientific trade unionism as against “table pounding from Kuru, Western Europe or the USA and use it uncritically in workers circles is to insult the earlier generation of trade unionists. These unionists “pounded tables because of the circumstances of their times. I recall this incident because one who will just pick up employers snob or bluff and use it is far from adequate for the leadership of a working people party. He is too much a slave to bourgeois sentiments. When the meeting under reference came to discuss trade union financing, I got up and said that to me it did not augur well that these days even when the trade unions are much larger than before and enjoy check-off which was absent before, some trade unions engage in the practice of going to the employer or even to the governor of a State to obtain funds for their congress. I was amazed when Sylvester Ejiofor got up to justify the practice by claiming that this is what trade unions do all over the world these days. I do not know what Ejiofor meant by the world. I have been National Trustee of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) since 1983. ASUU organizes all its congresses with its own funds. Unions used to do so in Nigeria before Ejiofor became spokesman of world trade union malpractice. If it is the employer that finances congresses, why do we talk of trade union democracy? In 1992, when ASUU was about to begin negotiations with the governments as employer, agents of the Federal Government offered the ASUU Negotiating Team (more than ten persons) accommodation throughout the negotiation at the Eko Holiday Inn (a super-modern hotel in Lagos). ASUU rejected the offer. One justification was the independence of the union. Another was the confidence of the members in the leadership. Yet another was the danger of careerism once the door was opened for feather-bedding. The final argument was, as Attihiru Jega put it, that money to house so large a team in Eko Holiday Inn for many days would do a lot of work if given to a school. In the sequel the ASUU Negotiating Team sometimes slept on the floor somewhere. The point of this story is that a man like Ejiofor will extend his employer financed trade union practice into a political party which he treats as a mere extension of his brand of trade unionism. Such a person is a disaster as a leader of a working people party. If the consequences of the type of obsequious or capitulationist consciousness reflected in the statements of Salam and Ejiofor were not clear before the formation of the Nigerian Labour Party, they are clear now. It is not for nothing that the workers kept asking whether it was the trade unionists that would lead their party. As matters stood, they had not long to mislead it; they simply sold it to assassins and left it dead. Speedy Collapse There were situational factors that caused the speedy disappearance of the NLP. They go to explain but do not excuse the tragedy. The fact that it was a trade union party infected it with the dishonesty, bureaucratism, personal ambition, corruption, greed, mediocrity and other bourgeois traits characteristic of trade unionism in Nigeria. It breathed into the party also the trade union principle and spirit of bargaining with the employer in power rather than fighting against him for power. The trade union outlook and the workers party outlook cannot be combined in one man unless that man happens to be a Michael Imoudu kind of man. The two kinds of consciousness came into conflict in the Nigerian Labour Party as it did in the British Labour Party which the Trade Union Congress there played a big role in forming. The British Labour Party still exists, but it does not differ much from the avowedly bourgeois parties. Another factor in the speedy collapse of the Labour Party is the fact that it was formed close to election and was election focused for most of those who came to “lead it. The Bassey election victory helped to intensify this election orientation and Bassey himself would not hear of any orientation not immediately focused on election. I was told later by many that to be frank, many of the trade unionists, etc. who showed apparent enthusiasm did so because they dreamt that they would soon be governors, parliamentarians, local council chairmen, etc. and enjoy the perquisites of these offices. This explains why joining the SDP appeared automatic once the party was not registered for election. There was opportunity in the SDP option to contest elections and do the trade union kind of bargaining. Another factor that caused the ready jettisoning of the party is the lack of preparation for it among trade unionists and others outside Calabar. The kind of education that inspired the DL at Calabar and later turned the trade unionists there solidly against the latter-day Bassey did not exist elsewhere. Opportunistic thinking had no organised resistance to contend with. Another factor, related to the election orientation, is the factor of party registration. To form a registration-seeking party, in the case of the worker-peasant party, is to seek to make the party exist or live on conditions imposed by the electoral, etc. rules of the class enemy. Quite strangely, however, the Labour Party “leaders sought registration even without raising this question. A fight over the question of registration would have legitimized an underground existence for the party. It would even cause a political crisis with a great boost in popularity for the party. Another factor may be called the Babangida exclusions. Babangida pronounced the exclusion of what he called “radicals, “extremists and “old politicians from the political process of return to civil rule. “Radicals and “extremists in the bourgeois mind was interpreted as Marxists, communists or socialists. “Old politicians was even more vague; it could apply to anyone who had taken part at any time in the past in political affairs. This played into the hands of place seekers who sought to elbow out some persons. In the stampede to acquiesce in and fit into Babangida non-ideological or “little to the Left and little to the Right imposition, some “Marxists even described themselves as “credible, i.e. acceptable to the regime. A leadership formed in this atmosphere is bound to be most inadequate and most cowardly. Such a leadership will sacrifice everything to avoid being seen as rocking the boat of transition. Yet another factor in the instant crumbling of the party is the bureaucratic way in which the trade union drivers drove it. There was no grass-root and, therefore, no obligation to refer anything to the grassroot. A few people in Lagos were the party. This made the disappearance of the party automatic once the few real “members in Lagos turned away from it. Another factor in the swift extinction was the inexperience of the man who in the prevailing circumstance became its President. The man had no clout with the working people themselves. He was a completely new name virtually from nowhere. He did not know the trade unionists because he had not worked with or moved with them over the years. He could not bypass them and on his own go to the workers themselves. He was a complete prisoner in their hands. The man became the President because he helped to finance the party initially. This is the wrong basis for becoming a leader in a working people party unless the man has other powerful credentials. When those who chose him because he could finance their going and coming saw bourgeois alternatives to him, they easily dumped him and ran to YarAdua, Olu Falae, etc, and he could not carry the party beyond them. Finally, there was the hurry in which things had to be done because the population was given only a short time to form and register political parties and go into elections. This was actually a bourgeois political melodrama. An effective organisation that could check opportunism could not be mounted. There was little or no time for party education. Things were worse because the trade unionists relied on their trade unions and the NLC communication channel, which they regarded as a substitute for the party. The only way to have the party continue to live and develop in education and in politics was to decide that the party must live at all cost and to form the committee I had suggested outside the election mentality, the National Electoral Commission conditions and the Babangida restrictions. Such a committee would have decided in time to preserve the party in some form and what development was necessary and how to go about things. This was not to be. Let me say here one thing I told the workers during my lectures calling for the party. There is no bourgeois regime that does not thoroughly hate a working people party. A bourgeois regime will always move to try to crush a working people party that is strong and can assume power. This is why in all cases working people parties come to power from cladestinity into which they are driven by the bourgeois regime. One should not choose cladestinity out of cowardice. However, anyone that forms a worker party for power and not for lobbying and is not prepared when the situation warrants to operate it from underground, as the African National Congress leaders did in 1960, should forget about forming it. When a working people party is sufficiently strong and influential and comes into power or is about to do so, the bourgeoisie abandon all pretence to democracy, human rights and liberty and resort to terrorism. That is what all history shows. Achievements of the Labour Party Did the Nigerian Labour Party achieve anything? Yes it did. First, from the period of British rule, the imperialist and bourgeois rulers have always translated the term “labour movement to mean the trade union movement. Trade unionists, except a few, accepted this translation. Political thinking was taboo in the working class movement. “Politics was the game of the bourgeoisie. The working class was so misled, so brainwashed by the bourgeoisie, and so paralysed by the equation of “labour movement to trade union movement, that the vast majority of workers did not know that the existing political parties in Nigeria belong to a particular class. Any question about the working class as a whole forming a party or about the working class taking power was limited to whispered talk to sectarian groups. In this matter, the working class was a prisoner of bourgeois ideas and practices. The mental, attitudinal and behavioral chains had to be smashed up with a big hammer and a big blow throughout the working class as a whole. That is what Comrade Imoudu and myself aimed at and that is what was achieved. For Comrade Imoudu and myself the massive response of the workers themselves was not in any doubt once things were put to them honestly, clearly, using their own experience and with audacity. Actually both during the civil war and in 1984-1989 those who were indifferent to and frightened of my talk of a workers party and of workers power were people politically dead under the paralysis of their own timidity and ignorance, hower they described themselves Left, Right, Marxist, Socialist, Progressive, Democrat. The lethargy had to be broken, and it could only be broken by a massive offensive. I myself did not expect a unanimous party. In this matter many trade unionists are much weaker for many reasons than the workers. Sufficient for me was a substantial working people party by which I meant one that no one could ignore. I think Comrade Imoudu would have been satisfied with this also for the same reason. For me, to seek to achieve an ideal working people party from the word “go was ridiculous infantilism. The party actually emerged with the near total support of the trade unionists thanks to Paschal Bafyau. I think he did not want to go into controversy over the matter if only because as President of the NLC he was “father of all and should not be seen as biased towards the pro-party faction of his “children if the family factionalised politically. Later, when the party was abandoned by opportunists, some of the trade unionists complained that they were coerced by Bafyau into it. We have seen that Ejiofor is said to have told the bourgeois government that he was “forced to be secretary of the Political Commission of the NLC. Workers should carefully note that Paschal Bafyau and Frank Oramolu who told me in the hospital of Ejiofor claim were respectively the President of the NLC and Chairman of the NLC Political Commission. 2. I campaigned with such totality for the emergence of a working people party that I collapsed in Katsina and passed out. When I regained consciousness, the doctor told me that by the time he arrived my heart had stopped. He told me that there was nothing wrong with me except exhaustion. Why this all-out effort? Three reasons operated: (a) I remembered that Imoudu was old and I had to do alone our joint work. Since 1963 his passion and mine had been to put the working people in power in Nigeria because of what this would mean for the people of Nigeria and for Africa and humanity. (b) I realized that I had acquired a unique capacity to educate the people instead of merely speak to them. That capacity had to be used at this moment. (c) The moment was the exit of yet another military regime and I was determined that the kicking of Nigeria and the Nigerian people from military predators to civilian predators and from the latter back to military predators must stop. In the next civilian regime there must emerge a working people party to contest with predators of all hues for power. 3. What Comrade Imoudu and myself wanted was not a mere election platform for this or that election or for elections, but a permanent political instrument to fight in all circumstances, and by any method necessitated by circumstances, for power until it was won. We were not thinking of any jamboree that would end like a nine-days wonder. Nevertheless, I thought that even if the working people party for some reason folded up, it would remain in the minds of the workers and this memory would make a future effort easier. It was necessary to smash up once and for all, through the emergence of a substantial party aiming at power, the impression that politics, the formation of parties and the contest for power were spheres reserved for bourgeois games. Today, it is easier for any set of trade union opportunists who would never have ventured into politics before to declare a political party for workers. Whatever happens workers alive who were not too young in 1989 remember that they had a party. This is a big gain. 4. The unanimity with which the workers themselves embraced the Labour Party shows conclusively that it is only lack of effort plus bad leadership, opportunism, ignorance and timidity that have kept and are keeping the Nigerian working people from power. Bourgeois rule in Nigeria has long been bankrupt. The reason given for repeated military coups and the fact that by their own conduct in government the military also have thoroughly discredited themselves are indicators of this bankruptsy. For workers to see that nothing now stands between them and power except a well-informed, non-opportunistic, incorruptible and courageous leadership is a big gain in their consciousness. They could not have learnt this lesson otherwise than from practice. To let all of them know how their first experience went is the purpose of this factual report on our party. 5. The experience of the NLP shows the enormous importance of education. For one to be principled, one must know the principles. If in every state there had emerged a DL and a group of trade unionists like those in Calabar the Nigerian Labour Party would not have been abandoned or betrayed. It would not have collapsed. It is significant that at Calabar it was the trade unionists and workers of the DL that deeply appreciated the party and asked for principle. 6. The first Trade Union Congress (TUC) formed in Nigeria in 1943 wanted to unite and organize workers not only for trade unionism but also for workers political power. Its programme shows this and the first President of the T.U.C., T. A. Bankole, told me this in the early 1960s when he and I were guests at a trade union congress. Over the years British trade union indoctrination had killed this political will. The Nigerian Labour Party not only resurrected this idea but passed from notion to deed. There emerged a massive political party not trade union for power. Last Word My last word to workers is a thank you for listening to me. They have been betrayed but this does not mean that they will not achieve their goal of power. The next effort must take account of all that has been said. Certain things I must nail down by way of education. 1. The Labour Movement is different from the Trade Union Movement. The trade union movement consists of trade unions. The labour movement is wider; it consists of the trade union movement and the socialist movement. T. A. Bankole himself described the trade union movement very aptly as a movement concerned with begging for crumbs from the master table, to use his exact words. In forming the TUC in 1943, he told me, they intended to go beyond this. British colonialists knew this intention. Little wonder that they set about erasing any notion of politics from the Nigerian working class. The trade union movement is the industrial movement of workers as wage slaves. Its role is to ask for crumbs from the industrial master table. Capitalists, however, are also rulers. The socialist movement is the political movement of the working class. It aims at political power for the working class. With this power workers would change both enterprises and society into a truly humane and democratic order. Only a people-oriented order can do this. It is the trade union movement and the socialist movement together that is called “the labour movement. 2. A trade union is quite different from a political party. The aims are different. The types and qualifications of leaders are different. The organisation, the knowledge, the membership and the opponent are different. 3. Under capitalism no one eventually can be a maximally effective trade union leader as well as a maximally effective political party leader. There is the question of time and the question of different or conflicting demands. The NLC was right in deciding that those union leaders who aspired to be leaders of the workers party should resign their trade union appointments. 4. Actually a workers party may start as a party only for wage and salaried workers. To be effective as an instrument for the pursuit of political power, however, it must turn itself into a working people party. This is to say that it must embrace into its fold and fight for all working people: wage and salaried workers, peasants, artisans, professional workers and petty traders. Most of these constitute the masses. 5. It is important for all workers to note that the mere fact that the Nigerian Labour Party was not registered for the immediate post-Babangida election or any election did not mean that it should die. Tunji Braitwaite is a lawyer. His Nigerian Advance Party was not registered for the next election after its birth, but it continued as a party for many years. Registration is not a qualification for existence as a party; it is a qualification for participation in elections. Gani Fawehinmi, also a lawyer, formed and led the Nigerian Conscience Party and this party existed under that name for many years. It has only recently been registered for election. Besides, parties can go underground or operate in various forms. The Nigerian Labour Party was abandoned and killed by its so-called leaders because what interested them was not workers power but a means of negotiating with the ruling class for positions of profit in the bourgeois system. 6. All those who could have been honest with the party were not position seekers. They were ignored or elbowed away by the position seekers, who dominated the party in order to use it for bargaining for positions in the bourgeois scheme if the party was not registered. Introduction The Working People Party was born in conferences of prodemocracy groups and other popular organisations sponsored by the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) in 2001 and 2002. Thus was formed another party of the working people of Nigeria. It promised, like the Nigerian Labour Party (1989), to be very massive and widely supported by the down-trodden. However, it was again betrayed and abandoned. This was the second betrayal. The first betrayal was by those who scurried to lick the boots of YarAdua; the second was by the running dogs of Obasanjo. Formation of the Party In 2001, I received an invitation from the Nigeria Labour Congress to attend a conference of the prodemocracy organisations in Abuja to look at the future of the country in terms of democracy. The papers that came with the invitation indicated the possibility of a pro-democracy or civil rights net-work for intervention in the political process in Nigeria and the formation of a platform/party. I was invited in my own right and not as a representative of any organisation. The meeting was at Abuja. I did not attend this meeting as my invitation came late. However, people who attended the meeting, including the President of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) who attended on behalf of ASUU, let me know what transpired. They informed me that on the question of the formation of a party, the meeting overwhelmingly supported the formation of a party; but two individuals vehemently opposed it. These individuals were Bassey Ekpo Bassey and Sylvester Ejiofor. However, the assembly was very hostile to their opposition. Because they could get nowhere with their opposition to the party idea, Bassey left the meeting and returned to Calabar but Ejiofor, for some reason, remained. The meeting was again convened in Jos. I was again invited to the Jos meeting. This time, I was able to attend. It turned out that more than twenty-five organisations were invited to these meetings, and the Jos meeting, which I saw, was very heavily attended. Among the bodies that responded were the NLC itself and several trade unionists, the Academic Staff Union of Universities, the National Council of Women Societies, the Nigerian Bar Association, and the Nigerian Medical Association. Alhaji Ali Ciroma, a former President of the NLC, was the chairman of this meeting. In his speech he mentioned the need for a party. This meeting decided to form a party rather than only a platform. It set up a Steering Committee to prepare all that was needed for the take-off of the party, including its name, symbols, programme, constitution, launching, and initial financing. I was elected into the Steering Committee in my recognition. The President of ASUU was elected into it. Alhaji Ali Ciroma was named the Convener of the Steering Committee. Concerning the pro-democracy network of civil society organisations, this network was also formed with Dr. Jibo as Convener. Development of the Party The Steering Committee for the Party met twice. It agreed on the name of the party as Working People Party, on the logo and the flag of the party, and on the draft programme. It assigned the drafting of the constitution and agreed on financing. These were to be reported to the plenary meeting i.e. conference. The third meeting of the conference came up at Ibadan in Premier Hotel. On the party, the Steering Committee reported. The conference approved the name of the party as Working People Party, the draft programme, the logo and the flag. Alhaji Ali Ciroma was in the chair. As the meeting came to launching and initial financing, in came Sylvester Ejiofor who was not present all along. This Ibadan meeting was as heavily attended, as orderly and as serious as the Jos meeting. Ejiofor got up to say what to do to raise money for all the democratic fight which had nothing to do with the report already before the house which was being considered. He tossed that aside and said “we should look for millions of Naira before we could think of a party or any fight for democracy. Conferees did not like the manner and drift of his intervention. When the chairman tried to bring him to order, he said: I have my own party. I am late because I am from a party meeting. Parties are constructed; not launched. The Chairman then said to him: If you have already got your party or want to form your party, then go on with your party. Why come to disrupt this one? Rome was not built in a day. If we go into election and fail, we can try again and again. Instead of making any positive point, Ejiofor tried to tar Alhaji Ali by saying: Some people must have sent you to do all this. The house was already getting very angry with Ejiofor. I thought I should not allow the altercation to continue or the meeting to get rowdy. I got up to cool tempers. I said I did not think Ejiofor did not want a party formed, even if he was in another party already. His idea of financing things might differ from others. We had already decided in Jos to form the party so that any opposition to its formation no longer arose. I defended Alhaji Ali from any character assassination. I said I had known Alhaji Ali for a long time and I knew from experience that he fully supported the formation of the party. I said that we had all listened to his speeches at Jos and at Ibadan. All along he was for the formation of the party. I did not believe that anyone was using Alhaji Ali on the question of a party. Who could have been using him and to achieve what? I then said: I can assure you that on the need for a working people party, Alhaji Ali is fully with you. Let us go on calmly with the discussion and conclude. However, let me make one assertion. For my part, I shall not go into any party with people who will later betray and turn their backs on it. The house exploded with a very loud applause. That calmed the assembly. I must say that in getting up to intervene, I was trying to prevent anyone from using filibustering or altercations to provoke rowdiness and frustrate the decisions on the party. Such I knew to be the stock-in-trade of certain trade unionists and certain flimsy politicians. I also considered the slinging of mud on Alhaji Ali most unfair. The house settled down to business. The Steering Committee was authorised to finish drafting the constitution, look for money and organize the launching. At the last meeting of the Steering Committee, the committee had decided that it would not wind up as soon as the party was launched. It would continue to serve as co-ordinator and motivator until a party conference was called, the programme, etc. were adopted, and proper organs were set up. Betrayal The Steering Committee decided to meet again at Ibadan on January 5, 2003. we had expected that the NLC Secretariat would arrange the meeting. On that day, both the President of ASUU and myself went to the venue at Ibadan (where we were to meet) only to find that there was no one there except us two. After a time, we left. The clue soon came about what happened. Some people in the NLC simply sabotaged the project. I later learnt that Adams Oshiomhole was not innocent of the sabotage. Some time later, the President of ASUU informed me that Ejiofor met him somewhere by accident and told him that some of the NLC people had decided to register a party. Ejiofor claimed that these people took their decision because of the alleged need to beat the deadline of the National Electoral Commission for registration. Let me deal at once with the question of urgency. There was no urgency. Parties can exist unregistered. Even for the immediate elections envisaged by the electoral commission, other parties were registered after Ejiofor party. A long time elapsed between the sabotage and the actual registration of parties. Ejiofor forgot that he had told the plenary meeting at Ibadan that he was coming from the meeting of another party. It turned out to be that the name of Ejiofor mysterious party was “Party of Social Democracy. This is very important. Questions arise. 1. Who in the NLC took the decision to sabotage the Working People Party? 2. The pro-democracy conferences at Abuja, Jos and Ibadan must have been known to and approved by the National Executive Council (NEC) of the NLC. Did the NEC of the NLC consider and approve the sabotage? 3. ASUU representatives, as democratic, honest and responsible people, were reporting every development relating to the Working People Party to the National Executive Council of ASUU. Did Ejiofor and his fellow conspirators do the same with the NEC of the NLC or of their own unions? 4. All the affiliates of the NLC individually and all the State Councils of the NLC were to be at least informed of the Working People Party. Were they consulted, and were they informed of the decisions at Ibadan? 5. More than 25 organisations in the country decided to form the Working People Party. Which of them was in the know of what the Ejiofor clique decided to do? 6. Some of the organizations that met in Jos and Ibadan to form the Working People Party were later able, long after the sabotage, to form a party of their own as a result of disappointment. Some of these, like Democratic Alternative, got registered as a party. Where is the urgency that Ejiofor claimed to justify the sabotage? Is it more serviceable to the Nigerian people for a few conspirators to form and register what they called “Party of Social Democracy than for twenty-five organizations to team together in the Working People Party? 7. Did Ejiofor get the 40 million or so naira that he claimed at Ibadan was necessary before one could think of a working people party? Who gave it to him to register his Party of Social Democracy? 8. If Ejiofor and co-conspirators did not consider it worthwhile to inform, for instance, the ASUU leadership about their sabotage, why did he consider it worthwhile to invite the ASUU leadership to the “convention of the conspiratorial “party? The Melodrama The “party of Ejiofor and Salam was called “Party of Social Democracy? Why did they choose this name? If they are ignorant of social democracy as something representing bourgeois welfarism, which is what recommended it to Babangida and Nwosu, i.e. if they are so politically ignorant, then why are they fooling around with the idea of a workers party? If, however, they do know that social democracy is not for workers power and working people transformation of society from predatory to people-oriented, but is only for marginal “ameliorations while the bourgeoisie sit securely in predatory power, then they are playing a conscious treacherous role. In either case, what qualifies them for leading workers politically? Later, the name of the party of conspirators was changed from “Party of Social Democracy to Nigerian Labour Party. Did these jokers with the fate of the country and the working people not know of “Labour Party as a name before? This change by itself shows that they are simply mischievous opportunists. The change is prompted by three things. First, my pamphlet, “Searchlight on Social Democracy, exposed social democracy which some people used to think of as a working people ideology but has revealed itself in the last one hundred years as bourgeois ideology. No one who reads that pamphlet can still stand before well informed working people as a “social democrat. If “social democracy had not been bourgeois and deceitful, Babangida would not have chosen it for one of his irresponsible “no ideology conglomerates. The other reason for the change of name is that Ejiofor, Salam and company do not have any prescriptive right to the name “Social Democracy. There were many others in Babangida Social Democratic Party, but Ejiofor and his cohorts are not ready to share offices with their former fellow travellers in a piratical adventure. A very important explanation is that 2007 will soon be here for new elections. The so-called “parties in Nigeria are only election platforms for the polls or for negotiations before and after. The conspirators will gain more by going back to a name by which they can easily claim to represent “labour i.e. all workers. They want to repeat the way in which the Nigerian Labour Party was sold. The effect of the meddling and melodrama of Ejiofor, Salam and other conspirators is to bring the idea of a worker party in Nigeria to dirt and ridicule. The formation of a working people party for power in Nigeria or any other country is a job for socialists and the workers and peasants themselves. The running of a trade union, which is the begging servants component of capitalism, is the job for trade unionists. Twice Ejiofor, Salam and people like them in the NLC have proved that they see the advocacy of a working people party by me and the DLs and workers enthusiastic response merely as an opening for dirty opportunism. Let them stick to their trade unionism, if their trade unions let them go on, but let them leave the party matter alone. There are reasons why his trade union colleagues, when they had to speak the truth in private, said that Salam was “not serious. A man who will talk of “scientific trade unionism and “table pounding because arrogant employers and their labour aristocrat agents use these phrases to scare cowards off militant trade unionism is far from qualified for any leadership role in a working people party. There must be a reason why Ejiofor for years has angled for the position of General Secretary of the NLC, but even the trade unionists as trade unionists, do not trust him enough to put him in that position. A man who was so much in tune with Obasanjo that he became the Chairman of his government useless Committee on Productivity, as Sylvester Ejiofor was, is certainly not competent to lead a working people party. Obasanjo is so much a serf of American imperialism that he is the African amplifier of all American imperialist economic policy dictates. He even had the temerity to please the U.S. with Nigeria sensitive military information. Then he invited American troops into the Niger Delta. The former act led to the resignation of General Malu and the latter to protests by militants in the Rivers, Bayelsa, Akwa Ibom, and Cross River States who promised war against such American semi-colonialism. No one who is a friend or lackey of such a man is qualified to lead a working people party. Yet the cabal that betrayed both the Nigerian Labour Party and the Working People Party were so much of camp followers of Obasanjo that when Obasanjo increased petroleum prices and striking workers were shot and killed as the NLC asserted, Sylvester Ejiofor said in a published statement: Obasanjo disappointed us. No worker, peasant, socialist, honest democrat or patriot trusted Obasanjo or his government. The members of the Academic Staff Union of Universities, a really patriotic, democratic and people-oriented union, do not trust Obasanjo or his government. Ejiofor statement is a very significant one. Some people in the NLC so trusted Obasanjo that they hailed his election and threatened fire and brimstone if the results were not accepted, notwithstanding that their European Union collaborators in election monitoring and all those who actually participated in the election except the lackeys of Obasanjo rejected it because of the scale of fraud that disqualified it as a democratic or fair election. The faithfuls of Obasanjo in the NLC went beyond even that and committed the sacrilege of inviting this leading warlord of capitalist predation, corruption, and imperialism to the workers May Day rally. The workers know what happened at the rally. After that the trusted leader of Ejiofor and other assassins of the parties of workers power jacked up petroleum prices to the severe detriment of workers and many workers, as the NLC averred, were shot by the police in the strike staged in resistance. The “us to whom Ejiofor referred, who kept their conscience in the heart of Obasanjo, are far from competent to lead a working people party anywhere. One who knows so little about social democracy that he made a “mistake of registering a party in that name and calls on workers to join or “construct it is completely inadequate for leading a working people party. Some trade unionists, of course, can participate in the founding and development of a working people party. Such trade unionists must be honest, principled and democratic. They must really believe in putting the working people in power to transform society as mapped out by the programmes of the Nigerian Labour Party and the Working People Party of Nigeria. Trade unionism and playing the game of amelioration with bourgeois masters securely in power is quite a different thing from putting the working people in power to become the ruling class and masters of their own destiny. I am stating conclusions born of universal experience on all continents since about 1840. The Nigerian experience merely confirms universal experience. It is with this experience in mind and my knowledge of trade union practices in Nigeria and elsewhere that I asserted to workers during my lectures advocating the party: Some trade unionists will sabotage your party; some may even betray it. I believe that Ali Ciroma, Paschal Bafyau, Frank Oramolu, David Ojelli, Aliyu Dangiwa, Paul Epuh to mention but a few and the Directorates for Literacy were honest with the idea of the working people party. The workers themselves were honest about the idea when they asked me repeatedly in mistrust whether it was the trade unionists that would lead the party. I found the Nigerian Civil Service Union, the Medical and Health Workers Union, the Nigerian Union of Teachers, the Nigerian Union of Railwaymen, the Nigerian Union of Musicians, the petroleum workers, ASUU, SESCAN etc. honest with the party idea. In fact, the members of every union were very enthusiastic about the party idea. The crowd that welcomed the Labour Party and the unanimity about the idea of a working people party in Jos and Ibadan in 2001-2002 bespeak the overwhelming reception. The Nigerian working people certainly want a liberating party, which means a party for working people power; but they want an honest party. They have had more than a surfeit of dirty tricks from dirty politicians and trade union bureaucrats. A few opportunistic paid trade union secretaries can fool around with the idea of a working people party only because the workers and the more honest trade unionists are not informed. They simply appropriate the party idea, kill the party when it is formed, and then trade the name in bourgeois markets as agents of “labour. In the case of the Working People Party, there can be no doubt about what happened. Ejiofor, Salam and their co-conspirators saw a party emerge from decisions taken by serious-minded organizations that no one can push around, like Democratic Alternative, Civil Liberty Organisation and the organizations of university lecturers, lawyers, doctors, women, students, etc. Ejiofor and his co-conspirators knew that given this setting, the overwhelming opposition to his sabotage speeches at Abuja and Ibadan, and the public knowledge of the wretched record of the NLC bosses whom Adams Oshiomhole himself condemned when he became President of the NLC, there is no miracle by which they could have emerged as President, Secretary, or Presidential candidate of the party. Therefore, they killed it and went ahead to register something such that as place seekers rather than liberators, they made themselves President, Secretary and Presidential Candidate. REASONS FOR A WORKING PEOPLE PARTY Why am I so much concerned with the creation of a powerful working people party? I have four driving reasons. The first is that even among Nigerians the vast majority are down-trodden. These are wage workers, artisans, peasants, and petty-traders. The ruling class of capitalists and lovers of capitalism use their rulership to enrich themselves in various ways at the expense or to the detriment of the down-trodden. Apart from being thus predatory the ruling class is also oppressive. Whatever song they sing about democracy or human rights, the reality is oppression. Neither the private employer nor the government official treats the ordinary people as equal citizens. They are bosses, often unjust, whom the people are expected simply to obey. I think that this harsh master and servant order is the wrong kind of society for those who are down-trodden to live in. Only when the working people themselves come to power can this situation be changed, for the sufferers alone can have a total and permanent interest in changing it. Without their power, every promise of change is hypocrisy. It is designed to deceive the sufferers, divide them and preserve the basic situation. Because of my study of social experiences from the beginning of human history, I can see this most clearly. It is not arguable. The vehicle by which the working people can come to power, hold it and make it permanent is their own political party. Why should they, for instance, vote for predators rather than for themselves? Why should they labour to bake the national cake only to hand it to their exploiters and masters to do with it what they like? My second reason for concern with the working peoples power is that the country is not really free. No country can say it is free when the main parts of mining, industry and banking are foreign owned. No country can be free if it has to import most of the equipment it uses. No country is really free if it has to follow foreign economic dictation on even how to make its budget. No country is free if it cannot manufacture the weapons that matter in modern war. Although Nigeria is said to be sovereign, it is still very much a colonial country. It is under Anglo-American imperialism. Imperialism, however, does not exploit uniformly all Nigerians. It exploits mainly the Nigerian working people: those who work in imperialist enterprises, in the public sector that serves imperialism, and in the farms and forests that produce the agricultural and forest raw materials that imperialists buy cheaply; and those who in the main buy the imported goods sold as dear as they can by imperialist firms. The leaders in the Nigerian ruling class are even in alliance with imperialism for what they gain from the joint exploitation of the working people. The country can be truly free only when it is ruled by patriots that determine that at all cost the country must be free. Such patriots are strongest if they are backed politically by the political party of those who really suffer from imperialist exploitation. It is still better if the effort to liberate the country completely is led by the working people party because if such a party is led by honest and clear-headed leaders, it will have many ways of fighting, and will not surrender till the country is completely free. The struggle will be easier and victory in it more assured when a clear-headed working people party is in power. The third reason why I am the chief and unyielding advocate of the working people party is that I have been a keen student of Nigerian politics since 1946 and an active participant in liberation politics. I can say firmly that Nigerians understand ideological politics very well. There are people who do not know that to take a position against colonialism as some Nigerians did and do, or support colonialism as the colonialists and their Nigerian lackeys did and do, is ideological confrontation. There are some who do not understand that to pitch the talakawa and pro-talakawa ideas against feudalists and their ideas, as the Northern Elements Progressive Union and the People Redemption Party did, is class politics and is ideological. The politics of the Directorate for Literacy at Calabar was class politics and ideological and that is why Bassey Ekpo Bassey was able to win the chairmanship election into the Calabar Municipal Council, in spite of bourgeois money and rigging. Yes, there is nothing alien to Nigerian experience about ideological confrontation. The word “ideology is from “ideas. An ideology is a set of ideas held by a broad group or collectivity of people about what is good or not good for society. In a class society, like Nigeria, each class necessarily has ideological notions based on its own interests. However, since 1960, i.e. since the ideological question of independence versus colonialism was removed from Nigerian politics, the politics of Nigeria has grossly degenerated. There is now no politics of ideas. We have the politics of individual bourgeois interests. Then the bourgeoisie in their selfish and greedy competition exploit ethnicity. The country is consumed by bourgeois greed, egotism, corruption and irresponsibility. Then from time to time, for lack of anything else to exploit to be a “leader, some resort to stroking up religious or regional differences. All this irresponsibility provokes military coups which leave problems unsolved. The country is a cauldron of opportunism, ethnicity and conflict. It is thanks to military autocracy and the love of ordinary Nigerians for the country that this country has not broken up. Even when the country has not broken up, why live a life of perpetual grabbing, egotism, opportunism, thoughtlessness, ethnicity, frivolous conflicts, and deaths that need not be? I concluded way back in 1962 that the only way of dragging this country out of the perpetual politics of grabbing, personality cult, ethnicity, opportunism and barrenness of ideas, and the constant danger of disintegration is to create a working people party. Such a party, if so substantial that it cannot be ignored, will counterpose the interest of the working people to the greedy interest of all the grabbing bourgeois egoists. The wage workers belong to all the ethnic groups. So do artisans as a class. So do the peasantry as a class. It is the vital interest of these classes that the bourgeoisie as a class toss aside. To cover up their pertidy they exploit ethnicity and sometimes ignite religious differences into a conflagration. The country can be united along class lines as the workers are industrially united in their trade unions. Whenever a powerful working people party emerges in Nigerian politics, the bourgeoisie will be forced willy nilly to face this party class-wise and ideologically across the country. Then whether anyone likes it or not, the politics of Nigeria will become the politics of issues rather than a mad house scene of greedy and malicious personality and ethnic conflicts. It is this vision of forcing Nigerian politics into a channel where it grapples positively or negatively with the problems of the people which transcend personality and tribe that has helped to fix my attention on the social utility of a working people party. People wonder why Nigerian politics is so frivolous and is not, as they say, concerned with issues or ideas. It cannot centre on broad social issues until ideological parties emerge. Ideological parties cannot come into being and there can be no persistent attention to the “wretched of the earth until a powerful party of the working people steps into Nigerian politics. Even to save the country from disintegration or interminable frivolity, irresponsibility and growing nihilism, a working people party is needed. The fourth reason for my long devotion to the working people party is my studies. My theoretical and comparative empirical studies in social philosophy, history and the social sciences show me what must be done to achieve this or that. I have the obligation of the one that knows and, if he has the love, must show the way to others. I can see what is wrong with Nigeria most clearly and most profoundly. Unfortunately, Nigeria is a country consumed by mediocrity. Instead of learning, carefree charlatans just pick up notions like “democracy or “workers party that are popular with the people and run an opportunistic race with it. They end nowhere, except that they may end up with some money in their pockets, and the social rot and futility continue. |
Download Ilorin Documents
From the Newspapers
Educational Materials
THE BIRTH AND MURDER OF THE NIGERIAN LABOUR PARTY
Written by Administrator
Wednesday, 05 March 2008 07:55
|
|